to find similar difficulties in the Christian religion. deacon's orders, and by a dedication to a volume If both proceed from the same author, the wonder of translations published in 1723, obtained a prewould rather be, that, even on this inferior ground sentation to a small vicarage. He now threw of difficulty and adaptation to the comprehension himself amidst the literary society of the metropof man, there should not be found the impress of olis, and sought for subsistence and advancement the same hand, whose works we can trace but a by his pen. On obtaining from a patron the very little way, and whose word equally transcends rectory of Brand Broughton, in Lincolnshire, he on some points the feeble efforts of unassisted retired thither, and devoted himself for a long reason. All Butler's arguments on natural and series of years to study. His first work of any revealed religion are marked by profound thought note was published in 1736, under the title of The and sagacity. In a volume of sermons published Alliance between Church and State; or the Necesby him, he shines equally as an ethical philosopher. sity and Equity of an Established Religion and a In the first three, on human nature, he has laid Test Law. This treatise, though scarcely calcuthe science of morals on a surer foundation than lated to please either party in the church, was any previous writer. After shewing that our social extensively read, and brought the author into affections are disinterested, he proceeds to vindi- notice. His next work was The Divine Legation cate the supremacy of the moral sentiments. of Moses, demonstrated on the Principles of a Man is, in his view, a law to himself; but the Religious Deist, from the Omission of the Doctrine intimations of this law are not to be deduced from of a Future State of Rewards and Punishments the strength or temporary predominance of any in the Jewish Dispensation (1738-1741). In this single appetite or passion. They are to be celebrated work, the gigantic scholarship of Wardeduced from the dictates of one principle, which burton shone out in all its vastness. It had is evidently intended to rule over the other parts often been objected to the pretensions of the of our nature, and which issues its mandates with Jewish religion, that it presented nowhere any authority. This master principle is conscience, acknowledgment of the principle of a future which rests upon rectitude as its object, as disin- state of rewards and punishments. Warburton, terestedly as the social affections rest upon their who delighted in paradox, instead of attemptappropriate objects, and as naturally as the appe- ing to deny this or explain it away, at once tite of hunger is satisfied with food. The ethical | acknowledged it, but asserted that therein lay the system of Butler has been adopted by Reid, strongest_argument for the divine mission of Stewart, and Brown. Sir James Mackintoshwho acknowledged that Bishop Butler was his father in philosophy-made an addition to it; he took the principle of utility as a test or criterion of the rectitude or virtue which, with Butler, he maintained to be the proper object of our moral affections. Butler's writings derive none of their value or popularity from mere literary excellence: his style is dry and inelegant. The life of this eminent prelate affords a pleasing instance of talent winning its way to distinction in the midst of difficulties. He was born in 1692, the son of a shopkeeper at Wantage, in Berkshire. His father was a Presbyterian, and intended his son to be a minister of the same persuasion, but the latter conformed to the establishment, took orders, and was successively preacher at the Rolls Chapel, prebendary of Rochester, clerk of the closet to the queen, bishop of Bristol (1738), dean of St Paul's (1740), and bishop of Durham (1750). He owed much to Queen Caroline, who had a philosophical taste, and valued his talents and virtues. Butler died on the 16th of June 1752. BISHOP WARBURTON. Moses. To establish this point, he ransacked the whole domains of pagan antiquity, and reared such a mass of curious and confounding argument, that mankind might be said to be awed by it into a partial concession to the author's views. He never completed the work; he became, indeed, weary of it; and perhaps the fallacy of the hypothesis was first secretly acknowledged by himself. If it had been consecrated to truth, instead of paradox, it would have been by far the most illustrious book of its age. As it is, we only look into it to wonder at its endless learning and misspent ingenuity. The merits of the author, or his worldly wisdom, brought him preferment in the church: he rose through the grades of prebend of Gloucester, prebend of Durham, and dean of Bristol, to be (1759), bishop of Gloucester-a remarkable transition for the Newark attorney, though many English prelates have risen from a much humbler origin. Warburton early forced himself into notice by his writings, but one material cause of his advancement was his friendship with Pope. He had secured the poet's favour by defending the ethical principles enunciated in the Essay on Man, and by writing commentaries on that and other poetiNo literary man of this period engrossed in his cal essays of Pope; in return for which the latter own time a larger share of attention than WILLIAM left him the property or copyright of his works, WARBURTON, bishop of Gloucester (1698-1779). the value of which Johnson