recent toast, "The Senate of the United States, the
guardians of a free people," by which a Boston paper said "more was
meant than met the eye." The evening was passed with the ordinary
sources of amusement. I have for some time felt that the time devoted to
these amusements, in which I never made much advance, would be better
given up to reading, or some inquiry from which I might hope to derive
advantage. An incident this evening impressed me with this truth, and I
came home with a resolution that one source of them should no longer
engross a moment of my time.

Harris, the author of Hermes, says, "It is certainly as easy to be a
scholar as a gamester, or any other character equally illiberal and low.
The same application, the same quantity of habit, will fit us for one as
completely as for the other. And as to those who tell us, with an air of
seeming wisdom, that it is men, and not books, that we must study to
become knowing; this I have always remarked, from repeated experience,
to be the common consolation and language of dunces." Now although I
have no purpose of aiming at extreme heights in knowledge, yet there are
some points in which every man should have that precision of knowledge
which is a concomitant of scholarship. And every man, by diligence, may
add to the number of these points, without aiming at all to put on a
character for extraordinary wisdom or profundity.

* * * * *

_9th. Historical Reminiscences_.--On the third of April, 1764, Sir
William Johnson concluded preliminary articles of peace and friendship
with eight deputies of the Seneca nation, which was the only one of the
Iroquois who joined Pontiac. This was done at his residence at Johnson
Hall, on the Mohawk.

In August, 1764, Colonel Bradstreet granted "Terms of Peace" to certain
deputies of the Delaware, Huron, and Shawnee tribes at Presque Isle,
being then on his way to relieve Detroit, which was then closely
invested by the Indians. These deputies gave in their adhesion to the
English cause, and agreed to give up all the English prisoners.

In October of the same year, Colonel Bouquet granted similar terms to
another deputation of Shawnees, Delawares, &c., at Tuscarawas.

The best account of the general transactions of the war of that era,
which I have seen, is contained in a "History of the Late War in North
America, and Islands of the West Indies. By Thomas Mante, Assistant
Engineer, &c., and Major