In the same spirit he writes on a different subject:

"You have seen, I suppose, what the public prints inform us of, relating to the proceedings of the General Assembly in Scotland against Mr. Patrick Simson. They are going to deprive that church of one of the most valuable men it contains, because he does not think it necessary to tie himself down exactly to their Shibboleth, nor oblige himself to conform to all their scholastic ways of speaking concerning the person of our blessed Lord, in points where the Scriptures are silent. By what I saw and heard of that gentleman when in Scotland, he is a much better judge of such matters than the greater part of those who presume to judge him! But his crime is, that he will think for himself; but yet he is very cautious to avoid giving offence, which I perceive is by the bigots interpreted as cunning and dissimulation. One would think the experience of so many ages should be sufficient to make the world wiser, and that those who pretend to govern in the church, should learn at last that their power might be much better exercised than in destroying the usefulness of the best men it contains, merely for nice speculations against unrevealed or disputable points. Suppose a person should not speak with an exact propriety (as we think) concerning the existence of Christ, a point perhaps much above our reach, if yet he loves him above all, trusts in him, and sincerely obeys him, what harm does religion suffer? But I need not enlarge upon this subject to you who are so well instructed in the unreasonableness of bigotry, as to any set of speculative notions."—Vol. II. p. 308.

To this correspondent (Dr. Clark) he was indeed indebted, as also to his tutor, Mr. Jennings, for early lessons in liberality and candour, which virtues were characteristic of both these excellent men, and appear to great advantage in those letters of the former which are presented to us in these volumes. The intercourse between the guardian and ward (a self-constituted relation in this instance) seems to have been exactly what it ought to be. There is perfect freedom on both sides; on one, watchful tenderness, and on the other as much affectionate confidence as respectful obedience. Dr. Clark's letters are by far the best in the collection, next to Doddridge's own; though in interest they yield to a few, a very few, from a person of whom we long to know more, and for whom it is impossible to help feeling an immediate and strong affection. We refer to Mrs. Nettleton, the only sister of Doddridge, and, we should imagine, strongly resembling him in character, intellectual as well as moral. She is, as far as we can gather, placed in circumstances of peculiar interest, and it is with a feeling of disappointment that we close the work without learning their issue-whether her precarious life was long spared, whether it was at length enriched with comforts which we are apt to consider essential, and what was the degree of intercourse which the brother and sister enjoyed after the settlement for life of the former. It would be painful to think of the degree of poverty against which they both had to struggle, if it was not evident that to minds constituted and regulated like theirs, godliness with contentment was sufficient gain. After visiting his sister at Hampstead, Doddridge thus writes on his return home:

"I do not know how to express my concern for the ill state of your health. I am really sometimes afraid, and I speak it with a very sad heart, that I shall never see you any more; for, if your appetite does not mend, I do not see how it is possible that you should live another year; and God knows that if I lose you, I lose the dearest friend I have in the world. I leave you, and all my other concerns, in the hands of that God who will certainly do that which is best for us both; but I can assure you, that if my prayers, and the prayers of a great many excellent friends here about, can keep you a few years longer out of heaven, you will not be there very soon. I earnestly insist upon it that you let me know how you do in a few days, and pray send me a partier'

account, for I am extremely solicitous about you, perhaps even to a fault. When I am alone, in the intervals of business, I cannot forbear reflecting upon the pleasure and advantage I have enjoyed in your company and friendship, and the loss I should sustain if it should please God to remove you: this thought makes me excessively melancholy, and in a great measure unfits me either for business or diversion. Indeed, I am now in a violent fit of weeping, and can say nothing but what is very doleful, and so will defer writing more till a brighter day."-Vol. I. p. 262.

The reply is as follows:

"I hope by this time you are pretty well settled, and more easy in your solitude; yet I could heartily wish you a little good company; though I doubt not but that you have that best companion, the peace of God, in your own bosom; and besides, you have so many good gentlemen, old and young, in leathern jackets, to converse with when alone, that you will find your solitude both pleasant and profitable.-I am extremely obliged to one of the best of brothers for his tender concern for me, particularly for the share I have in your prayers, which I assure you I prize at a high rate, and hope through mercy I am the better for. I give my dear brother many thanks for his kind present, and shall continue to take the remedy as long as it agrees with me, until at least, if it please God, that I am better. I question not the continuance of your prayers on my behalf, and hope that you will never forget to beg for me an entire resignation to the Divine Will, a fitness for heaven, and living comforts in dying moments.-I pray that God may make and continue you long a glorious instrument in his hands of much good to many souls."P. 266.