estimated at £4000; Great powers of application and copious expres- but Pope had also introduced him to Ralph Allen, sion, a bold and original way of thinking, and in- one of the wealthiest and most benevolent men of domitable self-will and arrogance, were the lead- his day, the Squire Allworthy of Fielding's Tom ing characteristics of this fortunate churchman. Jones; and Warburton so far improved upon this He was eager to astonish and arrest the attention introduction that he secured the hand of Allen's of mankind, and his writings, after passing like a niece, and thus obtained a large fortune. splendid meteor across the horizon of his own agc, Pope he was also indebted for an acquaintance have sunk into all but oblivion. He was the son with Murray, Lord Mansfield, whom he propitiof an attorney at Newark, and entered life in the ated by flattering attentions, and through whose same profession, and at the same town. A pas- influence he was made preacher of Lincoln's Inn sion for reading led Warburton in his twenty-fifth (1746). Among the various theological works of year to adopt the clerical profession. He took | Warburton are The Principles of Natural and To Revealed Religion, and a View of Bolingbroke's Philosophy (1755). He attacked Hume's Natural History of Religion. In 1747, he issued an edition of Shakspeare. The arrogance and dogmatism of Warburton have become almost proverbial. His great learning was thrown away on paradoxical speculations, and none of his theological or controversial works have in the slightest degree benefited Christianity. His notes and commentaries on Shakspeare and Pope are devoid of taste and genius, but often display curious erudition and ingenuity. His force of character and various learning, always ostentatiously displayed, gave him a high name and authority in his own day; but his contemporary fame has failed to receive the impartial award of posterity. Gibbon speaks of the Divine Legation as a brilliant ruin. The metaphor may be applied to Warburton's literary character and reputation. The once formidable fabric is now a ruin-a ruin not venerable from cherished associations, but great, unsightly, and incongruous. The Grecian Mythology-the Various Lights in which it was regarded.-From the Divine Legation.' Here matters rested; and the vulgar faith seems to have remained a long time undisturbed. But as the age grew refined, and the Greeks became inquisitive and learned, the common mythology began to give offence. The speculative and more delicate were shocked at the absurd and immoral stories of their gods, and scandalised to find such things make an authentic part of their story. It may, indeed, be thought matter of wonder how such tales, taken up in a barbarous age, came not to sink into oblivion as the age grew more knowing, from mere abhorrence of their indecencies and shame of their absurdities. Without doubt, this had been their fortune, but for an unlucky circumstance. The great poets of Greece, who had most contributed to refine the public taste and manners, and were now grown into a kind of sacred authority, had sanctified these silly legends by their writings, which time had now consigned to immortality. Vulgar paganism, therefore, in such an age as this, lying open to the attacks of curious and inquisitive men, would not, we may well think, be long at rest. It is true, freethinking then lay under great difficulties and discouragements. To insult the religion of one's country, which is now the mark of learned distinction, was branded in the ancient world with public infamy. Yet freethinkers there were, who, as is their wont, together with the public worship of their country, threw off all reverence for religion in general. Amongst these was Euhemerus, the Messenian, and, by what we can learn, the most distinguished of this tribe. This man, in mere wantonness of heart, began his attacks on religion by divulging the secret of the mysteries. But as it was capital to do this directly and professedly, he contrived to cover his perfidy and malice by the intervention of a kind of Utopian romance. He pretended 'that in a certain city, which he came to in his travels, he found this grand secret, that the gods were dead men deified, preserved in their sacred writings, and confirmed by monumental records inscribed to the gods themselves, who were there said to be interred.' So far was not amiss; but then, in the genuine spirit of his class, who never cultivate a truth but in order to graft a lie upon it, he pretended 'that dead mortals were the first gods, and that an imaginary divinity in these early heroes and conquerors created the idea of a superior power, and introduced the practice of religious worship amongst men.' Our freethinker is true to his cause, and endeavours to verify the fundamental principle of his sect, that fear first made gods, even in that very instance where the contrary passion seems to have been at its height, the time when men made gods of their deceased benefactors. A little matter of address hides the shame of so perverse a piece of malice. He represents those founders of society and fathers of their country under the idea of had brought men into subjection and slavery. On this destructive conquerors, who, by mere force and fear, account it was that indignant antiquity concurred in however, he would hardly have escaped, though he had giving Euhemerus the proper name of atheist, which, done no more than divulge the secret of the