and discover how much more is to be hoped from frequency and perseverance, than from violent efforts and sudden desires: efforts which are soon remitted when they encounter difficulty, and desires which, if they are indulged too often, will shake off the authority of reason, and range capriciously from one object to another.

The disposition to defer every important design to a time of leisure, and a state of settled uniformity, proceeds generally from a false estimate of the human powers. If we except those gigantic and stupendous Intelligences who are said to grasp a system by intuition, and bound forward from one series of conclusions to another, without regular steps through intermediate propositions, the most successful students make their advances in knowledge by short flights, between each of which the mind may lie at rest. For every single act of progression a short time is sufficient; and it is only necessary that, whenever that time is afforded, it be well employed.

Few minds will be long confined to severe and laborious meditation; and when a successful attack on knowledge has been made, the student recreates himself with the contemplation of his conquest, and forbears another incursion till the new-acquired truth has become familiar, and his curiosity calls upon him for fresh gratifications. Whether the time of intermission is spent in company, or in solitude, in necessary business, or in voluntary levities, the understanding is equally abstracted from the object of inquiry: but, perhaps, if it be detained by occupations less pleasing, it returns again to study with greater alacrity than when it is glutted with ideal pleasures, and surfeited with intemperance of application. He that will not suffer himself to be discouraged by fancied impossibilities, may sometimes find his abilities invigorated by the necessity of exerting them in short intervals, as the force of a current is increased by the contraction of its channel.

From some cause like this it has probably proceeded that among those who have contributed to the advancement of learning, many have risen to eminence in opposition to all the obstacles

which external circumstances could place in their way, amidst the tumult of business, the distresses of poverty, or the dissipations of a wandering and unsettled state. A great part of the life of Erasmus was one continual peregrination; ill supplied with the gifts of fortune, and led from city to city, and from kingdom to kingdom, by the hopes of patrons and preferment, hopes which always flattered and always deceived him: he yet found means, by unshaken constancy, and a vigilant improvement of those hours which, in the midst of the most reckless activity, will remain unengaged, to write more than another in the same condition would have hoped to read. Compelled by want to attendance and solicitation, and so much versed in common life, that he has transmitted to us the most perfect delineation of the manners of his age, he joined to his knowledge of the world such application to books, that he will stand for ever in the first rank of literary heroes. How this proficiency was obtained he sufficiently discovers, by informing us that the "Praise of Folly," one of his most celebrated performances, was composed by him on the road to Italy: ne totum illud tempus, quo equo fuit incidendum illi teratis fabulis teretur; "lest the hours which he was obliged to spend on horseback should be baffled away without regard to literature."

An Italian philosopher expressed in his motto that time was his ESTATE; an estate, indeed, which will produce nothing without cultivation, but will always abundantly repay the labours of industry, and satisfy the most extensive desires, if no part of it be suffered to lie waste by negligence, to be overrun with noxious plants, or laid out for show rather than for use.

On the Goodness of the Deity.

PALEY.

[WILLIAM PALEY was born at Peterborough in 1743. He was educated by his father, who was head-master of the Grammar School of Giggleswick, in Yorkshire, and he graduated at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1763. His

life was passed in the calm discharge of his professional duties, and in the com. position of the various works which have made his name one of the most familiar in English literature. Bishop Porteus made him a prebendary of St Paul's, London, and Bishop Prettyman the sub-dean of Lincoln, in 1794; and the year following Barrington, the Bishop of Durham, presented him with the valuable rectory of Bishop-Wearmouth. His tolerance and freedom of inquiry were not in unison with the opinions of those who had the bestowal of preferment. His reputation as a moralist and theologian has rather diminished of late years. His philosophy is that of expediency-his religion is that which is proposed to the reason rather than the heart. But for acuteness, strength of grasp, and felicity of illustration, he has never been surpassed; and though his chief works are founded upon materials collected by others, his powers as a writer are so admirable, that well-known facts and common thoughts become original under his treatment. His great works are "Moral and Political Philosophy;" "Hore Pauline;" "Evidences of Christianity;" and "Natural Theology." From the latter popular book our extract is taken. Paley died in 1805.]

The proof of the Divine goodness rests upon two propositions ; each, as we contend, capable of being made out by observations drawn from the appearances of nature.

