with Russia, by means of Odessa, and on the supposition of a war in the Baltic, a still more interesting relation to Turkey, and the Morea, and the Greek islands.—It had been repeatedly signified to the British government, that from the Morea and the countries adjacent, a considerable supply of ship timber and naval stores might be obtained, such as would at least greatly lessen the pressure of a Russian war. The agents of France were in full activity in the Morea and the Greek islands, the possession of which by that government would augment the naval resources of the French to a degree of which few are aware, who have not made the present state of commerce of the Greeks an object of particular attention. In short, if the possession of Malta were advantageous to England solely as a convenient watch-tower, as a centre of intelligence, its importance would be undeniable.

Although these suggestions did not prevent the signing away of Malta at the peace of Amiens, they doubtless were not without effect, when the ambition of Bonaparte had given a full and final answer to the grand question can we remain in peace with France? I have likewise reason to believe, that Sir Alexander Ball baffled by exposure an insidious proposal of the French government, during the negotiations that preceded the recommencement of the war-that the fortifications of Malta should be entirely dismantled, and the island left to its inhabitants. Without dwelling on the obvious inhumanity and flagitious injustice of exposing the Maltese to certain pillage and slavery from their old and inveterate enemies the Moors, he showed that the plan would promote the interests of Bonaparte even more than his actual possession of the island, which France had no possible interest in desiring, except as the means of keeping it out of the hands of Great Britain.

But Sir Alexander Ball is no more. I still cling to the hope that I may yet be enabled to record his good deeds more fully and regularly; that then, with a sense of comfort not without a subdued exultation, I may raise heaven-ward from his honored tomb the glistening eye of a humble but ever grateful friend.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX.

A.

PROSPECTUS OF THE FRIEND, (EXTRACTED FEOM A LETTER TO A CORRESPONDENT.)

It is not unknown to you, that I have employed almost the whole of my life in acquiring, or endeavoring to acquire, useful knowledge by study, reflection, observation, and by cultivating the society of my superiors in intellect, both at home and in foreign countries. You know, too, that at different periods of my life I have not only planned, but collected the materials for, many works on various and important subjects; so many indeed, that the number of my unrealized schemes and the mass of my miscellaneous fragments have often furnished my friends with a subject of raillery, and sometimes of regret and reproof. Waiving the mention of all private and accidental hinderances, I am inclined to believe that this want of perseverance has been produced in the main by an over-activity of thought, modified by a constitutional indolence, which made it more pleasant to me to continue acquiring, than to reduce what I had acquired to a regular form. Add, too, that almost daily throwing off my notices or reflections in desultory fragments, I was still tempted onward by an increasing sense of the imperfection of my knowledge, and by the conviction that, in order fully to comprehend and develop any one subject, it was necessary that I should make myself master of some other, which again as regularly involved a third, and so on with an ever-widening horizon. Yet one habit, formed during long absences from those with whom I could converse with full sympathy, has been of advantage to me,— that of daily noting down in my memorandum or common-place books both incidents and observations;-whatever had occurred to me from without, and all the flux and reflux of my mind within itself. The number of these notices and their tendency, miscellaneous as they were, to one common end-(quid sumus et quid futuri gignimur, what we are and what we are born to become; and thus from

the end of our being to deduce its proper objects)-first encouraged me to undertake the weekly essay, of which you will consider this letter as the prospectus.

Not only did the plan seem to accord better than any other with the nature of my own mind, both in its strength and in its weakness; but, conscious that in upholding some principles both of taste and philosophy, adopted by the great men of Europe, from the middle of the fifteenth till toward the close of the seventeenth century, I must run counter to many prejudices of many of my readers (for old faith is often modern-heresy), I perceived too in a periodical essay the most likely means of winning instead of forcing my way. The truth supposed on my side, the shock of the first day might be so far lessened by the reflections of succeeding days, as to procure for my next week's essay a less hostile reception than it would have met with had it been only the next chapter of a present volume. I hoped to disarm the mind of those feelings, which preclude conviction by contempt, and, as it were, fling the door in the face of reasoning by a presumption of its absurdity. A motive too for honorable ambition was supplied by the fact, that every periodical paper of the kind now attempted, which had been conducted with zeal and ability, was not only well received at the time, but has become permanently, and in the best sense of the word, popular. By honorable ambition I mean the strong desire to be useful, aided by the wish to be generally acknowledged to have been so. As I feel myself actuated in no ordinary degree by this desire, so the hope of realizing it appears less and less presumptuous to me since I have received from men of highest rank and established character in the republic of letters, not only strong encouragements as to my own fitness for the undertaking, but likewise promises of support from their own stores.

The object of The Friend, briefly and generally expressed, is-to uphold those truths and those merits, which are founded in the nobler and permanent parts of our nature, against the caprices of fashion and such pleasures as either depend on transitory and accidental causes, or are pursued from less worthy impulses. The chief subjects of my own essays will be:

The true and sole ground of morality or virtue, as distinguished from prudence:

The origin and growth of moral impulses, as distinguished from external and immediate motives:

The necessary dependence of taste on moral impulses and habits, and the nature of taste (relative to judgment in general and to genius) defined, illustrated, and applied. Under this head I comprise the substance of the Lectures given, and intended to have been given, at the Royal Institution on the distinguished English poets, in illustration of the general principles of poetry; together with suggestions concern