mysteries, and had not poisoned his discovery with this impious and foreign addition, so contrary to the true spirit of that secret. This detection had been long dreaded by the orthodox protectors of pagan worship; and they were provided of a temporary defence in their intricate and properly perplexed system of symbolic adoration. But this would do only to stop a breach for the present, till a better could be provided, and was too weak to stand alone fore, now took up the defence of paganism where the against so violent an attack. The philosophers, therepriests had left it, and to the others' symbols added their own allegories, for a second cover to the absurdities of the ancient mythology; for all the genuine sects of philosophy, as we have observed, were steady patriots, legisand to legislate without the foundation of a national lation making one essential part of their philosophy; religion, was, in their opinion, building castles in the air. So that we are not to wonder they took the alarm, and opposed these insulters of the public worship with all their vigour. But as they never lost sight of their proper character, they so contrived that the defence of the national religion should terminate in a recommendation of their philosophic speculations. Hence, their support of the public worship, and their evasion of Euhemerus's charge, turned upon this proposition, 'That the whole ancient mythology was no other than the vehicle of physical, moral, and divine knowledge.' And to this it is that the learned Eusebius refers, where he says: 'That a new race of men refined their old gross theology, and gave it an honester look, and brought it nearer to the truth of things.' However, this proved a troublesome work, and, after all, ineffectual for the security of men's private morals, which the example of the licentious story according to the letter would not fail to influence, how well soever the allegoric interpretation was calculated to cover the public honour of religion; so that the more ethical of the philosophers grew peevish with what gave them so much trouble, and answered so little to the interior of religious practice. This made them break out, from time to time, into hasty resentments against their capital poets; unsuitable, one would think, to the dignity of the authors of such noble recondite truths as they would persuade us to believe were treasured up in their writings. Hence it was that Plato banished Homer from his republic, and that Pythagoras, in one of his extramundane adventures, saw both Homer and Hesiod doing penance in hell, and hung up there for examples, to be bleached and purified from the grossness and pollution of their ideas. The first of these allegorisers, as we learn from Laertius, was Anaxagoras, who, with his friend Metrodorus, turned Homer's mythology into a system of ethics. Next came Hereclides Ponticus, and of the same fables made as good a system of physics. And last of all, when the necessity became more pressing, Proclus undertook to shew that all Homer's fables were no other than physical, ethical, and moral allegories. DR ROBERT LOWTH-DR C. MIDDLETON-REV. successively bishop of St David's, Oxford, and London; he died in 1787. The works of Lowth display both genius and learning. They consist of Prelections on Hebrew Poetry (1753), a Life of William of Wykeham (1758), a Short Introduction to English Grammar, and a Translation of Isaiah (1778). The last is the greatest of his productions. The spirit of eastern poetry is rendered with fidelity, elegance, and sublimity; and the work is an inestimable contribution to biblical criticism and learning, as well as illustrative of the exalted strains of the divine muse. DR CONYERS MIDDLETON, distinguished for his Life of Cicero, mixed freely and eagerly in the religious controversies of the times. One writer, Dr Matthew Tindal (1657-1733), served as a firebrand to the clergy. Tindal had embraced popery in the reign of James II. but afterwards renounced it. Being thus, as Drummond the poet said of Ben Jonson, of either religion, as versed in both,' he set himself to write on theology, and published The Rights of the Christian Church Asserted, and Christianity as Old as the Creation. The latter had a decided deistical tendency, and was answered by several divines, as Dr Conybeare, Dr Foster, and Dr Waterland. Middleton now joined in the argument, and wrote remarks on Dr Waterland's manner of vindicating Scripture against Tindal, which only increased the confusion by adding to the elements of discord. He also published (1747) A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers of the Church, which was answered by several of the High-Church clergy. These treatises have now fallen into oblivion. They were perhaps useful in preventing religious truths from stagnating in that lukewarm age; but in adverting to them, we are reminded of the fine saying of Hall: 'While Protestants attended more to the points on which they differed than those on which they agreed, while more zeal was employed in settling ceremonies and defending subtleties than in enforcing plain revealed truths, the lovely fruits of peace and charity perished under the storms of controversy.' A permanent service was rendered to the cause of Christianity by the writings of the REV. WILLIAM LAW (1686-1761), author of a still popular work, A Serious Call to a Holy Life (1729), which, happening to fall into the hands of Dr Johnson at college, gave him 'the first