against so vile a cheat, and when he came in, hoped he said, that he had not met with the enemy. But Goldsmith had met with him, and being examined by the Doctor, found to his confusion that Goldsmith had given him all he had. Above two months ago, died at Boston, Mr. Kirk Root, born at Derby, who had resided there above thirty years, and by his industry had acquired a handsome fortune.' He was a generous Englishman, and attentive to the wants of his fellow creatures, particularly to those who were strangers in distress. Many such he found, and cheerfully relieved them, and at the same time discovered that his circumstances were constantly meliorating in proportion to his liberality. May there be many such, many who will become truly wise and happy for ever. I long to hear of the progress and the speedy publication of Mr. Wellbeloved's Bible, and hope that it will be a great improvement of our present translation. The word hell in our present copies of the Old Testament, in the original means the grave, and I hope will be so rendered by this ingenious translator. Another thing to be considered is, whether the curses in many places of the Psalms and of the Prophets, should not be placed in the future tense instead of the imperative mood; as when it is said, may such or such curses come upon him, will not the original bear to have it rendered, such particular curses will come upon him? Thus the Old and New Testament will perfectly agree. I need not mention the text, thought it not robbery, &c. besides many others which must occur to the reader. The letter which you have transcribed from a Cork paper, [p. 123], must have been written by * He who rendered reconciliation atonement, now proceeds farther and denominates Unitarians Deists. His attempt may impose upon ignorant moderns, but in the end will prove an antidote against imposition. When men learn righteousness they will become lovers of truth, for every truth leads to righteousness, which is the case with all the truths of the blessed gospel.· W. H. SIB, A April 9th, 18174 LADY has communicated to me some remarks on the letter which you did me the favour of inserting in your interesting Miscellany [p. 153], on the rites of the Romish church as they are celebrated in the grand seat of Christian idolatry, But before I give them to you, I must take the liberty of correcting one or two typographical errors, which arose probably from the incorrectness of my handwriting. In line 35 of page 154, wafer is printed instead of water. In the 5th line from the bottom of the same column, is Trausted instead of Transtib, a word meaning beyond the Tiber. The lady above-mentioned, observes that I have omitted the blessing of the horses on the 17th of January, and the blessing of two lambs on the 21st, with whose wool the cloaks sent by the Pope to the Archbishops are trimmed. The volto santo is explained by her in the following manner. According to the Papistical faith, as Christ was ascending Mount Calvary, Saint Veronica gave him her handkerchief to wipe his face, and the impression of the features remained on it. This handkerchief if you can believe it, is now in existence, and has been sacredly preserved since that time. In line 17 of page 155, the images of the Virgin Mary, should have been the resemblances of the Virgin Mary, and in line 19 read in representation of the eternal feast. To the exposition on the 29th of December, is to be added that of the finger of the Apostle Thomas. Since writing my last letter to you, I have become possessor of a most invaluable relic, namely, a piece of the bone, what bone I do not know, of the holy Apostle St. Thomas. It is so small that it might almost escape heretical eyes, but I shall have great pleasure in shewing it to you and to some of your readers. If either you or they have any doubts upon the subject, I will do all that I can to remove them, by shewing you the testimonial of a venerable bishop who has signed it with his seal of office, and if you think it worthy of a place in your Miscellany, I will send you a copy of it, with a translation. CHRISTIANUS. GLEÅNINGS; OR, SELECTIONS AND 9. REFLECTIONS MADE IN A COURSE f OF GENERAL READING. No. CCXCVIII. Mussulman Pilgrimage. Mount Arafat is the principal ob jeet of the pilgrimage of the Mussul-, men; and several Doctors assert, that if the house of God ceased to exist, the pilgrimage to the former would be completely meritorious, and would produce the same degree of satisfaction. This is my opinion like wise. It is here that the grand spectacle of the pilgrimage of the Mussulmen must be seen, an innumerable crowd of men from all nations and of all colours, coming from the extremities of the earth, through a thousand dangers, and encountering fatigues of every description, to adore together the same God, the God of nature. The native of Circassia presents his hand in a friendly manner to the Ethiopian, or the Negro of Guinea; the Indian and the Persian embrace the inhabitant of Barbary and Morocco; all looking upon each other as brothers, or individuals of the same family united by the bands of religion; and the greater part speaking or understanding more or less the same language, the language of Arabia. No, there is not any religion that presents to the senses a spectacle more simple, affecting and majestic! Philosophers of the earth! permit me, Ali Bey, to defend my religion, as you defend spiritual things from those which are material, the plenum against a vacuum, and the necessary existence of the creation. Here, as I remarked in the narrative of my voyage to Morocco, is no intermediary between man and the divinity; all individuals are equal before their Creator; all are intimately persuaded that their works alone reconcile them to, or separate them from the Supreme Being, without any foreign hand being able to change the order of immutable justice! What a curb to sin! What an encouragement to virtue! But what a misfortune that, with so many advantages, we should not be better than the Calvinists! Travels of Ali Bey, 11. 