A work on the art of meditation has not yet been produced; yet such a work might prove of immense advantage to him who never happened to have more than one solitary idea.  The pursuit of a single principle has produced a great system.  Thus probably we owe ADAM SMITH to the French economists.  And a loose hint has conducted to a new discovery.  Thus GIRARD, taking advantage of an idea first started by Fenelon, produced his “Synonymes.”  But while, in every manual art, every great workman improves on his predecessor, of the art of the mind, notwithstanding the facility of practice, and our incessant experience, millions are yet ignorant of the first rudiments; and men of genius themselves are rarely acquainted with the materials they are working on.  Certain constituent principles of the mind itself, which the study of metaphysics curiously developes, offer many important regulations in this desirable art.  We may even suspect, since men of genius in the present age have confided to us the secrets of their studies, that this art may be carried on by more obvious means than at first would appear, and even by mechanical contrivances and practical habits.  A mind well organised may be regulated by a single contrivance, as by a bit of lead we govern the fine machinery by which we track the flight of time.  Many secrets in this art of the mind yet remain as insulated facts, which may hereafter enter into an experimental history.

Johnson has a curious observation on the Mind itself.  He thinks it obtains a stationary point, from whence it can never advance, occurring before the middle of life.  “When the powers of nature have attained their intended energy, they can be no more advanced.  The shrub can never become a tree.  Nothing then remains but practice and experience; and perhaps why they do so little may be worth inquiry."[A] The result of this inquiry would probably lay a broader foundation for this art of the mind than we have hitherto possessed, ADAM FERGUSON has expressed himself with sublimity:—­“The lustre which man casts around him, like the flame of a meteor, shines only while his motion continues; the moments of rest and of obscurity are the same.”  What is this art of meditation, but the power of withdrawing ourselves from the world, to view that world moving within ourselves, while we are in repose?  As the artist, by an optical instrument, reflects and concentrates the boundless landscape around him, and patiently traces all nature in that small space.

[Footnote A:  I recommend the reader to turn to the whole passage, in Johnson’s “Betters to Mrs. Thrale,” vol. i. p. 296.]