The death of the King of Wirtem- measure. It is in contemplation to let them receive testamentary gifts, but it is in vain to attempt to raise them to their former splendour. The age of delusion is gone by; and unless they come nearer to Christianity, which is not very likely, they will sink lower in public estimation. The Protestants, however, will be preserved from such proceedings as took place at Nismes; and, if they conduct themselves with prudence, will at least not suffer any infringement on their rights." burg promises to put an end to the disputes in his domains. This kingdom, Founded by Buonaparte, seems likely to be the first to enjoy the representative system. The new sovereign was friendly to the demands of the subjects, and he has a fine opportunity to begin his reign in a popular manner. It is probable also, that the power given to the Duke of Cambridge may be beneficial to the Hanoverian states. Prussia begins to feel some embarrassments from its new subjects of Saxony. This latter country was the best as Prussia was the worst governed of all the States of Germany, and the ideas of the new may be beneficial to the old subjects. Indeed, if it is true that a minister from one of the pulpits of Prussia, who had served against Buonaparte, inquired what have we been fighting for if we are not to have a constitution? we have reason to believe that the subjects may answer the question, and keep the sovereign to his promise. The national assembly of France has met. The sessions was opened by the king with the usual formalities. He went in solemn procession to the temple of her who is profanely called the Mother of God; was addressed by the priests in language which Protestants deem profane; and after assisting at their rites, delivered an oration to his assembled states. His speech has been re-echoed by the usual addresses, and the chambers have been employed in verifying the powers of the deputies. Great questions are to come before them; but by all accounts the ultraroyalist party seems to be in a minority. This augurs well for the French people, and it will be curious to see the ultra-royalists taking up the cause of liberty. Their grand advocate has already published doctrines consonant to those held by the Whigs at our Revolution. The liberty of the press is loudly called for, and the espionage of the police held out to deserved contempt. But it does not seem likely that their ministers will part with this too grand engine of despotism. Nor do the French seem to have acquired as yet just notions of the decorumi that belongs to a deliberative body. The affairs of the church seem likely to form a prominent part in the debates; some agreement has been negotiated with the pope, and the clergy will aim at raising themselves a little by the The affairs of the insurgents on the shores washed by the gulph of Mexico, appear to be unsuccessful, but how far this extends to the country properly called the kingdom of Mexico, is not ascertained. French officers are said to be expatriating themselves in great numbers for these regions, and we are yet to learn what has become of Humboldt and his expedition. In South America the cause of independence bears a more favourable aspect, and the shores of La Plata seem to be advancing fast towards a settled constitution. At home, meetings continue to be held, some on the subject of parliamentary reform, others on the distresses of the times. Amongst the former, Cornwall holds a high pre-eminence; and that county in which the abuses of representation are the greatest, speaks the loudest for the correction of them. The late meetings have also had very beneficial effects. A general disposition prevails to alleviate as much as possible present distress; and let us hope that benevolence duly exerted will be crowned with success. In this as in every thing belonging to his of fice, the Lord Mayor co-operates with his usual energy. His entrance into office for the second time must not pass without a remark. The procession upon these occasions returned not as usual by water, but by land through Westminster; and wherever the state coach passed, the acclamations of the people, and the crowded windows manifested the delight of the two cities in the popularity so well earned by this exemplary magistrate. Some umbrage was taken at this procession by one of the ministers; but the publication of the correspondence between him and the Lord Mayor, tended only. to raise the latter in public estimation. The case of Lord Cochrane has again been brought before the public. He appeared before the judges to receive their sentence for breach of prison, to which crime they attached a penalty of one hundred pounds, and of course imprisonment till the fine was paid. His Lordship not paying the fine was conveyed to prison, and his friends had a meeting to raise it by subscription. To this no objection can be made. The subscribers may gratify theinselves in thus releasing his Lordship from confinement; but it is evident that the laws must be obeyed, and after a trial by jury and commitment on that trial, there cannot be a doubt that breach of prison is a crime. If in the imprisonment there has been any injury sus tained