abundantly repay the labours of industry, and satisfy the most extensive desires, if no part of it be suffered to lie waste by negligence, to be overrun with noxious plants, or laid out for show rather than for use.

280.-OF THE GOODNESS OF THE DEITY.

PALEY.

[WILLIAM PALEY was born at Peterborough, in 1743. He was educated by his father, who was head-master of the Grammar School of Giggleswick, in Yorkshire, and he graduated at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1763. His life was passed in the calm discharge of his professional duties, and in the composition of the various works which have made his name one of the most familiar in English literature. Paley never reached any of the great dis tinctions of the church. His tolerance and freedom of inquiry were not in unison with the opinions of those who had the bestowal of preferment. His reputation as a moralist and theologian has rather diminished of late years. His philosophy is that of expediency-his religion is that which is proposed to the reason rather than the heart. But for acuteness, strength of grasp, and felicity of illustration, he has never been surpassed; and though his chief works are founded upon materials collected by others, his powers as a writer are so admirable, that well known facts and common thoughts become original under his treatment. His great works are, Moral and Political Philosophy;'Hora Pauline;' 'Evidences of Christianity;' and 'Natural Theology. From the latter popular book our extract is taken. Paley died in 1805.]

The proof of the divine goodness rests upon two propositions: each, as we contend, capable of being made out by observations drawn from the appearances of nature.

The first is, "that in a vast plurality of instances in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the contrivance is beneficial."

The second, "that the Deity has superadded pleasure to animal sensations beyond what was necessary for any other purpose, or when the purpose, so far as it was necessary, might have been effected by the operation of pain."

First, "in a vast plurality of instances in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the contrivance is beneficial.”

No productions of nature display contrivance so manifestly as the parts of animals; and the parts of animals have all of them, I believe, a real, and with very few exceptions, all of them a known and intelligible subserviency to the use of the animal. Now, when the multitude of animals is considered, the number of parts in each, their figure and fitness, the faculties depending upon them, the variety of species, the complexity of structure, the success, in so many cases, the felicity of the result, we can never reflect, without the profoundest adoration, upon the character of that Being from whom all these things have proceeded: we cannot help acknowledging what an exertion of benevolence creation was; of a benevolence how minute in its care, how vast in its comprehension!

When we appeal to the parts and faculties of animals, and to the limbs and senses of animals in particular, we state, I conceive, the proper medium of proof for the conclusion which we wish to establish. I will not say that the insensible parts of nature are made solely for the sensitive parts, but this I say, that when we consider the benevolence of the Deity, we can only consider it in relation to sensitive being. Without this reference, or referred to anything else, the attribute has no object, the term has no meaning. Dead matter is nothing. The parts, therefore, especially the limbs and senses, of animals, although they constitute in mass and quantity a small portion of the material creation, yet, since they alone are instruments of perception, they compose what may be called the whole of visible nature, estimated with a view to the disposition of its Author. Consequently, it is

to dismiss business, and exclude pleasure, and to devote their days and nights to a particular attention. But all common degrees of excellence are attainable at a lower price; he that should steadily and resolutely assign to any science or language those interstitial vacancies which intervene in the most crowded variety of diversion or employment, would find every day new irradiations of knowledge, and discover how much more is to be hoped from frequency and perseverance, than from violent efforts and sudden desires: efforts which are soon remitted when they encounter difficulty, and desires which, if they are indulged too often, will shake off the authority of reason, and range capriciously from one object to another.

The disposition to defer every important design to a time of leisure, and a state of settled uniformity, proceeds generally from a false estimate of the human powers. If we except those gigantic and stupendous intelligences who are said to grasp a system by intuition, and bound forward from one series of conclusions to another, without regular steps through intermediate propositions, the most successful students make their advances in knowledge by short flights, between each of which the mind may lie at rest. For every single act of progression a short time is sufficient; and it is only necessary that, whenever that time is afforded, it be well employed.

Few minds will be long confined to severe and laborious meditation; and when a successful attack on knowledge has been made, the student recreates himself with the contemplation of his conquest, and forbears another incursion till the newacquired truth has become familiar, and his curiosity calls upon him for fresh gratifications. Whether the time of intermission is spent in company, or in solitude, in necessary business, or in voluntary levities, the understanding is equally abstracted from the object of inquiry: but, perhaps if it be detained by occupations less pleasing, it returns again to study with greater alacrity than when it is glutted with ideal pleasures, and surfeited with intemperance of application. He that will not suffer himself to be discouraged by fancied impossibilities, may sometimes find his abilities invigorated by the necessity of exerting them in short intervals, as the force of a current is increased by the contraction of its channel.