66. No. CCXCIX. Perfect Allusion. An allusion pleases, by presenting a new and beautiful image to the mind. The analogy or the resemblance between this image and the principal subject is agreèable of itself, and is indeed necessary, to furnish an apology for the transition which the writer makes; but the pleasure is wonderfully heightened, when the new image thus presented is a beautiful one. The following allusion in one of Mr. Home's tragedies, appears to me to unite almost every excellence: "Hope and fear, alternate, sway'd his breast; "Like light and shade upon a waving field, "Coursing each other, when the flying clouds "Now hide, and now reveal, the sun." Here the analogy is remarkably perfect; not only between light and hope and between darkness and fear but between the rapid succession of light and shade and the momentary influences of these opposite emotions: and, at the same tine, the new image which is presented to us, is one of the most beautiful and striking in nature. Dugald Stewart's Elements, 1. 316, 317. No. CCC. Maxim of Ecclesiastics. St. Austin has well expressed the maxim of all sound Churchmen in the Orthodox or Catholic, that is, the more powerful, Church. The saint having laid down the gospel according to his own liking, (Ad Marcellin.) adds, very significantly, His qui contradicit, aut a Christi fide alienum est, aut est Hæreticus; that is in plain English, "He that contradicts me is a Heathen or a Heretic." No. CCCI. Frugality of Nature. Nature (says Fontenelle) is a great housewife, she always makes use of what costs least, let the difference be ever so inconsiderable: and yet that frugality is accompanied with an extraordinary magnificence, which shines through all her works; that is, she is magnificent in the design but frugal in the execution. VOL. XII. REVIEW. "Still pleased to praise, yet not afraid to blame."-Port. is a natural and useful introduction to the ensuing speculations. It must be read with pleasure by every man who respects human nature and values truth, and with profit by those especially who are entering on the study of moral and mental philosophy. The arrangement is clear, the expression luminous, the reasoning sound, and it is altogether a powerful antidote to count it deserves the attention of those universal scepticism; and on this acwho, finding that they have much to unlearn, are half inclined to excuse themselves from the labour of enquiry, by rashly concluding that nothing can be known by man. "There must be," says our author, "such a thing as truth. This assertion will be acknowledged by every man, excepting a most determined sceptic; and it is impossible for him to confute it. He who would persuade us that truth does not exist, is still attempting to establish the truth of his own position."—P. 4. TH HE mutual dealing of mankind is so similar, that it might _lead_us to infer, that there is not much difference in their opinion of human nature; yet it is certain there is no subject upon which men, plain as well as speculative, think more differently. While some see in it only what is corrupt and base and proper to be exterminated as soon as it is created, others find in it capacity of every virtue and predominant dispositions, generally to goodness, and often to great moral excellence. It is a little reniarkable, that the sceptical philosopher and the Calvinistic theologian, though at variance in most of their opinions, have laboured together in the degradation of our common nature; for "Truth is, and must be, beneficial in while one declares that man has no its nature; error must be pernicious. The moral worth, the other maintains that one is a sure guide; the foundation upon his intellectual faculty is wholly inade-which we must build to be secure. quate to the discovery of truth. Thus virtue and knowledge are both beyond the reach of his nature; and from the hands of these spoilers man comes, not surely as he comes from the hand of his Maker, without a trace either of the intellectual or moral image of the Creator. The author of the present volume is well known to most of our readers as an advocate of human nature; and having formerly defended it ably against the charge of innate and hereditary depravity, he has in the work under review entered his plea against the degradation of our intellectual nature, by asserting its sufficiency to explore truth. In both he appears the zealous, enlightened, and, we think, victorious advocate, in a cause which is not bad, though it has been accidentally and industriously perplexed. We learn from the Doctor's preface that the present volume, with the exception of the Strictures on Dr. Beattie's Essay on Truth, is an off-shoot from the Analysis of the Passions. The first Enquiry, On the Sources of Rational Conviction, We must know that things are, what they are, how they are, and what powers they possess, before we can act in a manner correspondent with their natures. Error must be pernicious, as it cannot be acted upon; it always deceives and disappoints. "Truth is important, because it respects existences and relations which may have an influence upon our well-being and without which well-being can never be obtained."-P. 5. On the attempt to discredit the evidence of the senses it is acutely remarked: "In a word, the strange hypothesis confutes itself. It is supported by an argument which destroys the objection. How can the objector know that our senses deceive us at any time? It can alone be by the accurate discoveries of these very senses. Thus is he compelled to place his confidence in a testimony which he professedly rejects."-P. 9. The same reasoning is applied to the evidence of testimony: "We cannot know that falsehood and error exist, but by the discovery of a truth. Every one who believes that falsehoods are detected, must believe in the facts which have led to the detection. We must therefore believe in the existence of a truth, though we may in many cases be ignorant where it is to be found."