occasion of thinking in earnest of religion after he became capable of rational inquiry.' Law was a Jacobite nonconformist: he was tutor to the father of Gibbon the historian, and the latter has commemorated his wit and scholarship, while also noticing the gloom and mysticism which characterise some of Law's writings. The two elementary works of DR ISAAC WATTS -his Logic, or the Right Use of Reason, published in 1724, and his Improvement of the Mind-a supplement to the former-were both designed to advance the interests of religion, and are well adapted to the purpose. Various theological treatises were also written by Watts. Of the other theological and devotional productions of the established clergy of this age, there is only room to notice a few of the best. The dissertations of Bishop Newton on various parts of the Bible (1754-58); the Lectures on the English Church Catechism, by Archbishop Secker; Bishop Law's Considerations on the Theory of Religion, 774 and his Reflections on the Life and Character of Christ, are all works of standard excellence. The labours of Dr Kennicot, in the collation of various manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, are also worthy of being here mentioned as an eminent service to sacred literature. He commenced his researches about 1753, and continued them till his death, in 1783. The Hebrew Bible of Dr Kennicot, with the various readings of manuscripts, appeared in 1776. JORTIN-HURD-HORNE. DR JOHN JORTIN (1698-1770), a prebendary of St Paul's, and archdeacon of London, was early distinguished as a scholar and an independent theologian. His Remarks upon Ecclesiastical History, published at intervals between 1751 and 1754 with an addition of two more volumes after his death, have been greatly admired, and he wrote Six Dissertations upon various Subjects (1755), which evince his classical taste and acquirements. His other works are a Life of Erasmus, 1758; Remarks upon the Works of Erasmus, 1760; and several tracts, philological, critical, and miscellaneous. Seven volumes of his Sermons were published after his decease. DR RICHARD HURD (1720-1808), a friend and disciple of Warburton, was author of an Introduction to the Study of the Prophecies (1772), being the substance of twelve discourses delivered at Cambridge. Hurd was a man of taste and learning, author of a commentary on Horace, and editor of Cowley's works. He rose to enjoy high church preferment, and died bishop of Worcester, after having declined the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury. DR GEORGE HORNE (1730-1792) was another divine whose talents and learning raised him to the bench of bishops. He wrote various works, the most important of which is a Commentary on the Book of Psalms, which appeared in 1776 in two volumes quarto. It is still a text-book with theological students and divines, and unites extensive erudition with fervent piety. GEORGE WHITEFIELD-JOHN AND CHARLES Connected with the English establishment, yet ultimately separating from it, were those two remarkable men, Whitefield and Wesley. Both were highly useful in their day and generation, and they enjoyed a popularity rarely attained by divines. GEORGE WHITEFIELD was born in Gloucester in 1714. He took orders, and preached in London with astonishing success. He made several voyages to America, where he was equally popular. Whitefield adopted the Calvinistic doctrines, and preached them with incessant activity, and an eloquence unparalleled in its effects. As a popular orator, he was passionate and vehement, wielding his audiences almost at will; and so fascinating in his style and manner, that Hume the historian said he was worth travelling twenty miles to hear. He died in Newbury, New England, in 1770. His writings are tame and commonplace, and his admirers regretted that he should have injured his fame by resorting to publication. JOHN WESLEY was more learned, and in all respects better fitted to become the leader and founder of a sect. His father was rector of Epworth, in Lincolnshire, where John was born in 1703. He was educated at Oxford, where he and his brother Charles, and a few other students, lived in a regular system of pious study and discipline, whence they were denominated Methodists. After officiating a short time as curate to his father, the young enthusiast set off as a missionary to Georgia, where he remained about two years. Shortly after his return in 1738, he commenced field-preaching, occasionally travelling through every part of Great Britain and Ireland, where he established congregations of Methodists. Thousands flocked to his standard. The grand doctrine of Wesley was universal redemption, as contradistinguished from the Calvinistic doctrine of particular redemption, and his proselytes were, by the act of conversion, made regenerate men. The Methodists also received lay converts as preachers, who, by their itinerant ministrations and unquenchable enthusiasm, contributed materially to the extension of their societies. Wesley continued writing, preaching, and travelling, till he was eighty-eight years of age; his apostolic earnestness and venerable appearance procured for him everywhere profound respect. He had preached about forty thousand sermons, and travelled three hundred thousand miles. His highly useful and laborious career was terminated on the 2d of March 1791. His body lay in a kind of state in his chapel at London the day previous to his interment, dressed in his clerical habit, with gown, cassock, and band; the old clerical cap on his head, a Bible in one hand, and a white handkerchief in the other. The funeral service was read by one of his old preachers. 