the history of science, opens a wide and fine field for the struggle of generous emulation. Thus literary and researching men become banded together for the noblest and most salutary purposes; individual improvement, the enlargement of knowledge, and the aggrandizement of empire.

On the general utility of such publications, it is wholly su perfluous to insist any longer. It seems to be a point absolutely conceded. Nothing remains for the editors of this new Journal but to proffer their pledge to the public, with the expectation that such pledge will be redeemed. Far from throwing down hostile gauntlets, like clashing foes, they present their gage like courteous cavaliers; and, on the open field of scientific adventure, justly hope for impartial, if not applauding spectators.

FOR THE PORT FOLIO.-THE LIBERAL ARTS.

INGENUAS didicisse fideliter ARTES

Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.

OVID.

THE liberal, or fine arts, are so admirably calculated to deceive life's tedious day, by their plastic, their pictorial, or musical power, that men, from the era of a Praxiteles, to that of a Reynolds, or a WEST, have conspired to enlarge the empire of the painter, the sculptor, and the musician. Princes and popes have neglected the Government and the Church to survey animated canvass on Italian walls; a tenth Leo, and a second Julius, have fondly fostered the arts in the cradle; and the genius of Charles I, of England, was not rebuked by an intimacy with Vandyke.

In Amèrica, at this epoch in the history of her republic, an institution to encourage arts of this description is at once a memorable and a joyful event. We hail it as the gay harbinger of the halcyon hours of genius, as the brilliant dawn of that dayspring from on high, which will soon irradiate a mighty nation.

During the last autumnal month the annual discourse, assigned to Joseph Hopkinson, Esq. by the taste and judgment of the directors of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, was delivered by that gentleman with a spirit, vivacity, and cloquence for which he is so honourably distinguished. On no occasion do we remember ever to have mingled among a more delighted assembly, which, in fact, was not only exceedingly numerous, but was composed of most of the distinguished characters of this enlightened metropolis. At the rhetorical pause of many a brilliant period, the impassioned orator was cheered by the honest plaudits both of his critics and his friends; and, at the close of his spirited and sprightly harrangue, the lively acclamation of an applauding audience was one of the most distinct testimonies in favour of genius that we ever witnessed. The general tribute to Mr. Hopkinson's talents was never more rightfully paid; and we anticipate the most salutary results from a most animated address, calculated, in an eminent degree, to rouse the genius and direct the energies of art, and summon to glorious exercise all the brilliant troops of the country. The audience appeared to be as thoroughly impressed with the force of the orator's reasoning, as they were electrified by the sparkles of his wit. His pungent sarcasm and sportive sallies repeatedly excited the merriment of the good humoured hearer; but, above all, the encouraging narrative which the orator related, with all the veracity of an historian, of the astonishing advancement of the arts in our nascent country appeared to create the liveliest sensation. In the progress of his discourse, Mr. Hopkinson took occasion to refute the theory of the brilliant but fanciful Montesquieu, which supposes, I know not what influence, of climate over the intellectual faculty. This is one of the wildest chimeras of philosophy. The human mind is influenced not by climate, but by government; not by soils but by customs; not by heat and cold, but by the genial glow of patronage, or the chilling frosts of neglect. It was once inquired, says the ingenious D'Israeli, why Paris and Thoulouse produced so many eminent lawyers. It was, for a long time, attributed to the climate, till some reasonable being discovered that the universities of those cities offered opportuni

ties and encouragements for the study of jurisprudence, which other places and other seminaries did not. A magnificent and munificent government, a happy education, an elegant leisure, and a passion for glory form a great man, a Johnson, a Warburton, a Thurlow, and a Burke. But, if by any stretch of fancy, we can, in the profoundest reverie, imagine a form of government, without much dignity and without much gratitude, such a constitution of things might, perhaps, form for the most part, nothing but little men; misers, pedlars, compilers of spelling books, fustian orators, fanatic sermonizers, puny deists, babbling philosophers, and callow statesmen.

After his signal overthrow of a specious but an absurd hypothesis, the orator victoriously assaulted that description of travellers who have conspired to calumniate the country. He nobly asserted Columbia's claim; and demonstrated, with mathematical truth, that neither the vine nor the fig tree of exuberance would be wanting, give them but ASSIDUOUS CULTURE AND

GENIAL SKIES.