by the person confined, he has his redress by law: but in this case as far as the crime and penalty are connected together, it will be generally thought that his Lordship can have no reason to complain of the severity of his last sentence. The moral world has been shocked by a transaction rendered too notorious between two barristers. A violent altercation it seems took place between them, and one of the parties thought it requisite to demand satisfaction according to the false principles of honour, against which they ought to have been the first to set themselves in opposition. Some demur took place in accepting the challenge, and in the mean time, the parties were prevented from putting their murderous intentions into execution, by being bound over by a magistrate to keep the peace. After a lapse of time, the party challenged became the challenger, and in a very scurrilous letter appointed Calais for the place of settling their differences within a time limited. Thither the parties resorted, and fired each his pistol at the other nearly instantaneously, and one of them only was wounded. They then returned to England, and the account of these disgusting proceedings was set forth in all the public papers. Whether the last challenger has received what is vulgarly called satisfaction, we do not know, for no explanation took place on the ground. He has returned unhurt, and all that has been gained by their attempts at murder, has been the proof, that each can stand to be shot at. The annals of duelling do not present an instance, in which such vulgar abuse and scurrilous language have been used. It remains to be seen what part the bar will take on this transaction; but surely it cannot be countenanced by a profession to which we look up for peculiar attention to the laws of our country. On the folly and wickedness of this mode of settling differences, it is not necessary for us to expatiate. The characters of the par ties cannot be raised in our estimation by such a paltry expedient; and, if either of them had died, we should not have acquitted the other of the guilt of murder. NEW PUBLICATIONS IN THEOLOGY AND GENERAL LITERATURE. Heresies Considered in Connexion with the Character of the Approved: A Sermon preached at the Opening of the Unitarian Chapel, in Thorne, on Friday June 28, 1816. By Nathaniel Philipps, D. D. To which is added an Appendix, stating the Rise and Progress of Unitarianism in the above Place. 8vo. 1s. 6d, Twenty-one Short Forms of Morning and Evening Prayers, for the Use of Families. By a Member of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. sve. 3s. 6d. boards. The Substance of a Farewell Sermon: in a Letter addressed to the Members, Subscribers and Congregation of the Unitarian Meeting, Dorchester. By B. Treleaven, late Minister of that Chapel. 8vo. 1s. A Faithful Enquiry after the Ancient and Original Doctrine of the Trinity, taught by Christ and his Apostles. By Isaac Watts, D. D. 1745. Svo. la. 6₫ [Reprinted from the edition of Mr. Gabriel Watts in 1802.] ERRATUM. XI. p. 665-572, for Mr. William Mathews, read Mr. William Matthews, Estimate of the Philosophical Character CUDWORTH was one of the first who successfully combated this new philosophy. As Hobbes, in the frenzy of his political zeal, had been led to sacrifice wantonly all the principles of religion and morality to the establishment of his conclusions, his works not only gave offence to the friends of liberty, but excited a general alarm among all sound moralists. His doctrine, in particular, that there is no natural distinction between right and wrong, and that these are dependent on the arbitrary will of the civil magistrate, was so obviously subversive of all the commonly received ideas concerning the moral constitution of human nature, that it hecane indispensably necessary, to expose the sophistry of the attempt, or to adinit, with Hobbes, that man is a beast of prey, incapable of being governed by any motives but fear, and the desire of self-preservation. either Between some of these tenets of the courtly Hobbists, and those inculcated by the Cromwellian. Antinomians, there was a very extraordinary and unfortunate coincidence; the latter insisting, that, in expectation of Christ's second coming, "the obligations of morality and natural law were suspended; and that the elect, guided by an internal principle, more perfect and divine, were superior to the leggarly elements of justice and hunanity." It was the object of Cudworth to vindicate, against the assaults of both parties, the immutability of moral distinctions. Born 1617, died 1688. 4 U In the prosecution of his very able argument on this subject, Cudworth displays a rich store of enlightened choice crudition, penetrated and throughout with a peculiar vein of sobered and subdued Platonism, from whence some German systems, which have attracted no sinall notice in our own times, will be found, when stripped of their deep neological disguise, to have borrowed their most valuable materials. The mind (according to Cudworth) perceives, by occasion of outward objects, as much more than is represented to it by sense, as a learned man does in the best written book, than an illiterate person or "To the eyes of both, the same brute. characters will appear; but the learned man, in those characters, will see heaven, earth, sun, and stars; read profound theorems of philosophy or geometry; learn and admire the wisdom of the composer, a great deal of new knowledge from them, while, to the other, nothing appears but black strokes drawn on white paper. The reason of which is, that the mind of the one is furnished with certain previous inward anticipations, ideas, and instruction, that the other wants."