sacrificing one or the other. He had no opinion of virtues, therefore, that accommodated themselves to the arts of society: nay, the least deviation from a virtue was a homage paid to vice, and was a sin, differing but in degree, from such which mankind consent to reprobate.

He would instance this in a variety of ways, and draw his instances from the lives of men, who otherwise had passed for fair characters, but who suffered themselves to be swayed occasionally by private interest, pique, or some unlawful bias of the heart, at the expense of truth, justice, or probity. There was, it must be owned, a sternness and severity often in his maxims on this head, to which it was impossible for a human individual, not a recluse, to tutor himself. He himself saw, and admitted the difficulties; but his answer always was, that the glory lay in those difficulties, that they were the touch-stone of God, who with infinite wisdom and goodness had placed beside it conscience, that monitor, which instructed the savage and philosopher equally as to the rule of right and wrong. That a peasant could not plead ignorance of, nor the most cunning casuist argue away his real feelings on, the slightest deviations from right. That the degree did not alter the difference as to the violation towards God, of whose divine Being we could form no idea, but by his attributes; that God was truth, God was justice, mercy, benevolence, consummate probity, and prudence; that wherever we gave up or deviated from these, we gave up and deviated from Him; that wherever we acted up to these virtues, and loved them, we loved and obeyed Him, and frail human nature was limited in proceeding farther.

Although no man's rule of faith could be more invariable and steady than Mr. Barry's, and to the principal doctrines of the Roman Catholic Religion was riveted, even to a degree which many of his protestant friends justly thought bigoted, yet was he a Catholic after his own way, and at times was very liberal, particularly with respect to points of discipline in that church, resembling the late Dr. Geddes, whom he has been heard very much to applaud for the pains which he had taken to soften down the asperities of their church. It was a favourite opinion of his, which he had imbibed from the writings of Grotius, Bossuet, Dr. Butler, and others, that a general reconciliation might take place between the Catholic and Protestant churches, without touching on any of the fundamental articles of faith, and by only sacrificing on one side or the other certain non-essential and merely disciplinal points, which perhaps tended more to fetter true religion, and keep up animosities, than to any solid good. He was very zealous, and eloquently so upon this subject, arguing, that as states had abandoned the pernicious error of waging war for the sake of religion, so the present time was the most fitted for a general council of learned and candid divines to settle a reconciliation between the prevailing sects. That on one hand the papal authority was so humbled, and on the other the general voice of infidelity and impiety so loud, that without such an union of the churches, the Christian religion was altogether endangered, to the ruin of states, and dissolution of all social order. He was wont to attribute to the growth and multiplicity of sects, the chief

evils.

evils, particularly revolutionary ones, to kingdoms and states, and would illustrate his point by the example of that convulsion which brought Charles I. to the block, attributing it entirely to the sectarian principles which grew out of the Reformation; that to the same principles which allowed every man to think for himself in matters of doctrine and faith, and to expound the scriptures as suited his ambition or interest, arose by an imperceptible gradation the various opinions which have distinguished, as he thought, unitarians, deists, and atheists, of modern time, with all the antecedent and intermediate casts, which went to form the most pernicious climax of errors in the human heart and head that the French Revolution was the effect of these operations, which had pervaded almost entirely the upper orders in that kingdom, and by the manoeuvres of the philosophes had begun to penetrate the middle and lower ones: That as early as the regency of the Duke of Orleans, the trains were laid of this tremendous and pestilential explosion; but the ground had been unwittingly prepared in the former reign by destroying the liberties, independence, and high character of the Gallican Church: It is not necessary to follow or defend him in these opinions; nor would they have been mentioned, but that his profound knowledge in the ecclesiastical history of France, entitled him to have an opinion, and there is nothing amiss but the tincture it receives from the from the religion religion he professed. His mind delighted in difficulties, and he probably had employed as much thought on the practicability of an Universal Church, as ever the Abbé St.

Pierre had done on that of a perpetual peace; led on like him enthusiastically by the greatness of the object and its importance to the happiness of man.

In

From the declamations he has been known to fall into, in favour of civil liberty, and in praise of the ancient Greek Republics respecting the arts, many ran awy with the notion, that he was a republican, and disaffected to monarchical institutions. He often declaimed for victory, from occasional love of opposition, or momentary pique and prejudice. Dr. Johnson was known to do the same, But in his cooler inoments, he has been heard again and again to assert, that no governments could be worse for a peaceful and virtuous man, than those worthless Greek republics, as he called them. the Athenian, which was the best, moral worth was always in danger from democratic turpitude. But to say no more, that man's republicanism will go for little, who invariably worshipped the character and memory of Charles the First, and detested the selfishness and hypocrisy of parties who planned and achieved his downfall. Though he abominated the, memory of William III. yet he hailed the deliverance which was achieved by his coming, and spoke highly of the characters who brought about the great work of our constitution; which he considered as the wisest fabric of government ever-planned by the mind of man. It is necessary to say thus much, in order to vindicate him from aspersions, which have occasionally been uttered against him on this head.

