None, no, not the least
remembrance of its very ruins, remains, not the shadow of an idea is
left, nor any sense that so much as one single one, perfect or imperfect,
whole or diminished, ever did appear to a mind within him, or was
perceived by it."
Think of this as the Dedication of a book "universally allowed to be the
best which that controversy produced," and what a flood of light it pours
on the insanities of those self-analyzing diarists whose morbid reveries
have been so often mistaken for piety! No. I. had something for me,
then, besides the cover, which was all it claimed to have worth offering.
No. II. was "A View of Society and Manners in Italy." Vol. III. By John
Moore, M. D. (Zeluco Moore.) You know his pleasant book. In this
particular volume what interested me most, perhaps, was the very spirited
and intelligent account of the miracle of the liquefaction of the blood
of Saint Januarius, but it gave me an hour's mighty agreeable reading.
So much for Number Two.
No. III. was "An ESSAY On the Great EFFECTS of Even Languid and Unheeded
LOCAL MOTION." By the Hon. Robert Boyle. Published in 1685, and, as
appears from other sources, "received with great and general applause."
I confess I was a little startled to find how near this earlier
philosopher had come to the modern doctrines, such as are illustrated in
Tyndall's "Heat considered as a Mode of Motion.
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