'All worldly attainments, whether of greatness, wisdom, or bravery, are but empty sounds. . . . There is nothing wise or great or noble in a human spirit but rightly to know, and heartily to worship and adore the great God who is the support and life of all spirits, whether in heaven or earth.'

Christianity is reduced to a single point,- redemption from the earthly to the divine; and the proof, as against the infidel, lies in each man's consciousness:

'I had frequently a consciousness rising up within me that the debate was equally vain on both sides, doing no more real good to the one than to the other; not being able to imagine that a set of scholastic, logical opinions about history, facts, doctrines of the Church, or a set of logical objections against them, were of any significancy toward making the soul of man either an eternal angel of heaven or an eternal devil of hell.'

His Serious Call is one of the most solemn and powerful works of its kind in any literature. Wesley even dates the rise of Methodism from its appearance in 1730.

Science. The history of optics and astronomical observation is marked in this age by the important correction of the Newtonian views as to the dispersion of refracted light, and by the invention of the achromatic telescope. Franklin, by his famous experiment of 1752, discovered the identity of electricity and lightning, which was followed by his invention of lightningrods. In general chemistry were announced many new and valuable facts illustrative of the phenomena of respiration and combustion. But the literature of Physical Science is valued more for its content than for its literary character, and the subject is here noticed only as it indicated and assisted that critical tone of thought which was setting at jar the two elements of creation, the natural and the supernatural.

Ethics. This, in common with theology, was showing the spirit fostered by the Organum. Bacon, directing attention to facts rather than to established opinions, had produced a feeling of scepticism in the study of matter. His disciples, it has been seen, naturally applied this method to the study of morals, and the controversy which they sprung has continued down to our own day. We possess the idea of right and of its opposite, wrong. What is the origin of these ideas? We feel that we ought to do the right as known, and to avoid the wrong as known. Whence this feeling of obligation? The answers as before explained may be reduced to two rival theories,—the intuitive and the utilitarian. By the first, the moral idea is a part of

our native intelligence, a portion of the mind's original furniture, in the light of which it sees and understands; by the second, it is derived from experience,- from an observation of the course of life which is conducive to our own and the general interest. The first teaches that we must do right for the sake of right, 'in scorn of consequence'; the second, that we must do it because it tends to promote the good of others, and hence our own. In the view of the utilitarian, 'ought' and 'ought not' mean the prospect of gaining or losing pleasure. Ask him why you should be benevolent. Because others will reciprocate your kindness. Why keep your promise? Because it is useful. Why be charitable?-To secure the esteem of those around us, and a return of favors bestowed. Whence the pleasure of being loved?- The prospective services we anticipate from those who love us. Whence the pleasure of piety?-The expectation of the favor of God in this life and another. Of these antagonistic schools, the first may in this age be represented by Butler, the second by Hartley.

Philosophy.-Here we find theories of a similar kind. The source of knowledge was taken as the central idea. For example, I have the idea of space:- the idea of a real, though invisible, fact. I know that it denotes a reality independent of myself, that it would exist if I were otherwise constituted,exist though the Omnipotent were not,- uncreated, for it is no object of creation,- indestructible, for it is no object of destruction. I am equally sure that every effect must have a cause; that the whole is greater than a part; that if equals be added to equals, the sums will be equal. Such ideas are distinguished as necessary truths, axioms, necessary laws of thought,- born with us, not derived from observation. Observed events are only the occasion of their being evoked. I also have the idea of bitter; but, on reflection, I discover that this idea represents, not an independent reality, but something relative to my present constitution, and hence contingent. Differently constituted, I should have a different sensation, and therefore a different idea; and the supposed bitterness would cease to be. To admit the existence of these two classes of ideas, together with their correspondent external objects, is Realism; to reject the first and retain the second, is Materialism; to deny the physical facts which corre

spond to our sensations, or to affirm that the sensation is no proof of anything without, is Idealism. The first divides the mental from the physical, and believes that the mind has proof of both; the second resolves the mental into the physical; the third resolves the physical into the mental. The first is the underlying philosophy of religion and daily life; the second is the prevailing drift of English speculation; the third is a reaction against the second,- a noble but mistaken endeavor to rescue the hopes and beliefs of men.

Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, and Hume make up the line of materialistic succession. The first made seeing and hearing the conditions of thinking, and thus gave English thought a material bent. The second made this tendency excessive and one-sided. The third was peculiarly influential at one point, the origin of ideas. He asserted that the sole ground of knowledge was experience. The mind contributed nothing,-it was simply paper, on which the images of outward things, and the states they occasioned, were received. The fourth carried the views of his predecessor to startling consequences.