Our extracts have been made with a view rather of illustrating those parts of Dr. Doddridge's character which were least known before, than of shewing how deep was his love of God and man, and how he excelled in the expression of that love. We could extract various passages remarkable for their piety; but our readers are acquainted with his " Rise and Progress," &c. We could quote some luminous and interesting commentaries on scripture; but his Expositor is open to every reader. We could shew how fearlessly he could admonish and reprove; but every one knows how strict was his guardianship of the souls of his pupils and of his flock. We could delight our readers with specimens of the exquisite address and tenderness with which he was accustomed to administer consolation; but his well-known letter to a lady on the loss of her brother, given in his Life by Orton, is a sufficient example. The most important purpose, perhaps, which these volumes will answer, and certainly that from which they derive their principal charm, is the corroboration which they afford of the truth that gaiety is the companion of innocence, and that religion is entertained in its proper character only when it is made conducive to the happiness of this world as well as the next; that it is designed to promote and protect the health of both body and mind, by equalizing the emotions, restraining undue excitements, and encouraging an alternation of the objects of pursuit, and the universal development of the manifold affections of the heart. It is very well to ascend occasionally above the tumults of the world, and to gaze into heaven from a more exalted point than the path of daily life; but to strive with the ambitious piety of a Simeon to pass a whole life on a pinnacle which was never designed for an abode, is an effort which is forbidden by duty and totally irreconcileable with wisdom and happiness.

The public will await with much interest the appearance of the promised Diary, which will probably lay open recesses hitherto unexplored of a mind whose ingenuousness has not yet revealed all its treasures of wisdom and of beauty.

ESSAY ON THE PASSIONS.

December 2, 1829.

"Modes of Self-love the passions we may call:
"Tis real good, or seeming, moves them all."

POPE.

THE pursuits, the characters, and the happiness of men, depend so closely on the passions, that an investigation of the source, the progress, and the issue, of these springs of action, cannot be unimportant. I shall adopt Hartley's enumeration of them, and endeavour to illustrate this part of his theory of the mind.

Regarding all the passions as arising from pleasure and from pain, he distributes them, generally, under LovE and HATRED.* He ranks under LOVE, desire, hope, joy, and pleasing recollection; under HATRED, aversion, fear, grief, and displeasing recollection-and he conceives of the passions, or affections, as no more than aggregates of simple ideas united by association.

Love, resembling the passions flowing from it, is self-interested; by which we must understand that it never exists, nor is cherished, in relation to any object, without our previous belief that the object will be instrumental to our advantage; although habit may render Love perfectly disinterested. A child's affection originates in a sense of there being something useful to him in the person, or the thing, upon which his love is exercised. All the little honours which he obtains for superior application—the finery of his dress, the beauty of his toys-he values only as he acquires from them a sort of pre-eminence over his companions. If we ask, why he prefers certain things to others, the answer must be, not simply because they are of a more attractive colour, size, and form, but inasmuch as these very circumstances render them more beneficial to him, at least in his own imagination, than any of the things from among which they have been selected. The actions of children are less artificial than those of adults, and for this reason exhibit with greater clearness the rise and the quality of the passions.

Even parental affection is connected with some perception of utility, some hope and prospect of advantage. Human beings have few or no instinctive principles. Most fathers and mothers love their offspring as a gift and possession of distinguished worth: they look forward to the reputation and usefulness of their children in society, and hence promise themselves no mean share of reflected benefit and fame. Nor can they be strangers to the wish that those whom they have borne and educated, may "rock the cradle of" their "reposing age."

Hatred, the opposite state of mind to Love, has evidently an alliance with self-interest; being formed under a sense of injury received from an object or a person, or, however, of wrongs and disadvantages apprehended from them.

Let me add that indifferency to an object, be it what it may, which in some men excites love and complacency, and in others hatred, is owing to the want of any knowledge and experience of its utility. Shew one of the

Much the same distribution was made by Pope :

"Love, Hope, and Joy, fair Pleasure's siniling train ;
Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of Pain."

most admired and beneficial productions of English art-the steam engine, for example-to an Indian savage, and mark how he feels, and what he thinks, on the occasion. He may gaze in astonishment at the machine; but he cannot estimate it, because, at present, he cannot judge of the variety of highly valuable ends to which it is available.

Thus, Love and Hatred, the respective parents of the two families to which the passions belong, depend on many and different associations of ideas for their preservation, if not indeed for their origin. Associated circumstances, therefore, will awaken the one or the other of these states of feeling. When children have conceived an affection for a particular individual, that affection recurs with fresh and lively vigour, if they happen to behold him on the spot, and about the season, of his first meeting their eyes.

