Yet many glorious efforts, and even artificial inventions, have been contrived to assist and save its moral and literary existence in that perpetual race which genius holds with time.  We trace its triumph in the studious days of such men as GIBBON, Sir WILLIAM JONES, and PRIESTLEY.  An invention by which the moral qualities and the acquisitions of the literary character were combined and advanced together, is what Sir WILLIAM JONES ingeniously calls his “Andrometer.”  In that scale of human attainments and enjoyments which ought to accompany the eras of human life, it reminds us of what was to be learned, and what to be practised, assigning to stated periods their appropriate pursuits.  An occasional recurrence, even to so fanciful a standard, would be like looking on a clock to remind the student how he loiters, or how he advances in the great day’s work.  Such romantic plans have been often invented by the ardour of genius.  There was no communication between Sir WILLIAM JONES and Dr. FRANKLIN; yet, when young, the self-taught philosopher of America pursued the same genial and generous devotion to his own moral and literary excellence.

“It was about this time I conceived,” says Franklin, “the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection,” &c.  He began a daily journal, in which against thirteen virtues accompanied by seven columns to mark the days of the week, he dotted down what he considered to be his failures; he found himself fuller of faults than he had imagined, but at length his blots diminished.  This self-examination, or this “Faultbook,” as Lord Shaftesbury would have called it, was always carried about him.  These books still exist.  An additional contrivance was that of journalising his twenty-four hours, of which he has furnished us both with descriptions and specimens of the method; and he closes with a solemn assurance, that “It may be well my posterity should be informed, that to this little artifice their ancestor owes the constant felicity of his life.”  Thus we see the fancy of Jones and the sense of Franklin, unconnected either by character or communication, but acted on by the same glorious feeling to create their own moral and literary character, inventing similar although extraordinary methods.

The memorials of Gibbon and Priestley present us with the experience and the habits of the literary character.  “What I have known,” says Dr. Priestley, “with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration and my contempt of others.  Could we have entered into the mind of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced his great works, we might see nothing very extraordinary in the process.”  Our student, with an ingenuous simplicity, opens to us that “variety of mechanical expedients by which he secured and arranged his thoughts,” and that discipline of the mind, by means of a peculiar arrangement of his studies for the day and for the year, in which he rivalled the calm and unalterable system pursued by Gibbon, Buffon, and Voltaire, who often only combined the knowledge they obtained by humble methods.  They knew what to ask for; and where what is wanted may be found:  they made use of an intelligent secretary; aware, as Lord Bacon has expressed it, that some books “may be read by deputy.”