they are all quite incapable of directing themselves. The art of navigation, for instance, will teach us to steer a ship across the ocean, but it will never teach us on what occasions it is proper to take a voyage. The art of war will instruct us how to marshal an army, or to fight a battle to the greatest advantage, but you must learn from a higher school when it is fitting, just, and proper to wage war or to make peace. The art of the husbandman is to sow and bring to maturity the precious fruits of the earth; it belongs to another skill to regulate their consumption by a regard to our health, fortune, and other circumstances. In short, there is no faculty we can exert, no species of skill we can apply, but requires a superintending hand-but looks up, as it were, to some higher principle, as a maid to her mistress for direction, and this universal superintendent is wisdom.

[From the Funeral Sermon for the Princess Charlotte of Wales.]

story, and of once more attaching the epoch of British glory to the annals of a female reign. It is needless to add that the nation went with her, and probably outstripped her in these delightful anticipations. We fondly hoped that a life so inestimable would be protracted to a distant period, and that, after diffusing the blessings of a just and enlightened administration, and being surrounded by a numerous progeny, she would gradually, in a good old age, sink under the horizon amidst the embraces of her family and the benedictions of her country. But, alas! these delightful visions are fled; and what do we behold in their room but the funeral-pall and shroud, a palace in mourning, a nation in tears, and the shadow of death settled over both like a cloud! Oh the unspeakable vanity of human hopes!-the incurable blindness of man to futurity !-ever doomed to grasp at shadows; to seize' with avidity what turns to dust and ashes in his hands; to sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind.

REV. JOHN FOSTER.

The REV. JOHN FOSTER (1770-1843) was author of a volume of Essays, in a Series of Letters, published in 1805, which was justly ranked among the most original and valuable works of the day. The essays are four in number---on a man's writing memoirs of himself; on decision of character; on the application of the epithet romantic; and on some of the causes by which evangelical religion has been rendered less acceptable to persons of cultivated taste. Mr Foster's essays are excellent models of vigorous thought and expression, uniting metaphysical nicety and acuteness with practical sagacity and common sense. He also wrote a volume on the Evils of Popular Ignorance, several sermons, and critical contributions to the Eclectic Review. Like Hall, Mr Foster was pastor of a Baptist congregation. He died at Staple

Born to inherit the most illustrious monarchy in the world, and united at an early period to the object of her choice, whose virtues amply justified her preference, she enjoyed (what is not always the privilege of that rank) the highest connubial felicity, and had the prospect of combining all the tranquil enjoyments of private life with the splendour of a royal station. Placed on the summit of society, to her every eye was turned, in her every hope was centred, and nothing was wanting to complete her felicity except perpetuity. To a grandeur of mind suited to her royal birth and lofty destination, she joined an exquisite taste for the beauties of nature and the charms of retirement, where, far from the gaze of the multitude, and the frivolous agitations of fashionable life, she employed her hours in visiting, with her distinguished consort, the cottages of the poor, in improving her virtues, in perfecting her reason, and acquiring the knowledge best adapted to qualify her for the pos-ton, near Bristol. session of power and the cares of empire. One thing only was wanting to render our satisfaction complete in the prospect of the accession of such a princess; it was, that she might become the living

mother of children.

The long-wished-for moment at length arrived; but, alas! the event anticipated with such eagerness will form the most melancholy part of our history.

It is no reflection on this amiable princess, to suppose that in her early dawn, with the dew of her youth so fresh upon her, she anticipated a long series of years, and expected to be led through successive scenes of enchantment, rising above each other in fascination and beauty. It is natural to suppose she identified herself with this great nation which she was born to govern; and that, while she contemplated its pre-eminent lustre in arts and in arms, its commerce encircling the globe, its colonies diffused through both hemispheres, and the beneficial effects of its institutions extending to the whole earth, she considered them as so many component parts of her grandeur. Her heart, we may well conceive, would often be ruffled with emotions of trembling ecstacy when she reflected that it was her province to live entirely for others, to compass the felicity of a great people, to move in a sphere which would afford scope for the exercise of philanthropy the most enlarged, of wisdom the most enlightened; and that, while others are doomed to pass through the world in obscurity, she was to supply the materials of history, and to impart that impulse to society which was to decide the destiny of future generations. Fired with the ambition of equalling or surpassing the most distinguished of her predecessors, she probably did not despair of reviving the remembrance of the brightest parts of their

In the essay On a Man's Writing Memoirs of Himself, Mr Foster thus speculates on a changeable character, and on the contempt which we entertain at an advanced period of life for what we were at an earlier period:

Though in memoirs intended for publication a large share of incident and action would generally be necessary, yet there are some men whose mental bistory alone might be very interesting to reflective readers; as, for instance, that of a thinking man remarkable for a number of complete changes of his speculative system. From observing the usual tenacity of views once deliberately adopted in mature life, we regard as a curious phenomenon the man whose mind has been a kind of caravansera of opinions, entertained a while, and then sent on pilgrimage; a man who has admired and dismissed systems with the same facility with which John Buncle found, adored, married, and interred his succession of wives, each one being, for the time, not only better than all that went before, but the best in the creation. You admire the versatile aptitude of a mind sliding into successive forms of belief in this intellectual metempsychosis, by which it animates so many new bodies of doctrines in their turn. And as none of those dying pangs which hurt you in a tale of India attend the desertion of each of these speculative forms which the soul has a while inhabited, you are extremely amused by the number of transitions, and eagerly ask what is to be the next, for you never deem the present state of such a man's views to be for permanence, unless perhaps when he has terminated his course of believing everything in ultimately believing nothing. Even then, unless he is very old, or

feels more pride in being a sceptic, the conqueror of all systems, than he ever felt in being the champion of one, even then it is very possible he may spring up again, like a vapour of fire from a bog, and glimmer through new mazes, or retrace his course through half of those which he trod before. You will observe that no respect attaches to this Proteus of opinion after his changes have been multiplied, as no party expect him to remain with them, nor deem him much of an acquisition if he should. One, or perhaps two, considerable changes will be regarded as signs of a liberal inquirer, and therefore the party to which his first or his second intellectual conversion may assign him will receive him gladly. But he will be deemed to have abdicated the dignity of reason when it is found that he can adopt no principles but to betray them; and it will be perhaps justly suspected that there is something extremely infirm in the structure of that mind, whatever vigour may mark some of its operations, to which a series of very different, and sometimes contrasted theories, can appear in succession demonstratively true, and which imitates sincerely the perverseness which Petruchio only affected, declaring that which was yesterday to a certainty the sun, to be to-day as certainly the moon.

It would be curious to observe in a man, who should make such an exhibition of the course of his mind, the sly deceit of self-love. While he despises the system which he has rejected, he does not deem it to imply so great a want of sense in him once to have embraced it, as in the rest who were then or are now its disciples and advocates. No; in him it was no debility of reason; it was at the utmost but a merge of it; and probably he is prepared to explain to you that such peculiar circumstances, as might warp even a very strong and liberal mind, attended his consideration of the subject, and misled him to admit the belief of what others prove themselves fools by believing.

quities, after having been so long beguiled, like the mariners in a story which I remember to have read, who followed the direction of their compass, infallibly right as they thought, till they arrived at an enemy's port, where they were seized and doomed to slavery. It happened that the wicked captain, in order to betray the ship, had concealed a large loadstone at a little distance on one side of the needle.

On the notions and expectations of one stage of life I suppose all reflecting men look back with a kind of contempt, though it may be often with the mingling wish that some of its enthusiasm of feeling could be recovered-I mean the period between proper childhood and maturity. They will allow that their reason was then feeble, and they are prompted to exclaim, What fools we have been-while they recollect how sincerely they entertained and advanced the most ridiculous speculations on the interests of life and the questions of truth; how regretfully astonished they were to find the mature sense of some of those around them so completely wrong; yet in other instances, what veneration they felt for authorities for which they have since lost all their respect; what a fantastic importance they attached to some most trivial things; what complaints against their fate were uttered on account of disappointments which they have since recollected with gaiety or self-congratulation; what happiness of Elysium they expected from sources which would soon have failed to impart even common satisfaction; and how certain they were that the feelings and opinions then predominant would continue through life.

