As you, Gentlemen, have long personated the eye of public Justice, you can have no prejudice, and can desire nothing but that truth should prevail. The truth, which had made some progress in this city, has been attacked by various means, and by violent measures. While the adversaries have shown no disposition to fair and liberal discussion, or to put the prevalence of conflicting sentiments on the proper issue of superior conviction, they have gradually put in motion all the means which artful ambition ever derived from prejudice, ignorance, and wilful blindness. For many years past their career has been with a high hand, and pursued with a supposed ascendant influence, corroborated with a pride of superiority, and insolence of success, intolerable to such as were placed in a situation to feel the secret sting of their contumely, or the lash of their public recrimination.

Their ascendency was supposed, because their little comparative omnipotence was never attempted. You are not to suppose that this city was void of all intellect; but while objects of a nature far different from theological discussion principally engrossed the public attention, and while a great body of people saw nothing about these men but the snowy robes and angelic meekness of peerless sanctity, and a still greater number rendered careless about a religion equally repugnant to reason and common sense, and independent of every province of the human mind, cared little through what conduits this turbid stream of inconsistency, mystery, and fanaticism flowed, the ignorant were silent through veneration, the irreligious through indifference, the pious from love of peace, and the interested from motives of popularity. And all were silent:

"Inde toro, pater Æneas sic orsus ab alto."

15

THE TRIANGLE.

THIRD SERIES.

No. I.

If the opinion of Buffon, that man is a gregarious animal, were not admitted as an evidence of the fact, the observation of every intelligent mind would lead to that conclusion. There is something equally grand and pleasing in the idea, that all rational beings are social; and, even admitting that an intelligent creature could be so constituted as to endure solitude without pain, yet, we may safely suppose, that reason would be wasted, if bestowed on such a creature; which supposition, the seclusion of the hermits and many of the monastic orders seems to justify.

If the presumption would be too great to make any allusion from this idea to the mysterious nature of Deity, who, in himself, has a plentitude of perfection and felicity, we may safely, and must necessarily, believe, that the most exalted of all creatures could not be happy but in society.

Our pleasures are usually divided into corporeal and intellectual, or mental. The pleasures of the mind are again resol ved into those of the heart and affections, and those of the understanding. Some of these lie nearer the region of sense, and others of thought; some seem to belong exclusively to the body, others to the mind. Addison considers the pleasures of the imagination as occupying a kind of middle region between

the two distinct provinces of our nature, and occasionally deriving auxiliaries from, and communicating enjoyment to both.

Beside these, and holding a higher and purer region, there are the pleasures of the understanding. These seem to lie wholly in the province of the intelligent and immortal nature. What the essence of the soul is, we know not; and we can only refer it to the unknown nature and constitution of the soul, that the perception or discovery of truth should give it pleasure. But that it does, and that under certain cirumstances, to a very high degree, no one can doubt. This, perhaps, may be among the final causes of the social principle.

Knowledge is the food of the mind; and in this, the analogy between the body and mind is obvious; for, as the sustenance and growth of our corporeal frame is an object ulterior to all the pleasures of the palate and the gratifications of appetite, so knowledge, while it gives pure and exalted pleasure to the mind, expands, ennobles, and raises it nearer the perfections of more exalted natures. And there are few topics more animating and delightful than the consideration of the means of gaining knowledge with which we are partially furnished here, and shall be more fully hereafter. And for this we are principally indebted to the gospel, in which life and immortality are brought to light. In our present feeble and mortal state, our progress seems slow, and often retarded; yet the grandeur of the surrounding universe is open before us; the volume of Revelation is in our hands, and many sublime and glorious objects engage our attention, and exalt our ideas. How, then, will it be in the spiritual world, where our faculties will be strong, acute, and adapted to converse with spiritual creatures of various orders, and in a language of as much facility as thought? The ceaseless ages of immortality will bring amazing improvement-will unfold new powers-elicit new faculties. And then, the accumulated and still growing felicity and grandeur of millions of creatures, in a field of operation as unlimited as immensity and eternity, will never cease to open new sources of knowledge. But God himself-God the Creator, the Saviour, the Ruler, the Lord of all, will be their chief good, the fountain of discovery, instruction, and happiness.

The question has been discussed, whether the city or the country be most favourable to the progress of the human mind in knowledge. A centre of intelligence, an assemblage of character, frequency of intercourse, and the influence of wealth and commerce on the arts and sciences, which in every city must be considerable, seem to give, at first view, decided advantages to the city. On the other hand, the quiet of the country, so favourable to calm reflection, the increased avidity of the mind when restored to its natural tension and tendencies by the absence of all disturbing influences; in short, the leisure and silence peculiar to a region where hurry and bustle are not as fashionable to those who do nothing as those who do most, seem to point out the country as the place for thought and application of mind.

Having, in the first number of the former series, adverted to several useful and benevolent improvements in this city, but which speak best their own eulogium in the relief they afford to thousands of sufferers, I trust it will not be displeasing to the polite and ingenuous reader to reflect, for a moment, on the advantages and incentives Providence has given this city to improve in every thing useful and ornamental, and particularly in knowledge.

city are rivalled by world. Should the

1. The commercial advantages of this none in the new, and by few in the old grand Columbian canal, intended to form a communication between this city and the great lakes, be opened upon the plan of those enlightened and enterprizing citizens who have made it so much the object of their attention, this port would ultimately surpass, in its advantages, those of Alexandria, Constantinople, or London. Indeed, those of London are rather adventitous than natural. On this point, the patriotic reader will do well to consult the history of Carthage, of Athens, Syracuse, Venice, Genoa, the cities of the Hanseatic League-I mean Antwerp, Bruges, and, in later times, Hamburgh and Amsterdam. Let me here, once, and once for all, implore the citizens of this favoured city to forget the jealousies and collisions of private interest and national politics, and direct their eyes towards that bright summit of grandeur and felicity which Providence has