As our conviction of the utility of an object causes us to love it, so the desire of possessing it springs up quickly within our minds. Desire takes place only where love has previously existed and continues to exist. A hated object is always an object of aversion. Into a state of indifferency neither love nor hatred enters; neither a wish nor a reluctance to make the acquisi⚫tion. For this reason, the pursuits of men, being modified by education, and by a vast number of associated incidents, are extremely various. Before discipline and experience have improved the judgment, a confused sense of usefulness gives birth to confused and indiscriminate desire; while in men of sound understanding desire is well directed and wisely tempered. Opinions, too, when practically expressed, are chequered partly by the strength or weakness of desire, and partly by its form. The principle, the feeling, is universal; but, in its shades and applications, when distributed among individuals, there subsists an almost endless diversity. Earnest desire, founded on the sense of a certain kind and measure of utility, has dictated the most famous deeds which the page of history records. It was this affection which prompted the enterprizes of Alexander, Julius Cæsar, and Columbus, and the more truly illustrious undertakings of Wickliffe and of Luther.

Aversion is augmented when the object of it was once the object of desire. The child's disappointment, in regard to whatever afforded him the promise of gratification, wonderfully inflames his hatred and increases his uneasiness. In these circumstances, anger, jealousy, and revenge, will often take possession of the breast.

It is a proof, however, of the wisdom and goodness of the Maker of our frame that he has subjected us to associations which controul the irregular and malignant passions. One state of feeling corrects another state: the pleasing affections serve to mitigate those which are painful.

Hope succeeds to desire; and, even where desire is less vigorous than at first, it cheers and enlivens the soul, and diffuses sunshine all around. This emotion has an intimate connexion with the sense of utility: nor will it mislead us, if we combine with it correct principle and judgment. It will be qualified by individual disposition. In men who are sanguine and volatile we find it predominant, and, not rarely, illusive and injurious: in children it is ardent, because their reason is not yet come to them; in our riper age

In this manner associations of resemblance vastly augment the interest with which some men read works of history and those of fiction. There are passages in Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield" that may be perused with signal effect amid the dreariest scenes of the months of winter: what I may term the contiguity of description, heightens the force of our sympathetic emotions.

it is often, though not always, governed by the sober precepts of Experience. Still, it can seldom or ever be extinguished: as the effect of our Creator's benevolence, of our intellectual and moral nature, and of our high destination,

"Hope travels on, nor quits us till we die."

This passion, at the same time, is not quite independent on our bodily constitution. Those who labour under certain kinds of delirium, however produced, are observed to express great eagerness of hope. The contrary is the fact as to sufferers from hypochondriacal disorders.

Fear is in the immediate train of aversion, and may be traced to the same cause. What it is, may, in individual men, be ascertained by means of their countenances, gestures, language-and frequently their breathless silence— either when the dreaded object appears, or when thoughts associated with it powerfully recur. In our younger days the fear of death is connected essentally with the adjuncts and signs of death, and employs itself upon them. But the familiar sight of these things causes them to be less and yet less impressive; whence we may learn that no spectacles, no exhibitions, should be frequent, the design of which is to spread a solemn, a moral, and religi

ous awe.

Hope may easily degenerate into rashness; fear, into torpidity and despair.

Joy respects the attainment of a wished-for object, and is the consequence of possession and success. Its emotions are, in common, more violent than those of hope, yet not not so durable, pleasing, and beneficial. Intense affection and excessive transport cannot be man's ordinary lot.

Associations of thought strongly influence grief as well as joy. Grief is the effect of disappointment, and has considerable variety according to the nature and degree of the disappointment. In minds of ungoverned sensibility, grief soon gives place to its opposite passion. When the emotions are not accompanied by steady principles of conduct, they lie at the mercy of every change of scene, incident, and society. Some of the finest delineations of human character which the pen of Genius has made, illustrate and assume the fact. Nothing," says a writer of antiquity,* "dries up so quickly as a tear." The remark admits of a wide, a practical, and a very important, application. Grief, real and internal, has a fixed countenance, and the "leaden eye which loves the ground."

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Both pleasing and displeasing recollection are united with utility: nor can the nature of them be unknown to those who have an acquaintance with the effects of the great law of association, according to men's ages, constitutions, education, employments, and intellectual habits. Memory dwells with delight on whatever contributed to our advantage and gratification, and thus prolongs that gratification and advantage :† to objects of the opposite class,

The unknown author of the Lib. Rhetoric. ad C. Herennium, II. 31. From a note in the Delph. ed., it appears that the aphorism was delivered originally by Apollonius the Rhetorician: it has been copied, I believe, by other Roman writers.

The paper from which this Essay has been formed, was drawn up nearly forty-four years since, and then read, as an academical exercise, in the presence of The Rev. Thomas Belsham, whose candid approbation it obtained. Let its author be permitted, at this interesting moment, to express his pleasing recollection of these circumstances, and to declare the sentiments of gratitude and respect with which he cherishes the thought, and transcribes the name, of a late honoured friend, once his faithful and accomplished tutor.