nd when
nothing but the simplest actions are adapted to their enfeebled state.
At such hours it is recorded of the Jewish Socrates, Moses Mendelssohn,
that he would stand at his window, and count the tiles of his
neighbour's house. An anonymous writer has told of Bayle, that he would
frequently wrap himself in his cloak, and hasten to places where
mountebanks resorted; and that this was one of his chief amusements. He
is surprised that so great a philosopher should delight in so trifling
an object. This objection is not injurious to the character of Bayle;
it only proves that the writer himself was no philosopher.

The "Monthly Reviewer," in noticing this article, has continued the
speculation by giving two interesting anecdotes. "The observation
concerning 'heavy hours,' and the want of elasticity in the intellectual
faculties of men of letters, when the mind is fatigued and the attention
blunted by incessant labour, reminds us of what is related by persons
who were acquainted with the late sagacious magistrate Sir John
Fielding; who, when fatigued with attending to complicated cases, and
perplexed with discordant depositions, used to retire to a little closet
in a remote and tranquil part of the house, to rest his mental powers
and sharpen perception. He told a great physician, now living, who
complained of the distance of places, as caused by the great extension
of London, that 'he (the physician) would not have been able to visit
many patients to any purpose, if they had resided nearer to each other;
as he could have had no time either to think or to rest his mind.'"

Our excellent logician was little accustomed to a mixed society: his
life was passed in study. He had such an infantine simplicity in his
nature, that he would speak on anatomical subjects before the ladies
with as much freedom as before surgeons. When they inclined their eyes
to the ground, and while some even blushed, he would then inquire if
what he spoke was indecent; and, when told so, he smiled, and stopped.
His habits of life were, however, extremely pure; he probably left
himself little leisure "_to fall into temptation_."

Bayle knew nothing of geometry; and, as Le Clerc informs us,
acknowledged that he could never comprehend the demonstration of the
first problem in Euclid. Le Clerc, however, was a rival to Bayle; with
greater industry and more accurate learning, but with very inferior
powers of reasoning and philosophy. Both of these great