If a reflective aged man were to find at the bottom of an old chest-where it had lain forgotten fifty years a record which he had written of himself when he was young, simply and vividly describing his whole heart and pursuits, and reciting verbatim many passages of the language which he sincerely uttered, would he not read it with more wonder than almost Another thing apparent in a record of changed every other writing could at his age inspire? He opinions would be, what I have noticed before, that would half lose the assurance of his identity, under there is scarcely any such thing in the world as simple the impression of this immense dissimilarity. It would conviction. It would be amusing to observe how seem as if it must be the tale of the juvenile days of reason had, in one instance, been overruled into some ancestor, with whom he had no connexion but acquiescence by the admiration of a celebrated name, that of name. He would feel the young man thus or in another into opposition by the envy of it; how introduced to him separated by so wide a distance of most opportunely reason discovered the truth just at character as to render all congenial sociality imposthe time that interest could be essentially served by sible. At every sentence he would be tempted to reavowing it; how easily the impartial examiner could peat-Foolish youth, I have no sympathy with your be induced to adopt some part of another man's opi- feelings, I can hold no converse with your understandnions, after that other had zealously approved some ing. Thus, you see that in the course of a long life a favourite, especially if unpopular part of his, as the man may be several moral persons, so various from Pharisees almost became partial even to Christ at the one another, that if you could find a real individual moment that he defended one of their doctrines against that should nearly exemplify the character in one of the Sadducees. It would be curious to see how a these stages, and another that should exemplify it in professed respect for a man's character and talents, the next, and so on to the last, and then bring these and concern for his interests, might be changed, in several persons together into one society, which would consequence of some personal inattention experienced thus be a representation of the successive states of one from him, into illiberal invective against him or his man, they would feel themselves a most heterogeneous intellectual performances, and yet the railer, though party, would oppose and probably despise one another, actuated solely by petty revenge, account himself the and soon after separate, not caring if they were never model of equity and candour all the while. It might to meet again. If the dissimilarity in mind were as be seen how the patronage of power could elevate great as in person, there would in both respects be a miserable prejudices into revered wisdom, while poor most striking contrast between the extremes at least, old Experience was mocked with thanks for her in-between the youth of seventeen and the sage of seventy. struction; and how the vicinity or society of the rich, and, as they are termed, great, could perhaps melt a soul that seemed to be of the stern consistence of early Rome, into the gentlest wax on which Corruption could wish to imprint the venerable creed- The right divine of kings to govern wrong,' with the pious inference that justice was outraged when virtuous Tarquin was expelled. I am supposing the observer to perceive all these accommodating dexterities of reason; for it were probably absurd to expect that any mind should itself be able in its review to detect all its own obli

The one of these contrasts an old man might contemplate if he had a true portrait for which he sat in the bloom of his life, and should hold it beside a mirror in which he looks at his present countenance; and the other would be powerfully felt if he had such a genuine and detailed memoir as I have supposed. Might it not be worth while for a self-observant person, in early life to preserve, for the inspection of the old man, if he should live so long, such a mental likeness of the young one? If it be not drawn near the time, it can never be drawn with sufficient accuracy.

DR ANDREW THOMSON.

to Evidences of Christianity; five, Moral Philosophy; six, Commercial Discourses; seven, Astronomical DisDR ANDREW THOMSON (1779-1831), an active and courses; eight, nine, and ten, Congregational Serable minister of the Scottish church, was author of mons; eleven, Sermons on Public Occasions; twelve, various sermons and lectures, and editor of the Tracts and Essays; thirteen, Introductory Essays, Scottish Christian Instructor, a periodical which exer- originally prefixed to editions of Select Christian cised no small influence in Scotland on ecclesiastical Authors; fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen, Christian questions. Dr Thomson was successively minister and Economic Polity of a Nation, more especially of Sprouston, in the presbytery of Kelso, of the East with reference to its Large Towns; seventeen, On Church, Perth, and of St George's Church, Edin- Church and College Endowments; eighteen, On burgh. In the annual meetings of the general Church Extension; nineteen and twenty, Political assembly he displayed great ardour and eloquence as Economy; twenty-one, The Sufficiency of a Parochial a debater, and was the recognized leader of one of System without a Poor- Rate; twenty-two, three, the church parties. He waged a long and keen four, and five, Lectures on the Romans. In all Dr warfare with the British and Foreign Bible Society Chalmers's works there is great energy and earfor circulating the books of the Apocrypha along nestness, accompanied with a vast variety of illuswith the Bible, and his speeches on this subject, tration. His knowledge is extensive, including though exaggerated in tone and manner, produced a science no less than literature, the learning of the powerful effect. There was, in truth, always more philosopher with the fancy of the poet, and a famiof the debater than the divine in his public addresses; liar acquaintance with the habits, feelings, and daily and he was an unmerciful opponent in controversy. life of the Scottish poor and middle classes. The When the question of the abolition of colonial sla- ardour with which he pursues any favourite topic, very was agitated in Scotland, he took his stand on presenting it to the reader or hearer in every posthe expediency of immediate abolition, and by his sible point of view, and investing it with the charms public appearances on this subject, and the energy of a rich poetical imagination, is a peculiar feature of his eloquence, carried the feelings of his country-in his intellectual character, and one well calculated men completely along with him. The life of this to arrest attention.* It gives peculiar effect to his ardent, impetuous, and independent-minded man was brought suddenly and awfully to a close. In the prime of health and vigour he fell down dead at the threshold of his own door. The sermons of Dr Thomson scarcely support his high reputation as a church leader and debater. They are weighty and earnest, but without pathos or elegance of style.

