The victory of Waterloo might have been organized in the ball-room at Brussels: and thus RODNEY, at the table of Lord Sandwich, while the bottle was briskly circulating, being observed arranging bits of cork, and his solitary amusement having excited inquiry, said that he was practising a plan to annihilate an enemy's fleet.

This proved to be that discovery of breaking the line, which the happy audacity of the hero afterwards executed.

What situation is more common than a sea-voyage, where nothing presents itself to the reflections of most men than irksome observations on the desert of waters?
But the constant exercise of the mind by habitual practice is the privilege of a commanding genius, and, in a similar situation, we discover CICERO and Sir WILLIAM JONES acting alike.

Amidst the Oriental seas, in a voyage of 12,000 miles, the mind of JONES kindled with delightful enthusiasm, and he has perpetuated those elevating feelings in his discourse to the Asiatic Society; so CICERO on board a ship, sailing slowly along the coast, passing by a town where his friend Trebatius resided, wrote a work which the other had expressed a wish to possess, and of which wish the view of the town had reminded him.
[Footnote A: A collection of sixty-four of these sketches were published at Paris in 1730.

They are remarkable as delineations of mental character in feature as strongly felt as if done under the direction of Larater himself .-- ED.] To this habit of continuity of attention, tracing the first simple idea to its remoter consequences, the philosophical genius owes many of its discoveries.