-P. 18. In the same manner it is argued respecting knowledge, regained through the medium of memory : "Here we may also urge, that there can be no method of detecting a delusion in some cases, but by being convinced of realities in others. We could not form an idea of a deception, if we were always deceived. It is a deviation from the usual tenor, which convinces us of a possibility in some cases, and an impossibility in all."-P. 31, danger it is not to escape the danger, but to be released from the fear? or when we rejoice, it is not on account of the good in contemplation, but because of the pleasant effects of the joy itself?"-P. 95. "The object of the passion suggests the motive for action, and not the desire to indulge, or to be exempt from, the sensation peculiar to the passion. If this be the case in every instance which concerns ourselves, a parity of reasoning requires us to expect the same law of human agency respecting others; particularly as this mode of reasoning so perfectly coincides with the consciousness of every benevolent mind, which the other system so strangely opposes."-. P. 97. The third Enquiry respects the ExOn self-evidence our author asks: istence of a Moral Sense, to which it "Strictly speaking, can any thing be is objected that " if a moral sense exsaid to be self-evident, exclusive of sensi-isted, of the nature, and for the purposes ble objects? A man can advance no argu- supposed by its advocates, a dispute ments to prove that he sees, hears, smells, concerning its existence could not have and feels, stronger than the report of his arisen. The mental sense would have senses; but whatever is not an immediate been as obvious as any of the corporeal object of sense, requires a certain degree of thought. It requires a process, to which self-evidence cannot be applied, in its literal sense, though it is by courtesy as expressive of extremely quick perception. Should the truth of this observation be doubted, we may still assert, without the fear of confutation, that numerous axioms which are currently received as first principles, and as it were prior to all reasoning, have originally gone through a process which has escaped the memory."-Pp. 53, 54. It would be gratifying to ourselves had we space to present our readers with an analysis of this disquisition on Rational Conviction, with which the volume opens, and of that with which it concludes, On Moral Obligation, as they form together a masterly view of the nature of man in his double capacity of a creature formed both for contemplation and action. The second Speculation is, On Disinterested Benevolence, and we agree with the author that "what seems to decide this question is the fact, that, in no one instance, is the pleasure derived from the excitement of a passion a motive for the indulgence of that passion; or the pain which it occasions, the sole motive to liberate ourselves from it." "Can there be more propriety in the assertion, that when we feel distress at the distress of another, we relieve him merely to get rid of our own sufferings, than in the position, that when we fear and fly from senses. The man whose olfactory nerves are in such a healthy state that he can distinguish odours, never calls their existence into question. Every one knows that he has optics to see and distinguish objects, and an ear to distinguish sounds. The reluctance with which the doctrine of a sixth sense is received by one party, and the incapacity of the other to demonstrate its existence, fully prove that the cases are not perfectly parallel, and lead us to suspect that there may be an essential discrepancy." On this objection it seems just to remark, that the advocates of the moral sense never could intend to use the word in precisely the same meaning, as when it is applied to the faculty of perceiving external objects through the corporeal organs. They applied it analogically to the mental power of distinguishing between moral good and evil, and analogies do not require that the cases be perfectly parallel. We extract the following passage, because it presents briefly and at once the Doctor's theory of moral sentiments. "We have attempted to prove that the grand characteristic of virtue consists in its being an energy of mind, designedly exerted by a voluntary agent, productive of personal or social advantages, according to certain invariable principles; and that vice, notwithstanding its personaj gratifications and temporary advantages is in its own nature inimical to permanen we happiness. We have also shewn that our The fourth Speculation is on the long contested Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity. What especially demands notice in this Essay is the author's opinion, that the opposite hypotheses might be in some sort reconciled, if their advocates would agree in the rejection of certain terms, such as must, and necessary,' and in the substitution of others less liable to be mistaken. "It (the word Necessity) has a tendency to confound two things which differ essentially. It places mechanical or physical agency, over which the will may not bave any power, upon the same line with moral agency, where the agent feele** The phrase which is sometimes used "If the necessarian will not be so very tenacious of the words must, cannot act otherways, &c. &c. when he speaks of any particular or specific act of the will, the advocate for free agency will be disposed to admit the grand principle, that no man has ever acted without a motive; that the strongest inducement became the motive; that it became the strongest at the time, by appearing to be most adapted to his purpose; that this purpose consisted in the possession of some good. He will acknowledge that no man can desire greater freedom, than that of following his own inclinations."-Pp. 165, 166. "Nor are the designs of the necessarian so well answered by the pertinacious and partial use of the favourite expression. It is the professed object to enforce the doctrine of an extensive and invariable concatenation. But as the human will forms so important a link in the chain, If the two hypotheses differed but in 1 |