OR SKETCHES, BIOGRAPHICAL, ECCLESIASTICAL, AND HISTORICAL. BY JOHN COCKIN. The true end of reading is to furnish the mind with materials on which to exercise its own powers.-Dr. Doddridge. I read that I may think for myself. - Miss Edgeworth. LONDON: T. WARD & Co. PATERNOSTER ROW. 1843. He is the best author who not only thinks himself, but makes his reader think; and when we are excited to think, and led into a number of reflections, it is advantageous to arrange them, and express them in writing. Doing this will bring them distinctly before our view, and impress them upon our minds; and such compositions will inform us in future years what we thought, and how we felt, respecting the books we read, and the subjects we studied, at the time when they were full and fresh in our consideration, and when we were therefore most competent to form a right judgment. By following this practice from the days of youth, the pieces of this kind which I have written, at different times, are rather numerous; and it has lately been part of my employment to look them over, and to select, and revise for publication, those which seem the most eligible. When papers which have been fortuitously produced, at distant intervals, are laid together, some coincidences of sentiment and expression may be observed; and, as they were written upon no plan, they will be regulated by no scale of proportion; there will also be little correspondence between the length of them and the eminence of the characters of whom they treat, or the importance of the subjects they discuss. An edifice that consists of rooms and offices which were built one after another without previous arrangement, and as circumstances |