n
discerning future; together with its numberless discoveries in the
several arts and sciences, I feel a conscious conviction that this
active, comprehensive principle can not possibly be of a mortal
nature. And as this unceasing activity of the soul derives its energy
from its own intrinsic and essential powers, without receiving it from
any foreign or external impulse, it necessarily follows (as it is
absurd to suppose the soul would desert itself) that this activity
must continue forever. But farther; as the soul is evidently a simple,
uncompounded substance, without any dissimilar parts or heterogeneous
mixture, it can not, therefore, be divided; consequently, it can not
perish. I might add, that the facility and expedition with which youth
are taught to acquire numberless very difficult arts, is a strong
presumption that the soul possessed a considerable portion of
knowledge before it entered into the human form, and that what seems
to be received from instruction is, in fact, no other than a
reminiscence or recollection of its former ideas. This, at least, is
the opinion of Plato.

JULIUS CAESAR.

Julius Caesar was born on the 12th of July, 100 B.C. As to his
intellectual character, Caesar was gifted by nature with the most
varied talents, and was distinguished by an extraordinary genius, and
by attainments in very diversified pursuits. He was, at one and the
same time, a general, a statesman, a lawgiver, a jurist, an orator, a
poet, an historian, a philologer, a mathematician, and an architect.
He seemed equally fitted to excel in all, and has given proofs that he
would surpass most men in any subject to which he should devote the
energies of his great mind; and Middleton says he was the only man in
Rome capable of rivaling Cicero as an orator. During his whole busy
life he found time for literary pursuits, and always took pleasure in
the society and conversation of men of learning.

Caesar wrote many works on different subjects, but they are now all
lost but his "Commentaries." These relate the history of the first
seven years of the Gallic War in seven books, and the Civil War down
to the commencement of the Alexandrine in three books. The purity of
his Latin, and the clearness and beauty of his style have rendered his
"Commentaries" a most popular and desirable text book for students of
the Latin language.

A most important change was introduced by him in the reformation of
the calendar, which was not