'When he came to that part of the service, "forasmuch as it hath pleased God to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother," his voice changed, and he substituted the word father; and the feeling with which he did this was such, that the congregation, who were shedding silent tears, burst at once into loud weeping. At the time of Wesley's death, the number of Methodists in Europe, America, and the West India Islands, was 80,000: they are now above a million-three hundred thousand of which are in Great Britain and Ireland. The writings and journals of Wesley are very volumin- | ous, and have been published in sixteen volumes (London, 1809). CHARLES WESLEY (1708-1788) joined with his brother in publishing, in 1738, a Collection of Psalms and Hymns, some of which are among the most striking and beautiful in the language. HERVEY ERSKINE-WEBSTER. The REV. JAMES HERVEY (1714-1758) was a popular writer on religious subjects. His Meditations on the Tombs, on a Flower-garden, &c. had an extraordinary sale, and the author is said to have received £700 for the copyright of the first part of his work-which sum he distributed in charity. Hervey was also author of Theron and Aspasio, or a Series of Letters and Dialogues on the most important Subjects; Remarks on Lord Bolingbroke's Letters on History; Eleven Letters to the Rev. John Wesley, in answer to his Remarks on Theron and Aspasio, &c. After * Southey's Life of Wesley. his death, collections of his letters and sermons were printed, and these, with his works, are comprised in six volumes octavo. When Johnson, on one occasion, ridiculed Hervey's Meditations, Boswell could not join in this treatment of the admired volume. "I am not an impartial judge,' he says, 'for Hervey's Meditations engaged my affections in my early years.' This apology may be pleaded by many readers, for the Meditations are written in a flowery, ornate style, which captivates the young and persons of immature taste. The inflated description and overstrained pathos with which the work abounds render it distasteful-almost ludicrous-to critical readers; but Hervey was a good man, whose works have soothed many an invalid and mourner, and quickened the efforts of benevolence and piety. He was rector of Weston-Favell, near Northampton, and was most exemplary in the discharge of his pastoral duties. The REV. EBENEZER ERSKINE (1680-1754) and his younger brother, the REV. RALPH ERSKINE (1685-1752), are both divines celebrated in the annals of the Scottish Church, but more remarkable for their personal influence and preaching than as contributors to our theological literature. The first was founder of the Secession Church, having isolated himself from the establishment in consequence of disagreement with the leaders of the General Assembly respecting the law of patronage and other ecclesiastical matters. Mr Erskine and three other clergymen abjured the authority of the Assembly, and held aloof from it for several years; and in 1740 they were formally severed from the Established Church by a judicial act of the Assembly. His congregation, however, adhered to him; other ministers also withdrew from the church, and the seceders took the name of Burghers. In this body differences also arose, and it became divided into two sections-Burghers and Anti-burghers. A collection of Erskine's Sermons, extending to five volumes, printed 17621765, has been published.-Ralph Erskine was minister of Dunfermline from 1711 to 1737, when, having joined the secession with his brother and the other ministers, he withdrew from the establishment. Ralph Erskine was a copious writer on religious subjects. His sermons are numerous, and his Gospel Sonnets, published in 1760, fill two large volumes. These works are devotional, not poetical, and are not of a nature to be subjected to literary criticism. DR ALEXANDER WEBSTER (1707-1784), minister of the Tolbooth Church in Edinburgh, has the merit of originating the Ministers' Widows' Fund-a benevolent scheme sanctioned by parliament—and also of carrying out the first attempt at a census in Scotland. According to the returns obtained by Webster in 1755, Scotland had a population of 1,265,380. In 1798, a more careful and regular series of returns, obtained from the clergy by Sir John Sinclair, made the amount of the population 1,526,492. On the occasion of Whitefield's famous visit to Scotland in 1741, Webster acted a conspicuous part. On his journey to Ralph Erskine at Dunfermline, Whitefield was met and entertained at Edinburgh by Webster and some of his brethren; and learning from them the state of church prejudices and parties, he refused to connect himself with any particular sect. The spiritual tempest,' says Mr Burton in his History of Scotland, 'was worked up to its wildest climax when, in an encampment of tents on the hill-side at Cambuslang, Whitefield, at the head of a band of clergy, held, day after day, a festival which might be called awful, but scarcely solemn, among a multitude calculated by contemporary writers to amount to 30,000 people. The Secession ministers imputed the whole to sorcery and the devil, and a fast was appointed as a penitence for these sins of the land. Dr Webster, on the other hand, wrote a pamphlet ascribing the conversions