From some cause like this it has probably proceeded that among those who have contributed to the advancement of learning, many have risen to eminence in opposition to all the obstacles which external circumstances could place in their way, amidst the tumult of business, the distresses of poverty, or the dissipations of a wandering and unsettled state. A great part of the life of Erasmus was one continual peregrination; ill supplied with the gifts of fortune, and led from city to city, and from kingdom to kingdom, by the hopes of patrons and preferment, hopes which always flattered and always deceived him he yet found means by unshake constancy, and a vigilant improvement of those hours which, in the midst of most reckless activity, will remain unengaged, to write more than another i same condition would have hoped to read. Compelled by want to attendar solicitation, and so much versed in common life, that he has transmitted t most perfect delineation of the manners of his age, he joined to his kno the world such application to books, that he will stand for ever in the fi literary heroes. How this proficiency was obtained he sufficiently d informing us that the PRAISE OF FOLLY, one of his most celebrated was composed by him on the road to Italy: ne totum illud tempus, incidendum, illiteratis fabulis teretur; "lest the hours which he spend on horseback should be baffled away without regard to liter An Italian philosopher expressed in his motto, that time catate, indeed, which will produce nothing without cultiv

the abundantly repay the labours of industry, and satisfy the most extensive desires, if no part of it be suffered to lie waste by negligence, to be overrun with noxious plants, or laid out for show rather than for use.

go right for it to be at ease; yet how large a proportion out of every species is so in every assignable instant! Secondly, we contend, in the terms of our original proposition, that throughout the whole of life, as it is diffused in nature, and as far as we are acquainted with it, looking to the average of sensations, the plurality and the preponderancy is in favour of happiness by a vast excess. In our own species, in which, perhaps, the assertion may be more questionable than any other, the prepollency of good over evil, of health, for example, and ease, over pain and distress, is evinced by the very notice which calamities excite. What inquiries does the sickness of our friends produce! what conversation their misfortunes! This shows that the common course of things is in favour of happiness; that happiness is the rule, misery the exception. Were the order reversed, our attention would be called to examples of health and competency, instead of disease and want.

One great cause of our insensibility to the goodness of the Creator is the very extensiveness of his bounty. We prize but little what we share only in common with the rest, or with the generality of our species. When we hear of blessings, we think forthwith of successes, of prosperous fortunes, of honours, riches, preferments, i. e. of those advantages and superiorities over others, which we happen either to possess, or to be in pursuit of, or to covet. The common benefits of our nature entirely escapo us. Yet these are the great things. These constitute what most properly ought to be accounted blessings of Providence; what alone, if we might so speak, are worthy of its care. Nightly rest and daily bread, the ordinary use of our limbs, and senses, and understandings, are gifts which admit of no comparison with any other. Yet, because almost every man we meet with possesses these, we leave them out of our enumeration. They raise no sentiment; they move no gratitude. Now, herein is our judgment perverted by our selfishness. A blessing ought in truth to be the more satisfactory-the bounty at least of the donor is rendered more conspicuous-by its very diffusion, its commonness, its cheapness; by its falling to the lot and forming the happiness of the great bulk and body of our species, as well as of ourselves. Nay, even when we do not possess it, it ought to be matter of thankfulness that others do. But we have a different way of thinking. We court distinction. That is not the worst; we see nothing but what has distinction to recommend it. This necessarily contracts our views of the Creator's beneficence within a narrow compass, and most unjustly. It is in those things which are so common as to be no distinction, that the amplitude of the Divine benignity is perceived.

[THOMAS CAMPBELL. was born in 1777 at Glasgow; he died in 1844 at Boulogne, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His reputation will chiefly rest upon his poetry; and of this his lyrics will perhaps give him the best claim to immortality. His 'Specimens of the British Poets' offer favourable examples of his critical ability, and of his prose style. From this popular work the following notice of Chatterton is extracted.]

Thomas Chatterton was the posthumous child of the master of a free school in Bristol. At five years of age he was sent to the same school which his father had taught, but he made so little improvement that his mother took him back; nor could he be induced to learn his letters, till his intention had been accidentally struck by the illuminated capitals of a French musical manuscript. His mother afterwards taught him to read from an old black letter Bible. One of his biographers has expressed surprise that a person in his mother's rank of life should have been acquainted with black letter. The writer might have known that books of the ancient type continued to be read in that rank of life, long after they had ceased to be used by persons of higher station. At the age of eight he was put to a charity school, in Bristol, where he was instructed in reading, writing, and arithmetic. From his tenth year he discovered an extraordinary passion for books, and before he was twelve had perused about seventy volumes, chiefly on history and divinity. The prematurity of his mind, at the latter period, was so strongly marked in a serious and religious cast of thought as to induce the bishop to confirm him, and admit him to the Sacrament at that early age. His piety, however, was not of long duration. He had also written some verses sufficiently wonderful for his years, and had picked up some knowledge of music and drawing, when, at the age of fourteen, he was bound apprentice to a Mr. Lambert, a scrivener, in his native city. In Mr. Lambert's house his situation was very humble, he ate with the servants, and slept in the same room with the footboy; but his employment left him many hours of leisure for reading, and these he devoted to acquiring a knowledge of English antiquities and obsolete language, which, together with his poetical ingenuity, proved sufficient for his Rowleian fabrications.

It was in the year 1768 that he first attracted attention. On the occasion of the new bridge of Bristol being opened, he sent to Farley's Journal, in that city, a letter, signed Dunhelmus Bristoliensis, containing an account of a procession of friars, and of other ceremonies which had taken place, at a remote period, when the old bridge had been opened. The account was said to be taken from an ancient manuscript. Curiosity was instantly excited, and the sages of Bristol, with a spirit of barbarism which the monks and friars of the fifteenth century could not easily have rivalled, having traced the letter to Chatterton, interrogated him, with threats, about the original. Boy as he was, he haughtily refused to explain upon compulsion, but by milder treatment was brought to state that he had found the manuscript in his mother's house. The true part of the history of those ancient papers, from which he pretended to have derived this original of Farley's letter, as well as his subsequent poetical treasures, was, that in the muniment room of St. Mary Red4TH QUARTER.

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