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 means by various recent publications, suggests some meditation upon the leading events in his biography, accompanied with a few historical and speculative notices, as an introduction to that great department of knowledge of which he was so distinguished a cultivator, viz., Metaphysical Philosophy.

Perhaps these two last words are fitted to excite feelings of repugnance in the minds of some readers, as relating to something that is conceived to be at best vague and unproductive. The tendencies of public opinion in Great Britain, in the former half of this century, have evidently been greatly averse from these speculations. The section of society given to abstract meditation has never in any age been a large one; and the recent wide extension of a certain measure of intelligence has perhaps helped to diminish it, by putting the current