This self-examination, or this "Faultbook," as Lord Shaftesbury would have called it, was always carried about him.

These books still exist.

An additional contrivance was that of journalising his twenty-four hours, of which he has furnished us both with descriptions and specimens of the method; and he closes with a solemn assurance, that "It may be well my posterity should be informed, that to this _little artifice_ their ancestor owes the constant felicity of his life." Thus we see the fancy of Jones and the sense of Franklin, unconnected either by character or communication, but acted on by the same glorious feeling to create their own moral and literary character, inventing similar although extraordinary methods.
The memorials of Gibbon and Priestley present us with the experience and the habits of the literary character.

"What I have known," says Dr.
Priestley, "with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration and my contempt of others.

Could we have entered into the mind of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced his great works, we might see nothing very extraordinary in the process." Our student, with an ingenuous simplicity, opens to us that "variety of mechanical expedients by which he secured and arranged his thoughts," and that discipline of the mind, by means of a peculiar arrangement of his studies for the day and for the year, in which he rivalled the calm and unalterable system pursued by Gibbon, Buffon, and Voltaire, who often only combined the knowledge they obtained by humble methods.