THE STERLING SENSE OF A PHILOSOPHICAL PHYSICIAN.

I MAY not fully subscribe to all the conclusions of this excellent writer, because, in the course of his admirable speculation, he derides with Dr. Johnson the influence of gloomy weather upon a gloomy mind. We fear that we should be at issue both with experience and fact if we utterly denied this theory. For the situation of man, whether sylvan or urban unquestionably in some degree affects the moral faculty; and the sage author of the Rambler in some parts of his works, supports our hypothesis.

It will be perceived that the medical gentleman to whose wisdom we are indebted for the ensuing excellent essay dates from the metropolis of the British empire during the reign of midsummer, at which epoch the whole fashionable world vanish into the country. The sarcasms and the reasonings of our philosophical prescriber may be perfectly understood by a class of the Philadelphians, who, like the loungers of London, are in the habit of wander

ing on the margin of brooks or the shores of the ocean, in quest of those forms of health and pleasure, which, alas! too often fly like phantoms, before us. EDITOV

The periodical propensity to migration is beginning to show itself among the more opulent inhabitants of the metropolis. It may be considered as constituting the fashionable epidemic of the summer season. This domiphobia may be opposed to the hydrophobia inasmuch as a patient affected with the former complaint, so far from betraying any dread of water is for the most part impelled, by an almost irresistible impulse to places of resort where that element is to be found in the greatest abundance. London, which at other times serves as a nucleus for an accumulated population, seems now to exert a surprising centripetal force; by which are driven from it a large proportion of those inhabitants who are not fastened to the spot, by the rivet of necessity, or some powerful local obligations. Men whose personal freedom is not in like manner restricted within geographical limits gladly escape, in the fervid months, from the perils real or imaginary, of this artificially heated capital.

Pericula mille

Sævæ urbis.

An already immense and incessantly expanding city, on every side of which new streets are continually surprising the view, as rapid almost in their formation as the sudden shootings of crystalization, it is reasonable to imagine cannot be particularly favourable to the health of that mass of human existence which it contains. But it is, at best, a matter of doubtful speculation how far those maladies, which are attributed exclusively to the air of this great town inay arise from the perhaps more noxious influence of its fashions and its habits. Man is not in so humiliating a degree dependent, as some are apt to suppose, upon the particles which float about him. He is by no means constituted so, as necessarily to be the slave of circumambient atoms. As the body varies little in its heat in all the vicissitudes of external temperature to which it may be exposed, so there is an internal power of resistance in the mind, which, when roused into action, is in most instances sufficient to counteract the hostile agency of extraneous

causes. I have repeatedly been acquainted with the instance of a female patient, who, at a time, when she felt too feeble and enervated to walk across a room, could, notwithstanding, without any sense of inconvenience or fatigue, dance all night with an agreeable partner. So remarkably does the stimulus of a favou1ite and enlivening amusement awaken the dormant energies of the animal fibre. Upon a similar principle, they are for the most part, only the vacant and the indolent, those "lillies of the valley, that neither toil nor spin," who suffer in any considerable degree, from the closeness of the air or the changes of the weather. One, whose attention is occupied, and whose powers are actively engaged, will be found, in a great measure, indifferent to the elevations or depressions of the thermometer. Leisure, although not the subject, is the principal source of all our lamentations. There is no disquietude more intolerable than that which is experienced by persons who are unfortunately placed in what are called easy circumstances. Toil was made for man, and although he may sometimes inherit what is necessary to life, he is in every instance obliged to earn what is essential to its enjoyment. The vapours of melancholy most frequently arise from an untilled or insufficiently cultivated soil.

Although habitual industry is of such indispensible importance to our physical as well as intellectual well being, it will not be found sufficient to secure the continuance of either, without the co-operation of temperance, which is, indeed, its usual and natural ally.

Temperance ought to be regarded as a virtue of more comprehensive meaning than what relates merely to a salutary discipline in dict. Temperance implies a certain regulation of all the feelings, and a due, but restricted exercise of all the faculties of the frame. There is no species of dissipation or exertion in which we may not pass beyond the bounds of a wholesome moderation. A man may be intemperately joyful or sorrowful, intemperate in his hopes or in his fears, intemperate in his friendships or his hostilities; intemperate in the restlessness of his ambition or the greediness of his gain.

The state of the pulse depends so much upon the beating of the passions that the former cannot be regular and calm, while