-" In the room of this book of human composition, let us now substitute the book of Nature, written all over with the characters and impressions of divine wisdom and goodness, but legible only to an intellectual To the sense both of man and brute, eye. there appears nothing else in it, but, as in the other, so many inky scrawls; that is, nothing but figures and colours. But the mind, which hath a participation of the divine wisdom that made it, upon occasion of those sensible delineations, exerting its own inward activity, will have not only a wonderful scene, and large prospects of other thoughts laid open before it, and variety of knowledge, logical, mathematical, and moral displayed; but also clearly read the divine wisdom and goodness in every page of this great volume, as it were written in large and legible characters." I do not pretend to be an adept in the Another coincidence between the Hobbists and the Antinomians, may be remarked in their common zeal for the scheme of necessity; which both of them stated in such a way as to be equally inconsistent with the moral agency of man, and with the moral attributes of God. The strongest of all presumptions against this scheme is afforded by the other tenets with which it is almost universally combined; and accordingly, it was very shrewdly observed by Cudworth, that the licentious system which flourished in his time, (under which title, I presume, he comprehended the immoral tenets of the fanatics, as well as of the philosophy of Kant; but I certainly think I pay it a very high compliment, when I suppose, that, in the Critic of pure Reason, the leading idea is somewhat analogous to what is so much better expressed in the foregoing passage. To Kant it was probably suggested by the following very acute and decisive remark of Leibnitz on Locke's Essay: "Nempe, nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu, nisi ipse intellectus." Aristotle's words. In justice to Aristotle, it may be here observed, that, although the general strain of his language is strictly conformable to the scholastic maxim just quoted, he does not seem to have altogether overlooked the important exception to it pointed out by Leibnitz. Indeed, this exception or limitation is very nearly a translation of Και αυτός δε νους νοητός εστιν, ώσπερ τα νοητα. επι μεν γαρ των ανευ ύλης, το αυτό Εστι ΤΟ VOOUV και TO VODUμLEVOV. "And the mind itself is an object of knowledge, as well as other things which are intelligible. For, in immaterial beings, that which understands is the same with that which is understood." (Do Anima, Lib iii. cap. v.) I quote this very curious, and, I suspect, very little known sentence, in order to vindicate Aristotle against the misrepresentations of some of his present idolaters, who, in their anxiety to secure to him all the credit of Locke's doctrine concerning the Origin of our Ideas, have overlooked the occasional traces which occur in his works, of that higher and sounder philosophy in which he had been educated. The doctrines of fate or destiny were deemed by the Independents essential to all religion. In these rigid opinions, the whole sectaries, amidst all their other differences, unánimously concurred." Hume's History, chap. Ivii. Hobbists), "grew up from the doetrine of the fatal necessity of all actions and events, as from its proper root." The unsettled, and, at the same time, disputatious period during which Cudworth lived, afforded him peculiarly favourable opportunities of judging from experience, of the practical tendency of this metaphysical dogma; and the result of his observations deserves the serious attention of those who may be disposed to regard it in the light of a fair and harmless theme for the display of controversial subtilty. To argue, in this manner, against a speculative principle from its palpable effects, is not always so illogical as some authors have supposed. "You repeat to me incessantly," says Rousseau to one of his correspondents, "that truth can never be injurious to the world. I myself believe so as firmly as you do, and it is for this very reason I am satisfied that your proposition is false."