discover an object still more stupendous, that army of fixed stars
hung up in the immense space of the universe, innumerable suns whose
beams enlighten and cherish the unknown worlds which roll around them;
and whilst I am ravished by such contemplations as these, whilst my
soul is thus raised up to heaven, imports me little what ground I
tread upon."

[Footnote 31: Plut. of Banishment. He compares those who cannot live
out of their own country, to the simple people who fancied the moon of
Athens was a finer moon than that of Corinth,

----_Labentem coelo quae ducitis annum._
VIRG., _Georg._]

_Hazlitt._

OF PERSONS ONE WOULD WISH TO HAVE SEEN

B---- it was, I think, who suggested this subject, as well as the
defence of Guy Faux, which I urged him to execute. As, however, he
would undertake neither, I suppose I must do both--a task for which he
would have been much fitter, no less from the temerity than the
felicity of his pen--

"Never so sure our rapture to create
As when it touch'd the brink of all we hate."

Compared with him I shall, I fear, make but a commonplace piece of
business of it; but I should be loth the idea was entirely lost, and
besides I may avail myself of some hints of his in the progress of it.
I am sometimes, I suspect, a better reporter of the ideas of other
people than expounder of my own. I pursue the one too far into paradox
or mysticism; the others I am not bound to follow farther than I like,
or than seems fair and reasonable.

On the question being started, A---- said, "I suppose the two first
persons you would choose to see would be the two greatest names in
English literature, Sir Isaac Newton and Mr. Locke?" In this A----, as
usual, reckoned without his host. Every one burst out a laughing at
the expression of B----'s face, in which impatience was restrained by
courtesy. "Yes, the greatest names," he stammered out hastily, "but
they were not persons--not persons."--"Not persons?" said A----,
looking wise and foolish at the same time, afraid his triumph might be
premature. "That is," rejoined B----, "not characters, you know. By
Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, you mean the Essay on the Human
Understanding, and the _Principia_, which we have to this day. Beyond
their contents there is nothing personally interesting in the men. But
what we want to see any one _bodily_ for, is when there is something
peculiar, striking in the ind