study the Bible for the express purpose of becoming acquainted with human nature, abstractedly, or think of applying what you discover of it there, in your habitual judgment of your fellow-creatures? If not, take it up sometimes for this express purpose. There is no history, no biography, no philosophical treatise to be compared with it, for disclosing what man is in the aggregate, what we have reason to expect from him, and what we are likely to find in him; or for teaching us to judge of individuals with fairness and without prejudice. There we learn what the heart of man is, how it became so, and why it remains so-there we find explained the dark blemishes that blot the fairest characters, and the factitious beauties that adorn the most debased. And while we there discover mankind in general to be worse, infinitely worse than we know or can conceive, it is there we most certainly shall learn to judge of every individual with more lenity, tolerance, and tenderness.

Histories, if true, would teach us much of human character-by true, I mean if no false glosses were given by the historian to facts and circumstances that, true in themselves, leave, as they are stated, very false impressions of the characters and motives of those concerned in them. Every historian has political opinions, religious sentiments, and favourite theories of his own, which influence his judgment where he intends to be the most impartial; and then he writes for the most part of characters so remote, that though he very hiberally supplies us with their feelings, thoughts, and words, as well as deeds, it is small fund he has on which to draw for them, unless upon his own imagination. All this must be allowed for in studying history, and to read it profitably, I believe we must be always armed with a certain degree of incredulity as to the excessive goodness or excessive badness, excessive wisdom or excessive folly, of its heroes; at least till we have read largely, and can form a truth for ourselves, out of contradictory falsehoods.

Biography is sometimes subject to the same objections, but not always. The writer usually has had personal acquaintance with his subject, has been the depository of his thoughts, the sharer in his conversations, the confidant of his motives and designs. If he tells them honestly, we may form a correct judgment of the character, though he should not. Then he usually has documents to produce, more certainly correct than the records of his own memory. The letters of private friend ship, of domestick affection, of public business; perhaps the yet more secret confession of the bosom to itselfthe midnight reflection, the passing thought, the immature desire the journal, the days-book, the careless memoranda, that disclose of a man when dead, more than we ever may of him while living. Of all descriptions of reading, Biography I conceive is that which will give you the most real insight into human nature; and there is none I should now more strongly recommend to you on that account. Of those works which treat of the philosophy of mind in general, I have already spoken. They, also, are much to the point we have in view, and I am glad to hear you find them less dry than you expected. Depend upon it, every exercise of the intellect is in itself an enjoyment, independently of what may be attained by it. Some people have no idea of this, and think that however pleasant it may be to know, to learn must always be a disagreeable effort. This is the effect of habit-of habitual indolence of mind, acting exactly in the same way as that habitual indolence of body, which drags itself perforce where it needs must go, but has no idea of the delight that a vigorous and healthful frame can find in exercise.

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DESCRIPTION OF BRITISH TREES.

No. VII.

BIRCH-BETULA.

THE Birch, from the smallness of the leaf, the airy lightness of the branches, and the whiteness of the bark, can scarcely be mistaken among the trees of our woodlands, where it is very common. The flower is a pendent string of small green blossoms, blowing before the leaves, of the Class Tetrandria Digynia.

"Betula, the Birch or Birc, (whence some derive the name of Berkshire,) in British Beduen, is doubtless a proper indigene of England, though Pliny calls it a Gaulish tree. Though Birch be of all others the worst of timber, yet it has its various uses; as for the husbandman's ox-yokes; also for hoops, panniers, brooms, &c. It claims a memory for arrows, bolts, shafts, our old English artillery; also for dishes, bowls, ladles, and other domestic utensils, in the good old days of more simplicity, yet better and truer hospitality. With this tree, whereof they have a blacker kind, the North Americans make canoes, boxes, brackets, kettles, dishes, (which they sew and join very curiously with threads made of Cedar roots,) and divers other domestical utensils, as baskets, bags, &c.; and of a certain fungus excrescence' from the bole, after being boiled, beaten, and dried in an oven, they make excellent spunk or touchwood, and balls to play withal. They make also not only this small ware, but even small eraft, pinnaces of Birch; ribbing them with white Cedar, and covering them with large flakes of Birch-bark, they sew them with thread of Spruce roots, and pitch them.”—EVELYN.

"The inner white cuticle, and silken bark, which strips off of itself almost every year, was anciently used for writing-tables, before the invention of paper. There is a Birch-tree in Canada, whose bark will serve to write on, and may be made into books, and of the twigs very pretty baskets; with the outward thicker coarser part of the common Birch, are divers houses in Russia, Poland, and those poor northern tracts, covered instead of slates and tiles: nay, one who has lately published an account of Sweden, says that the poor people grind the very bark of Birch-trees to mingle with their bread-corn. It is affirmed by Cardan, that some Birch-roots are so very extravagantly veined, as to represent the shapes and images of beasts, birds, trees, and many other pretty resemblances. Lastly, of the whitest part of the old wood, found commonly in doating Birches, is made the grounds of our effeminate farined Gallants' sweet powder; and of the quite consumed and rotten, such as we find reduced to a kind of reddish earth in superannuated hollow trees, is gotten the best mould for the raising of divers seedlings of the rarest plants and flowers; to say nothing here of the Magisterial Fasces, for which an