Résumé. A new form of landscape gardening was introduced. Symmetry of design, so popular in the reign of Anne, was discarded for the variety and freedom of nature. Hogarth cultivated the taste for portrait-painting, as yet 'the only flourishing branch of the high tree of British art.' He translated the inward into the outward, exhibiting manners, with deep and various meaning, in color and form. The impulse given to sacred music, and the origin of the English opera, are the capital events in musical history. These facts indicate the tendencies of taste. Both literature and government were given a more popular turn. Instead of the vices, miseries, and frivolities of the great, the people now saw, in what they read, an account of themselves. The critical spirit of the age was at once formal and substantial,-increasingly the latter.

Prose was preeminent, and spread far and wide into many realms. History was a favorite study. No literary labor was more remunerative, nor did any other so readily raise to distinction those who excelled in it.

The prevailing style was still classical; but to the nimble move

ment of Pope and the graceful pace of Addison, was now added the ponderous and stately gait of Johnson.

Poetry, open to petty and superficial criticism, conformed to the rules and proprieties, but was divorced from living nature.

Formalism and rationalism provoked reactionary efforts, disclosing far-off forces at work, promises of the coming spontaneity in which poetry should flow as lava from volcanoes, light from stars, or perfume from flowers.

RICHARDSON.

His power was his own in the strictest sense; not borrowed from books, little aided even by experience of life, derived almost solely from introspection of himself and communion with his own heart.-Craik.

Biography.-Born in Derbyshire, in 1689, son of a poor carpenter. Received a common-school education, and at the age of sixteen was apprenticed to a printer in London-a calling to which he was determined by its prospective opportunities for reading. Advanced rapidly by industry and good conduct, was taken into partnership, and ultimately became the head of an extensive business. At fifty, became an author, writing during his leisure moments in his shop parlor. Delicate, nervous, often ill, his disorders terminated fatally on the 4th of July, 1761.

Writings. Known from his youth as a fluent letter-writer, he had been engaged to prepare a manual of familiar letters on useful subjects, and it occurred to him, while executing the task, that the work would be greatly enlivened if the letters were made to tell a connected story. The result was Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740); published in order to cultivate the principles of virtue and religion in the minds of the young.

Pamela is an artless and lovely child of fifteen, half servant and half favorite, who finds herself exposed to the wickedness of a rich and aristocratic young master, a justice of the peace, a sort of divinity to her. He insults her, but she is always timid and humble:

It is for you, sir, to say what you please, and for me only to say, God bless your honor!'

Again he is kind, and she is confused:

To be sure I did think nothing but curt'sy and cry, and was all confusion at his goodness.'

He confines her for several months with a wicked creature'; threatens her, tries money, then gentleness. Everything is against her even her own heart, for she loves him secretly. The toils close around her, and she seems lost; but a grand sentiment saves her. Distinctions of soul are the only ones that will live in Heaven:

'My soul is of equal importance to the soul of a princess, though my quality is inferior to that of the meanest slave.'

He learns to respect her, wishes now to marry her, and she answers him in a timid, troubled way:

'I fear not, sir, the grace of God supporting me, that any acts of kindness would make me forget what I owe to my virtue; but . . . my nature is too frank and open to make me wish to be ungrateful; and if I should be taught a lesson I never yet learnt, with what regret should I descend to the grave, to think that I could not hate my undoer; and that at the last great day, I must stand up as an accuser of the poor unhappy soul that I could wish it in my power to save.'

She is happy now, for she may trust him; and day by day her letters joyously and gratefully record the preparations for their marriage. For her wedding present, she obtains the pardon of those who have ill-treated her. As a wife, she prays to God that she may be enabled to discharge her duty; hopes her husband will be indulgent to the overflowings of her grateful heart; resolves to read in his absence, that she may polish her mind, and make herself worthier of his company and conversation.

Clarissa Harlowe (1748), his masterpiece. Like the other, a novel of conflict, but in which virtue, subjected to a severer test, is given its greatest prominence. The heroine is of noble mind, saintly purity, and never-failing sweetness of temper. A despotic father, with an ambition to found a house, wishes to marry her to a coarse and heartless fool; she rebels, is importuned by her mother, urged by a furious brother, stung by a venomous sister, growled at by two uncles, hounded by the whole family-aunt and nurse included. She offers to give up her property, never to marry at all, concedes, begs, implores, weeps, faints, but in vain. True, they are afraid of her tears, but the torture is obstinate, incessant. It is the sort of parental tyranny and stupidity that drives the victim to madness, dishonor, or death. When, at the last moment, she thinks to escape them, she is chased by another