The first is, "that in a vast plurality of instances in which con trivance is perceived, the design of the contrivance is beneficial.”

The second, "that the Deity has superadded pleasure to animal sensations beyond what was necessary for any other purpose, or when the purpose, so far as it was necessary, might have been effected by the operation of pain."

First, "in a vast plurality of instances in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the contrivance is beneficial.”

No productions of nature display contrivance so manifestly as the parts of animals; and the parts of animals have all of them, I believe, a real, and with very few exceptions, all of them a known and intelligible subserviency to the use of the animal. Now, when the multitude of animals is considered, the number of parts in each, their figure and fitness, the faculties depending upon them, the variety of species, the complexity of structure, the success, in so many cases, the felicity of the result, we can never reflect, without the profoundest adoration, upon the character of that Being from whom all these things have proceeded: we cannot

help acknowledging what an exertion of benevolence creation was; of a benevolence how minute in its care, how vast in its comprehension !

When we appeal to the parts and faculties of animals, and to the limbs and senses of animals in particular, we state, I conceive, the proper medium of proof for the conclusion which we wish to establish. I will not say that the insensible parts of nature are made solely for the sensitive parts, but this I say, that when we consider the benevolence of the Deity, we can only consider it in relation to sensitive being. Without this reference, or referred to anything else, the attribute has no object, the term has no meaning. Dead matter is nothing. The parts, therefore, especially the limbs and senses, of animals, although they constitute in mass and quantity a small portion of the material creation, yet, since they alone are instruments of perception, they compose what may be called the whole of visible nature, estimated with a view to the disposition of its Author. Consequently, it is in these that we are to seek His character. It is by these that we are to prove that the world was made with a benevolent design.

Nor is the design abortive. It is a happy world after all. The air, the earth, the water, teem with delighted existence. In a spring noon or a summer evening, on whichever side I turn my eyes, myriads of happy beings crowd upon my view. "The insect youth are on the wing." Swarms of new-born flies are trying their pinions in the air. Their sportive motion, their wanton mazes, their gratuitous activity, their continual change of place without use or purposé, testify their joy and the exultation which they feel in their lately-discovered faculties. A bee amongst the flowers in spring is one of the most cheerful objects that can be looked upon. Its life appears to be all enjoyment, so busy and so pleased; yet it is only a specimen of insect life, with which, by reason of the animal being half-domesticated, we happen to be better acquainted than we are with that of others. The whole winged insect tribe, it is probable, are equally intent upon their proper employments, and, under every variety of constitution, gratified, and perhaps equally gratified, by the offices which the

Author of their nature has assigned to them. But the atmosphere is not the only scene of enjoyment for the insect race. Plants are covered with aphides, greedily sucking their juices, and constantly, as it should seem, in the act of sucking. It cannot be doubted but that this is a state of gratification. What else would fix them so close to the operation, and so long? Other species are running about, with an alacrity in their motions which carries with it every mark of pleasure. Large patches of ground are sometimes halfcovered with these brisk and sprightly natures. If we look to what the waters produce, shoals of the fry of fish frequent the margins of rivers, of lakes, and of the sea itself. These are so happy that they know not what to do with themselves. Their attitudes, their vivacity, their leaps out of the water, their frolics in it, (which I have noticed a thousand times with equal attention and amusement,) all conduce to show their excess of spirits, and are simply the effects of that excess. Walking by the sea-side, in a calm evening, upon a sandy shore, and with an ebbing tide, I have frequently remarked the appearance of dark cloud, or rather very thick mist, hanging over the edge of the water, to the height, perhaps of half a yard, and of the breadth of two or three yards, stretching along the coast as far as the eye could reach, and always retiring with the water. When this cloud came to be examined, it proved to be nothing else than so much space filled with young shrimps, in the act of bounding in the air from the shallow margin of the water, or from the wet sand. If any motion of a mute animal could express delight, it was this; if they had meant to make signs of their happiness, they could not have done it more intelligibly. Suppose, then, what I have no doubt of, each individual of this number to be in a state of positive enjoyment; what a sum, collectively, of gratification and pleasure have we here before our view!

The young of all animals appear to me to receive pleasure simply from the exercise of their limbs and bodily faculties, without reference to any end to be attained, or any use to be answered by the exertion. A child, without knowing anything of the use of language, is in a high degree delighted with being able to speak.