disables the body from resisting the attacks of disease.
The public library of Leyden is chiefly celebrated for the stores of oriental literature which it contains. Joseph Scaliger bequeathed to it a valuable collection of Hebrew books; and Golius, who filled for many years with great reputation the Arabic professorship of the university, enriched it with the rare Persian, Chaldee, Arabic, Turkish, and other manuscripts, which he brought with him from the east. The manuscripts which repose in this library amount to eight thousand, and form its principal treasures. The heavy volumes of controversial divinity, which crowd the shelves, far exceed the proportion which they contain of elegant and valuable literature. But these dull remains of a bigotted and unenlightened age do not appear to be much looked into, and the good sense of the approaching century may perhaps dispossess them of the places which they so unworthily fill. Among the publications of a recent date, I saw the histories of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon, and the
