tion without plague. Much curious information may be procured in this manner, and some real improvements introduced into the management of public business. But will the system tend to strengthen and elevate the minds of our statesmen? Will it enable or prepare them to take a comprehensive view of the interests of their country, or the duty of its children. Will it recruit the senatorial ranks with English gentlemen of the old stamp, well versed in the history of their native land; firmly attached to its institutions, and incapable of consenting to remove its land-marks? It would be difficult and hazardous to answer in the affirmative. Constitutional questions are now discussed, after a different fashion from that which prevailed in days of yore. There is not the same disposition to reason, or to act upon fixed principles. There is not the same reliance upon the tried wisdom of preceding generations. There is more affectation of science, more smattering and smartness, and, of course, more presumption and more ignorance. Unless there be a certain number of persons of solid judgment and long experience, who are listened to upon great occasions with deference the political vessel is deficient in ballast. Such deficiency may be expected to arise from too great an extension of the present system. And we shall sincerely rejoice at its abandonment. The return of our country gentlemen to old pursuits and old studies, will be advantageous to every class of society. It may diminish their present means of making a noise, or cutting a figure; but it will enable them to do permanent good to their country and their fellow-creatures. To return to the volume before us. It consists of five-andtwenty essays, on the most important religious and moral subjects. --Reason; The Passions; Free Agency; Society; Moral Obligation; Virtue; Vice; The Being of God; The Incommunicable Attributes of God; The Moral Attributes of God; The Wisdom of God; The Power of God; The Moral Government of God; Infidelity; Religion; Enthusiasm; Superstition; Prayer; A State of Trial; The Reward of Virtue; The Punishment of Vice; Providence; The Immateriality of the Soul; The Immortality of the Soul; The Evidences of the Christian Revelation. The author informs us in his preface, that the arrangement was formed many years ago, and that he was led in the course of his reading upon theology and moral philosophy, to transcribe those passages which appeared to throw a material light upon the subjects he intended to discuss. He did so with the hope of entering fully into all those points; but having no leisure for the accomplishment of so great a work, and unwilling that his labour should be entirely lost, he drew up a short essay on each of the forementioned subjects, as an introduction to that extensive inquiry which the references suggest, and may produce. These essays, and these references, are comprised in the present work. The latter are divided into eleven periods, occupying a space of two or three years each, during which they were collected. Some idea may be given of their author's industry and perseverance, by stating, that the references occupy at least a third of the book, and send us to specified parts of the writings of two or three hundred voluminous authors. We do not see the advantage or propriety of retaining the division into periods. The reader cannot easily divest himself of the notion, that these divisions relate to the subject matter of the essays. And the fact that they are only governed by the time at which Mr. Browne happened to peruse this or that volume, is continually overlooked. If any divisions had been retained, they should have followed either the different parts of each head of inquiry, or the different subjects of which the authors treat. The latter strikes us as the preferable plan. The theological, the moral, the metaphysical, the historical writers might have been separately classed, and afterwards subdivided into ancient and modern, Christian and heathen, domestic and foreign, or any other similar divisions. We shall furnish the reader with extracts from the essays on Infidelity, and on the Reward of Virtue, which will enable him to form a fair opinion of the general contents of the volume. "It has been contended, that we are quite passive in our belief, therefore infidelity cannot be criminal; and that the human mind is so differently framed, that the same evidence which convinces one man has no effect upon another. Both these theories are unfounded, or supported by false principles. The former supposes that we are not free agents in our thoughts, whatever we may be in our words and actions. The latter supposes, that mind in every rational being is not the same, but capable of a diversity destructive of its very essence. This is a position which would lead to universal scepticism. Upon the same principle, that we are supposed passive in our belief, we may imagine ourselves passive in all moral and social virtues. It is difficult, I allow, to conquer an inveterate prejudice, especially the prejudices which pride and licentiousness indulge against religion; but not more difficult than to subdue an inordinate passion. The fastidious declare that they find it impossible to sympathize with any man. The capricious and conceited feel an invincible reluctance to accommodate themselves to company they despise, or to enjoy that society into which they must naturally fall; but are these difficulties, or these impossibilities, as we fondly call them, pleas, which any wise or good man will allow, for the violation of every duty which benevolence, gratitude, or natural affection demand? Can the misanthrope or the