In his enthusiasm after aft, he was apt to over-rate his profession, and to place its utility too high in the scale of human occupations, D2 lamenting

Jamenting that an universal taste did not prevail for the highest style of art. No man was better fitted to shew that this style can only be understood, and consequently relished by the educated and polished orders of society, and that the mass of mankind have something else, and perhaps something better to do, than to be gazing on pictures and statues. This always was, and always will be the case. The bulk of Italians never heard of Corregio or Raffael: who among our peasantry know any thing even of a Milton who among them will ever hear of a Reynolds, or Barry?

a

There was a better reason for his lamenting that so much of the superfluous wealth of individuals should be thrown away upon the sumptuary rather than the fine arts; upon inanities or monstrosities; upon things which are not likely to impress posterity with much reverence for the good sense, or good taste of the period.

His ordinary language of conversation was often coarse and unpolished, and he had acquired a bad habit of interspersing it with oaths; yet we have seen him several times in the company of men of rank, when he put himself on 'his guard; and his language became not only correct, but polished, and even courtly: if he could catch the forms of beauty for his canvas, he knew where they lay for language and sentiment-and there is no doubt, if fortune bad led him more under the eyes of the great, his manner would readily have transformed itself. Even as it was, people soon orgot his rough language and his oaths in the strength of his mind: we have witnessed many instances of this, and once saw a devout old lady en

tering the room where he was, hold him for some time in a sort of hor ror. The conversation however happened to turn on the nature of Christian meekness, which gave him an opportunity of opening on the character of our Saviour-with that power of heart and mind, and energy of words, that in spite of the oaths which fell abundantly, the old lady remarked that she never heard so divine a man in her life, and desired to know who he

was.

So with respect to his dress, of which he was always very neghgent, and even at times squalid, that strangers would stare when they saw him in company, as if a beggar had been picked up and brought in.

Yet his appearance

was forgot, the moment he began to discourse on any subject. Such are the effects produced by a vigorous and commanding mind, whose power, by the reveries it calls up, can agitate or compose the passions, suspend the senses, and aggrandize or annihilate the casualties of time. place, and objects.

In his person he was rather under the common size, but with limbs well set together, and active even to the last: In his face one could

see lines prematurely engraven by workings of an impas sioned mind, so that he appeared older than he really was. There was something very sweet and agreeable in his smiles-but his looks, when rouzed by anger, were ferocious indeed. Of such sensibilities was he compounded. that according as things floated in his mind, it was not uncommon to see these opposite extremes at very short intervals of time. required no long acquaintance with him to see his character for frankness, boldness, and decision, as of

one

rious affection to discover the ultimate causes of that something unique and peculiar in Paley's bold cast of conception and delivery. To refer this to the exercise of his talents as a college lecturer, of which, by the way, we want a more detailed account from some intelligent pupil, is only to come one step nearer the cause of his originality, without reaching the spring itself; which, I apprehend, after all, must be traced to the peculiar scene of his boyhood and youth. In a spot comparatively rude and rustic, like Giggleswick, in the free and familiar acquaintance with a people of strong mother wit and Sabine simplicity, the peculiar genius of Paley was formed, void of art, and abhorrent to all affectation. Without change of place and the benefit of higher education, he would have been more coarse without being less vigorous, and not less clear in what he knew, though not so extensively enlightened. But had he been brought up in the politeness of a city, or in the regular discipline of a great public school, his character must have lost in rugged solidity, whatever it gained in refinement and elegance; and while in his books, if he had written any, he might have avoided the charge of colloquial homeliness, or want of dignity in his diction, the stamp of mind would hardly have been so deep and broad in the impression of his style, or his mind itself, in the mode at least of its exertion, so clear from all fastidious nicety, and so free in adopting images of illustration for their strength and point with little regard to beauty and still less to fashion. In short, we know very well and prize most highly what we actually had in Paley; and there is little reason to

think, that any supposed advantage of different circumstances, in his early life, could have produced any thing like the same combina tion of talents and usefulness. To those indeed who love the exuberance of native character, there is in the writings of Paley, as connected with his personal naiveté, every thing to interest and gratify. And for those, if such there be, who yet desiderate in him a higher temperament of sensibility, or finer delicacy of expression, let them learn to take substantial excellence wherever they are happy enough to find it, though it be not quite rectified up to their own exquisite standard of taste. For, after all, as Paley most candidly and happily says, when speaking of his friend and first patron Bishop Law,

it is the condition of human morality. There is an opposition between some virtues which seldom permits them to subsist together in perfection."

On the other hand, I know there are persons who lament that intellectual powers, like those of Paley, were not more devoted to profound disquisition, to the discovery of new truth rather than to the es tablishment and recommendation of doctrines and principles already well known and believed. Here again, there are grounds for contentment. In what he actually has done, the benefit we enjoy is invaluable. Whether in any other department his inquiries would have been, if bold, successfully pursued, and if so, crowned besides with popularity and usefulness, is all mere conjecture. Indeed, the limited sale of his Hora Pauline, though a contribution from one man, and from one mind, almost unparalleled,- to the evidences of Christianity, and the most decisive

proof