alleged to have been made by Whitefield to the influence of the Holy Spirit. Political agitation followed this religious fervour the Stuart insurrection of 1745 broke out, and Webster lent all his energies and influence to the cause of the royalists. After the victory of Culloden he was appointed to preach the thanksgiving sermon, and this discourse, with a few other of his sermons, was printed. He is said also to have written several patriotic songs to animate the loyalty of his countrymen, and one amatory lyric on the lady to whom he was married. Webster was employed by a gentleman of his acquaintance to gain Miss Erskine, a young lady of fortune related to the Dundonald family. He urged the suit of his friend with uncommon eloquence, but received a decided refusal, to which the lady naïvely added: 'Had you spoken as well for yourself, perhaps you might have succeeded better.' Upon this hint the minister spake, and became the husband of the heiress. Mr Chambers, in his Traditions of Edinburgh, relates various anecdotes of this energetic clergyman, characterising him as 'a man eminent in his day on many accounts-a leading evangelical clergyman in Edinburgh, a statist and calculator of extraordinary talent, and a distinguished figure in festive scenes.' He is reported to have drawn up the first plan of the New Town of Edinburgh. DR JOHN ERSKINE-DR HUGH BLAIR. The REV. DR JOHN ERSKINE (1721-1803) was united with Dr Robertson, the historian, in the collegiate charge of the Old Greyfriars parish, Edinburgh. They were opposed to each other in the church courts, but were cordial personal friends. Dr Erskine was a learned and able divine, who maintained an extensive correspondence with eminent men at home and abroad, *This song seems worthy of quotation as unique in its history and style: O how could I venture to love one like thee, You said, when they teased you with nonsense and dress, Oh, where is the nymph that like thee ne'er can cloy, When I see thee, I love thee, but hearing adore, In all that I write, I'll thy judgment require: and wrote numerous Discourses and Theological Dissertations adapted to the times. One of the most popular and influential of the Scottish clergy was DR HUGH BLAIR, born in Edinburgh in 1718. He was at first minister of a country church in Fifeshire, but, being celebrated for his pulpit eloquence, he was successively preferred to the Canongate, Lady Yester's, and the High Church in Edinburgh. In 1759 he commenced a course of lectures on rhetoric and belleslettres, which extended his literary reputation; and in 1763 he published his Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian, a production evincing both critical taste and learning. In 1777 appeared the first volume of his Sermons, which was so well received that the author published three other volumes, and a fifth which he had prepared was printed after his death. A royal pension of £200 per annum further rewarded its author. Blair next published his Rhetorical Lectures, and they also met with a favourable reception. Though somewhat hard and dry in style and manner, this work forms a useful guide to the young student; it is carefully arranged, contains abundance of examples in every department of literary composition, and has also detailed criticisms on ancient and modern authors. The sermons are the most valuable of Blair's works. They are written with taste and elegance, and by inculcating Christian morality without any allusion to controversial topics, are suited to all classes of Christians. Profound thought, or reasoning, or impassioned eloquence they certainly do not possess, and in this respect they must be considered inferior to the posthumous sermons of Logan the poet, which, if occasionally irregular or faulty in style, have more of devotional ardour and vivid description. In society, Dr Blair was cheerful and polite, the friend of literature as well as of virtue. His predominant weakness seems to have been vanity, which was soon discovered by Burns, in his memorable residence in Edinburgh in 1787. Blair died on the 27th of December 1800. We subjoin two short extracts from his Lectures. On the Cultivation of Taste. Such studies have this peculiar advantage, that they exercise our reason without fatiguing it. They lead to inquiries acute, but not painful; profound, but not dry or and while they keep the mind bent in some degree and abstruse. They strew flowers in the path of science; toilsome labour to which it must submit in the acquisiactive, they relieve it at the same time from that more tion of necessary erudition, or the investigation of abstract truth. The cultivation of taste is further recommended by the happy effects which it naturally tends to produce on human life. The most busy man in the most active sphere cannot be always occupied by business. Men of serious professions cannot always be on the stretch of serious thought. Neither can the most gay and flourishing situations of fortune afford any man the power of filling all his hours with pleasure. Life must always languish in the hands of the idle. It will frequently languish even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit. How, then, shall these vacant spaces, those unemployed intervals, which more or less occur in the life of every one, be filled up? How can we contrive to dispose of them in any way that shall be more agreeable in itself, or more consonant to the dignity of the human mind, than in the entertain |