infidel plead an insuperable necessity at the tribunal of an omniscient Judge, who knows the free agency he has bestowed upon man, and the responsibility flowing from it? Every truth, when it is brought before the mind, becomes self-evident, and must be universally received. But the difficulty consists in bringing truths properly before the mind, when they are not evident at first sight. No religious truth is evident at first sight; it must, therefore, be brought before the mind by some voluntary exertion of the intellectual agent, that is, of the being who contemplates it. No instructor can teach a pupil, without some active energy of the pupil's own mind. It is, therefore, in our power to refuse to make this exertion, and if we do not decline the effort altogether, the intenseness or remission of it, the time we employ in it, all depends upon ourselves. As ignorance depresses us in the moral intellectual scale, so we raise ourselves, not only in the moral and intellectual, but in the religious scale of being, by all the conviction which we are enabled, through our own voluntary exertions, to obtain of divine truth. I am ready to acknowledge, that we cannot investigate the truth of any theological position, nor have it properly presented to the mind, if there is a great deficiency of natural capacity, or education, or learning, or leisure; but these advantages are not required in an eminent degree, if we confine our examination to the fundamental doctrines of natural or revealed religion. These qualifications become chiefly necessary, when some subtlety of human invention, supported by sophistry is to be exploded; or when we VOL. III. No. 13.-Museum. F inquire into the true interpretation of a particular passage in scripture; or whets we attempt to explore the regions of eternity and immensity, or the nature of that Being, who, in his full perfection, is incomprehensible to every created mind. If, however, in our inquiries after divine truth, we are properly sensible of our defects, whatever is wanting in knowledge or ability will be supplied by an humble and a docile temper, and our right of private judgment will be best exerted in the choice of an enlightened guide. Although we advance towards perfection, and gradually ascend according to the number of true propositions which we believe, if we act correspondently to them, yet we shall not, at the day of judgment, be rewarded or punished exactly in this proportion; for the number of true propositions, which we believe, depends upon a variety of unavoidable circumstances. Our reward or punishment will be awarded in conformity with our laudable diligence or culpable neglect." P. 336. "If self satisfaction proceeds from adulation and vanity, it is of a very shadowy and fluctuating nature; liable to be overthrown by every wind of popular fame; dependent upon the breath of man; subject every hour to innumerable mortifications, and always regulated by the flow or depression of animal spirits. But if it proceeds from a real knowledge of moral truth, and of our own hearts, it is the habitual consciousness of virtue, which we cannot have without the possession of it. "Nor will our sense of deficiency impair this satisfaction, if we are assured of our sincere endeavours to conquer every bad propensity, and to make a daily progress in virtue. The more earnest these endeavours are, and the greater the success of them, the higher will be our enjoyment, and the more perfect our morality. When there is a particular danger of acting wrong, a firm resolution constantly opposed to that danger, is a continued act of virtue. Vicious indulgencies deprave, virtuous self-government improves, the inward constitution and character; and by raising us to a greater eminence in the moral scale, renders us more capable of self-satisfaction. The more accurate, the more enlarged, the more elevated our conceptions of duty are, the happier we shall be, if we act according to our knowledge of what is right. Duty and happiness are inseparable from virtue; the former as the principle, the latter the result; the former the guide, the latter the reward. A bad mind is the sorest adversity which can befal us; for in the most accumulated distress, the comfort of a good conscience will afford a pleasure, far beyond any delightful sensations which prosperity the most unbounded, without a good conscience, can bestow. The want of this true principle of self-satisfaction renders all pleasures insipid, if we partake of them; at the same time that they become necessary to dispel our mental gloom, and we cannot endure the calamity which their deprivation inflicts. We cannot bear their absence, yet have no enjoyment of them when present. I acknowledge, that self-satisfaction, though arising from the most frivolous fancies and absurd pretensions, will furnish some transient gratification. The very madman is happy while he thinks himself a king; but the happiness, which self-satisfaction produces, the peace of mind which it creates, must be in proportion to the solidity of the foundation upon which it stands. The firm and impregnable rock, which alone can afford it an adequate support, is the full conviction, that we have brought no calamities upon ourselves, and that our conduct has always been directed to the wisest and best ends; and that to obtain these ends we have been diligent in prayer, and have used all the lawful means which it has been in our power to exert." P. 474. If this work does not become as extensively popular, as it is unquestionably and highly useful, the circumstance must be attributed to the following facts. The style and matter throughout the volume are sensible rather than brilliant-and a pure mind, a correct judgment, and an unwearied industry, are more conspicuous than originality, or philosophical free-thinking. The author sustains the character of a Christian, a Churchman, and a Patriot— and though the composition of such a work must be more beneficial than the perusal of it, yet no man will rise from a perusal of these Essays, without feeling that he has derived pleasure and instruction from the occupation. ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND VOLUME OF THE LIBERAL. NEVER was a greater outcry raised among the hypocrites of all classes, than against this publication. What with the "great vulgar" protesting, the "small" abusing, lawyers denouncing, "divines" cursing, scandal-mongers bawling, dunces of all sorts shrieking-all the sore places of the community seem to have been touched, and the "body politic" agitated accordingly. "As when the long-ear'd, milky mothers wait There, Webster! peal'd thy voice; and, Whitfield! thine; And courts to courts return it round and round."-Dunciad. All these people deserve no better answer than a laughing quotation. But we will just admonish some well-meaning persons, not over strong in their understandings, that with respect to the religious part of the business, they are most grossly and "irreligiously" taken in, if they suffer themselves to be persuaded, that it is we who would lessen the divinity of what is really divine. It is these pretended "divines" and their abettors, who lessen it; -those raisers-up of absurd and inhuman imaginations, which they first impudently confound with divine things, and then, because we show the nonsense of the imaginations, as impudently call their exposers blasphemers. Were we inclined to retort their own terms upon them, we should say that there was nothing in the world more "blasphemous" than such charges of blasphemy. The whole secret is just what we have stated. They first assume unworthy notions of the Divine Spirit, and then because that very Spirit is in fact vindicated from their degradations by an exposure of the absurdity and impossibility of such notions, they assume a divine right to denounce the vindicators, and to rouse up all the fears, weakness, and ignorance of society, in defence of the degradation. Of this stuff have the "Scribes, Pharisees, and Hypocrites” in all ages been made, whenever established opinion was to be divested of any of its corruptions." He blasphemeth!" quoth the modern tribunal. "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" quoth the Quarterly. This is the point, which persons who undertake to be didactic in Reviews, should answer; and not a hundred things which we never said. There is a more generous indignation which we allow might be felt by some persons upon another point, but still owing to real want of information on the subject. We allude to what has been said in the Liberal of the late King. The Vision of Judgment was written in a fit of indignation and disgust at Mr. Southey's nonsense; and we confess that had we seen a copy of it in Italy, before it went to press (for we had none by us) we should have taken more pains to explain one or two expressions with regard to that prince. Had the preface, also, entrusted to Mr. Murray, been sent, as it ought to have been, to the new publisher, much of the unintended part of the effect produced upon weak minds would have been explained away at once;-that effect, which the hypocritical enemies of the Liberal at once delighted to assist in producing, and most pretended to deprecate. But the virtues of the late King, though of a negative kind, were of a kind nevertheless exceedingly calculated to excite a great many feelings in favour of him in a society like that of England; while his vices (pardon us, dear self-love of our countrymen, for supposing that you have vices) were equally calculated to be overlooked in a certain general blindness prevailing on that subject. Yet to those vices, extreme self-will for instance, sullenness of purpose, a strong natural vindictiveness, &c. was owing the bloody protraction of the American War: to those vices, as well as to Mr. Pitt's haughty sympathy with them, was mainly owing the general war against liberty which was roused among the despots of the continent: and if certain staid and well-intentioned people suppose, that persons quite as moral and as pious as themselves, could not hold the late King in a light very different from their own, and much more revolting than even we hold it, they are most egregiously mistaken. What was thought of George the Third's natural character by a man of the highest respectability, who knew him intimately at court,-to wit, his own Governor when Prince of Wales, may be seen by those who wish to do us justice, in the Memoirs of James, Earl of Waldegrave, published by the aforesaid Mr. Murray. See also Dr. Franklin's Life, Junius, and the opinion of Mr. Southey's friend, the author of Gebir. What the Earl of Waldegrave prophecied of that character, may be seen also in Mr. Murray's publication. We think that prophecy came to pass. The most pious and virtuous person we ever knew, even in the ordinary sense of those terms (and she might have stood by the side of the most virtuous, in the most extraordinary) thought so too, and taught some of us to think so in our childhood. The ruin of her family and prospects was brought upon her, to her knowledge, by that Prince's temper and obstinacy; and though the strict religious way in which she was brought up might have induced her to carry too far her opinion of the cause of that calamitous and awful affliction under which he suffered, the parasites of |