DR THOMAS CHALMERS.

The most distinguished and able of living Scottish divines is THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D. and LL.D., one of the first Presbyterian ministers who obtained an honorary degree from the university of Cambridge,

Dr Thomas Chalmers.

and one of the few Scotsmen who have been elected a corresponding member of the Royal Institute of France. The collected works of Dr Chalmers fill twenty-five duodecimo volumes. Of these the two first are devoted to Natural Theology; three and four

* Robert Hall seems to have been struck with this peculiarity. In some Gleanings from Hall's Conversational Remarks, appended to Dr Gregory's Memoir, we find the following criticism, understood to refer to the Scottish divine:- Mr Hall

repeatedly referred to Dr, and always in terms of great

esteem as well as high admiration of his general character, exercising, however, his usual free and independent judgment. The following are some remarks on that extraordinary individual:-"Pray, sir, did you ever know any man who had that singular faculty of repetition possessed by Dr-? Why, sir, he often reiterates the same thing ten or twelve times in the course of a few pages. Even Burke himself had not so much of that peculiarity. His mind resembles that optical "You instrument lately invented; what do you call it ?"

mean, I suppose, the kaleidoscope." "Yes, sir, an idea thrown into his mind is just as if thrown into a kaleidoscope. Every turn presents the object in a new and beautiful form; but the object presented is still the same. ** His mind seems to move on hinges, not on wheels. There is incessant motion, but no progress. When he was at Leicester, he preached a most admirable sermon on the necessity of immediate repentance; but there were only two ideas in it, and on these his mind revolved as on a pivot." A writer in the London Magazine gives a graphic account of Dr Chalmers's appearances in London. When he visited London, the hold that he took on the minds of men was unprecedented. It was a time of strong political feeling; but even that was unheeded, and all parties thronged to hear the Scottish preacher. The very best judges were not prepared for the display that they heard. Canning and Wilberforce went together, and got into a pew near the door. The elder in attendance stood close by the pew. Chalmers began in his usual unpromising way, by stating a few nearly self-evident propositions neither in the choicest language nor in the most impressive voice." If this be all," said Canning to his companion, "it will never do." Chalmers went on-the shuffling of the congregation gradually subsided. He got into the mass of his subject; his weakness became strength, his hesitation was turned into energy; and, bringing the whole volume of his mind to bear upon it, he poured forth a torrent of the most close and conclusive argument, brilliant with all the exuberance of an imagination which ranged over all nature for illustrations, and yet managed and applied each of them with the same unerring dexterity, as if that single one had been the study of a whole life. "The tartan beats us," said Mr Canning; "we have no preaching like that in England." Chalmers, like the celebrated French zeal which become men who are ambassadors from Christ. divines (according to Goldsmith), assumed all that dignity and The English divines, like timorous envoys, seem more solicitous not to offend the court to which they are sent, than to drive home the interests of their employers. The style of Dr

pulpit ministrations; for by concentrating his attention on one or two points at a time, and pressing these home with almost unexampled zeal and animation, a distinct and vivid impression is conveyed to the mind, unbroken by any extraneous or discursive matter. His pictures have little or no background-the principal figure or conception fills the canvass. The style of Dr Chalmers is far from being correct or elegant-it is often turgid, loose, and declamatory, vehement beyond the bounds of good taste, and disfigured by a peculiar and by no means graceful phraseology. These blemishes are, however, more than redeemed by his piety and eloquence, the originality of many of his views, and the astonishing force and ardour of his mind. His Astronomical Discourses' contain passages of great sublimity and beauty, and even the most humble and prosaic subject, treated by him, becomes attractive and poetical. His triumphs are those of genius, aided by the deepest conviction of the importance of the truths he inculcates.

