nly is not that portion of my task which has cost me most."

The history of the "Bibliotheca Britannica" of the late Dr. Watt may serve
as a mortifying example of the length of labour and the brevity of life.
To this gigantic work the patient zeal of the writer had devoted twenty
years; he had just arrived at the point of publication, when death folded
down his last page; the son who, during the last four years, had toiled
under the direction of his father, was chosen to occupy his place. The
work was in the progress of publication, when the son also died; and
strangers now reap the fruits of their combined labours.

One cannot forbear applying to this subject of voluminous designs, which
must be left unfinished, the forcible reflection of Johnson on the
planting of trees: "There is a frightful interval between the seed and
timber. He that calculates the growth of trees has the unwelcome
remembrance of the shortness of life driven hard upon him. He knows that
he is doing what will never benefit himself; and, when he rejoices to see
the stem arise, is disposed to repine that another shall cut it down."

* * * * *

OF DOMESTIC NOVELTIES AT FIRST CONDEMNED.

It is amusing enough to discover that things, now considered among the
most useful and even agreeable acquisitions of domestic life, on their
first introduction ran great risks of being rejected, by the ridicule or
the invective which they encountered. The repulsive effect produced on
mankind by the mere strangeness of a thing, which at length we find
established among our indispensable conveniences, or by a practice which
has now become one of our habits, must be ascribed sometimes to a proud
perversity in our nature; sometimes to the crossing of our interests, and
to that repugnance to alter what is known for that which has not been
sanctioned by our experience. This feeling has, however, within the latter
half century considerably abated; but it proves, as in higher matters,
that some philosophical reflection is required to determine on the
usefulness, or the practical ability, of every object which comes in the
shape of novelty or innovation. Could we conceive that man had never
discovered the practice of washing his hands, but cleansed them as animals
do their paws, he would for certain have ridiculed and protested against
the inventor of soap, and as tardily, as in other matters, have adopted
the invention. A reader, unaccustom