† But the principal importance of Cudworth, as an ethical writer, arises from the influence of his argument concerning the immutability of right and wrong on the various theories of morals which appeared in the course of the eighteenth century. To this argument may, more particularly, be traced the origin of the celebrated question, Whether the principle of moral approbation is to be ultimately resolved into reason, or into sentiment?a question, which has furnished the chief ground of difference between the systems of Cudworth and of Clarke, on the one hand; and those of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith, on the other. The Intellectual System of Cud worth, embraces a field much wider than his treatise of Immutable Morality. The latter is particularly directed against the ethical doctrines of Hobbes, and of the Antinomians; but the former aspires to tear up by the roots all the principles, both physical and metaphysical, of the Epicurean phi losophy. It is a work, certainly, which reflects much honour on the talents of the author, and still more on the boundless extent of his learn + "Vous répétez sans cesse que la vérité ne peut jamais faire de mal aux hommes; je le crois, et c'est pour moi lấ preuve que ce que vous dites n'est pas la vérité." Estimate of the Philosophical Character of the Antagonists of Hobbes. 695 mg; but it is so ill suited to the taste of the present age, that, since the time of Mr. Harris and Dr. Price, I scarcely recollect the slightest reference to it in the writings of our British metaphysicians. Of its faults Of its faults (beside the general disposition of the author to discuss questions placed altogether beyond the reach of our faculties), the most prominent is the wild hypothesis of a plastic nature; or, in other words, of a vital and spiritual, but unintelligent and necessary agent, created by the Deity for the execution of his purposes." Notwithstanding, however, these, and many other abatements of its merits, the Intellectual System will for ever remain a precious mine of information to those whose curiosity may lead them to study the spirit of the ancient theories; and to it we may justly apply what Leibnitz has somewhere said, with far less reason, of the works of the schoolmen, "Scholasticos agnosco abundare ineptiis; sed aurum est in illo cono.”* Before dismissing the doctrines of Hobbes, it may be worth while to remark, that all his leading principles are traced by Cudworth to the remains of the ancient sceptics, by some of whom, as well as by Hobbes, they seem to have been adopted from a wish to flatter the uncontrolled passions of sovereigns. Not that I am disposed to call in question the origi nality of Hobbes; for it appears, from the testimony of all his friends, that he had much less pleasure in reading than in thinking. "If I had read," he was accustomed to say, " as much as some others, I should have been as ignorant as they are." But similar political circumstances invariably reproduce similar philosophical theories; and it is one of the numerous disadvantages attending an inventive mind, not properly furnished with acquired information, to be confinually liable to a waste of its powers on subjects previously exhausted. The sudden tide of licentiousness, Both in principles and in practice, which burst into this island at the moment of the Restoration, conspired The Intellectual System was published in 1678. The Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality did not appear till a considerable number of years after the author's death. with the paradoxes of Hobbes, and with the no less dangerous errors recently propagated among the people by their religious instructors, to turn the thoughts of sober and speculative men towards ethical disquisitions. The established clergy assumed a higher tone than before in their sermons; sometimes employing them in combating that Epicurean and Machiavellian philosophy which was then fashionable at court, and which may be always suspected to form the secret creed of the enemies of civil and religious liberty;-on other occasions, to overwhelm, with the united force of argument and learning, the extravagancies by which the ignorant enthusiasts of the preceding period had exposed Christianity itself to the scoffs of their libertine opponents. Among the divines who appeared at this era, it is impossible to pass over in silence the name of BARROW, whose theolo gical works (adorned throughout by classical erudition, and by a vigorous, though unpolished eloquence), exhibit, in every page, marks of the same inventive genius which, in ma thematics, has secured to him a rank second alone to that of Newton. As a writer, he is equally distinguished by the redundancy of his matter, and by the pregnant brevity of his expres sion; but what more peculiarly cha racterizes his manner, is a certain air of powerful and of conscious fa cility in the execution of whatever he undertakes. Whether the subject be mathematical, metaphysical, or theo logical, he seems always to bring to it a mind which feels itself superior to the occasion; and which, in con tending with the greatest difficulties, puts forth but half its strength." He has somewhere spoken, of his Lectiones Mathematica (which it may, in passing, be remarked, display metaphysical talents of the highest order), as extemporaneous effusions of his pen; and I have no doubt that the same epithet is still more literally applicable to his pulpit discourses. It is, indeed, only thus we can account for the variety and extent of his volu minous remains, when we recollect that the author died at the age of forty-six,↑ + In a note annexed to an English translation of the Cardinal Maury's Prociples of Eloquence, it is stated, upon the |