as before. In a word, though I might have made him a more upright and honourable man, I might have left him as destitute of the essence of religious principle as ever. But the interesting fact is, that during the whole of that period in which I made no attempt against the natural enmity of the mind to God, while I was inattentive to the way in which this enmity is dissolved, even by the free offer on the one hand, and the believing acceptance on the other, of the gospel salvation; while Christ, through whose blood the sinner, who by nature stands afar off, is brought near to the heavenly Lawgiver whom he has offended, was scarcely ever spoken of, or spoken of in such a way as stripped him of all the importance of his character and his offices, even at this time I certainly did press the reformations of honour, and truth, and integrity among my people; but I never once heard of any such reformations having been effected amongst them. If there was anything at all brought about in this way, it was more than ever I got any account of. I am not sensible that all the vehemence with which I Dr Chalmers is a native of Anstruther, in the urged the virtues and the proprieties of social life had county of Fife. A fugitive memoir states that he the weight of a feather on the moral habits of my was born about the year 1780, that he studied at St parishioners. And it was not till I got impressed by Andrews, and was soon a mathematician, a natural the utter alienation of the heart in all its desires and philosopher, and, though there was no regular pro- affections from God; it was not till reconciliation to fessor of that science at St Andrews, a chemist.' him became the distinct and the prominent object of After his admission to holy orders, he officiated for my ministerial exertions; it was not till I took the sometime as assistant to the minister of Wilton, Scriptural way of laying the method of reconciliation near Hawick. He afterwards obtained the church before them; it was not till the free offer of forgiveof Kilmany, in his native county, and here the actiness through the blood of Christ was urged upon their vity of his mind was strikingly displayed. In addi-, acceptance, and the Holy Spirit given through the tion to his parochial labours, he lectured in the channel of Christ's mediatorship to all who ask him, different towns on chemistry and other subjects; he was set before them as the unceasing object of their became an officer of a volunteer corps; and he wrote dependence and their prayers; it was not, in one a book on the resources of the country, besides word, till the contemplations of my people were turned pamphlets on some of the topics of the day; and of a soul providing for its interest with God and the when the Edinburgh Encyclopædia was projected, he was invited to be a contributor, and engaged to concerns of its eternity, that I ever heard of any furnish the article "Christianity," which he after-made the earnest and the zealous, but, I am afraid, those subordinate reformations which I aforetime wards completed with so much ability.* At Kil- at the same time the ultimate object of my earlier many Dr Chalmers seems to have received more ministrations. Ye servants, whose scrupulous fidelity serious and solemn impressions as to his clerical has now attracted the notice and drawn forth in my duties, for in an address to the inhabitants of the hearing a delightful testimony from your masters, parish, included in his tracts, there is the following what mischief you would have done had your zeal remarkable passage:for doctrines and sacraments been accompanied by the sloth and the remissness, and what, in the prevailing tone of moral relaxation, is counted the allowable purloining of your earlier days! But a sense of your heavenly Master's eye has brought another influence to bear upon you; and while you are thus striving to adorn the doctrine of God your Saviour in all things, you may, poor as you are, reclaim the great ones of the land to the acknowledgment of the faith. You have at least taught me that to preach Christ is the only effective way of preaching morality in all its branches; and out of your humble cottages have I gathered a lesson, which I pray God I may be enabled to carry with all its simplicity into a wider theatre, and to bring with all the power of its subduing efficacy upon the vices of a more crowded population.

[Inefficacy of mere Moral Preaching.]

And here I cannot but record the effect of an actual though undesigned experiment which I prosecuted for upwards of twelve years amongst you. For the greater part of that time I could expatiate on the meanness of dishonesty, on the villany of falsehood, on the despicable arts of calumny-in a word, upon all those deformities of character which awaken the natural indignation of the human heart against the pests and the disturbers of human society. Now, could I, upon the strength of these warm expostulations, have got the thief to give up his stealing, and the evil speaker his censoriousness, and the liar his deviations from truth, I should have felt all the repose of one who had gotten his ultimate object. It never occurred to me that all this might have been done, and yet every soul of every hearer have remained in full alienation from God; and that even could I have established in the bosom of one who stole such a principle of abhorrence at the meanness of dishonesty that he was prevailed upon to steal no more, he might still have retained a heart as completely unturned to God, and as totally unpossessed by a principle of love to Him,

Chalmers became the rage in Scotland among the young
preachers, but few could do more than copy his defects.
* London Magazine.

to these great and essential elements in the business

From Kilmany Dr Chalmers removed to the new church of St John's in Glasgow, where his labours were unceasing and meritorious. Here his principal sermons were delivered and published; and his fame as a preacher and author was diffused not only over Great Britain, but throughout all Europe and America. In 1823 he removed to St Andrews, as professor of moral philosophy in the United college; and in 1828 he was appointed professor of divinity in the university of Edinburgh. This appointment he relinquished in 1843, on his secession from the established church.