Dr. Johnson's Studies

The direction of Dr. Johnson's studies was partly determined, we are told, by the discovery of a folio of Petrarch lying on a shelf, where he was lookiug for apples. It was an accident, again, which threw the coiitinuation of Echard's Roman history in the way of Gibbon. "ïo xue," he says, "the reigns of the successors of Constantino were absolutely uew, and I was immersed in the passage of the Goths over the Danube when the summous of the dinner bell reluctantly dragged me from my iutellectual feast. I procured the second and third volumes of Howell's 'History of the World,' which exhibit the Byzantine period on a larger scale. Simon Ockley first opened my eyes, and I wns led from one book to anotber, till I had ranged round the circle of oriental tory."-