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annual pension of two hundred pounds. The latter part of his life was passed in infirm health, and he died on the twenty-seventh of December, 1800, in his eighty-third year.

Of all Dr. Blair's productions, his Rhetorical Lectures enjoy the most wide-spread reputation. Though somewhat hard and dry, in style and manner, these lectures still form a useful guide to the young student. The ar rangement might be improved; but the work itself contains abundance of examples in every department of literary composition, and has also detailed criticisms on numerous authors, both ancient and modern. His 'Sermons,' however, are the most valuable of his works. They are written with taste and elegance, and by inculcating Christian morality without any allusion to controversial topics, are suited to all classes of Christians. In profound thought, close reasoning, impassioned eloquence, and devotional ardor, they are, however, inferior to the posthumous sermons of Logan, the poet. In private life Dr. Blair was cheerful and polite, the friend of literature as well as of virtue.

The following extract is from his introductory lecture on Rhetoric, and is a fair specimen of his style :

THE CULTIVATION OF TASTE.

Such studies have this peculiar advantage, that they exercise our reason without fatiguing it. They lead to inquiries acute, but not painful; profound, but not dry or abstruse. They strew flowers in the path of science, and while they keep the mind bent in some degree and active, they relieve it at the same time from that more toilsome labour to which it must submit in the acquisition of necessary erudition or the investigation of abstract truths.

The cultivation of taste is further recommended by the happy effects which it naturally tends to produce on human life. The most busy man in the most active sphere can not be always occupied by business. Men of serious professions can not always be on the stretch of serious thought. Neither can the most gay and flourishing situations of fortune afford any man the power of filling all his hours with pleasure. Life must always languish in the hands of the idle. It will frequently languish even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit. How then shall these vacant spaces, those unemployed intervals, which more or less occur in the life of every one, be filled up? How can we contrive to dispose of them in any way that shall be more agreeable in itself, or more consonant to the dignity of the human mind, than in the entertainments of taste, and the study of polite literature? He who is so happy as to have acquired a relish for these, has always at hand an innocent and irreproachable amusement for his leisure hours, to save him from the danger of many a pernicious passion. He is not in hazard of being a burden to himself. He is not obliged to fly to low company, or to court the riot of loose pleasures, in order to cure the tediousness of existence.

Providence seems plainly to have pointed out this useful purpose to which the pleasures of taste may be applied, by interposing them in a middle station between the pleasures of sense and those of pure intellect. We were not designed to grovel always among objects so low as the former; nor are we capable of dwelling constantly in so high a region as the latter. The pleasures of taste refresh the mind after the toils of the intellect and the labours of abstract study; and they gradually raise it above the attachments of sense, and prepare it for the enjoyments of virtue.

So consonant is this to experience, that, in the education of youth, no object has in every age appeared more important to wise men than to tincture them early with a relish for the entertainments of taste. The transition is commonly made with ease from these to discharge of the higher and more important duties of life. Good hopes may be entertained of those whose minds have this liberal and elegant turn. It is favourable to many virtues. Whereas to be entirely devoid of relish for eloquence, poetry, or any of the fine arts, is justly construed to be an unpromising symptom of youth: and raises suspicions of their being prone to low gratifications, or destined to drudge in the more vulgar and illiberal pursuits of life.

There are indeed few good dispositions of any kind with which the improvement of taste is not more or less connected. A cultivated taste increases sensibility to all the tender and humane passions, by giving them frequent exercise; while it tends to weaken the most violent and fierce emotions.

Ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes

Emollit mores, nec sinit esse feros.*

The elevated sentiments and high examples which poetry, eloquence, and history are often bringing under our view, naturally tend to nourish in our minds public spirit, the love of glory, contempt of external fortune, and the admiration of what is truly illustrious and great.

I will not go so far as to say that the improvement of taste and virtue is the same, or that they may always be expected to coexist in an equal degree. More powerful correctives than taste can apply, are necessary for reforming the corrupt propensities which too frequently prevail among mankind. Elegant speculations are sometimes found to float on the surface of the mind, while bad passions the interior regions of the heart. At the same time, this can not but be admitted, that the exercise of taste is, in its native tendency, moral and purifying. From reading the most admired productions of genius, whether in poetry or prose, almost every one rises with some good impressions left on his mind; and though these may not always be durable, they are at least to be ranked among the means of disposing the heart to virtue. One thing is certain, that without possessing the virtuous affections in a strong degree, no man can attain eminence in the sublime parts of eloquence. He must feel what a good man feels, if he expects greatly to move or to interest mankind. They are the ardent sentiments of honour, virtue, magnanimity, and public spirit, that only can kindle that fire of genius, and call up into the mind those high ideas, which attract the admiration of ages; and if this spirit be necessary to produce the most distinguished efforts of eloquence, it must be necessary also to our relishing them with proper taste and feeling.

GEORGE CAMPBELL, the greatest name, with the single exception of Dr. Robertson, the historian, that the Scottish church can number amongst its clergy, was born at Aberdeen, in 1719. He was educated in the university of his native city, and afterwards became professor of divinity, and then principal of Marischal College, connected with the same institution. In the midst of the laborious duties which his professional position imposed upon him, he passed a long and useful life, and died, in 1796, deeply regretted by all who personally knew him.

Dr. Campbell, as a theologian and critic, possessed a vigor of intellect and

*These polished arts have humanized mankind,

Softened the rude, and calmed the boisterous mind.

a variety of learning, rarely found combined in the same individual. His Dissertation on Miracles, written in reply to Hume, is so conclusive and masterly a piece of reasoning, that even Hume himself admitted the 'inge nuity' of the work, and the 'great learning' of the author. The well-known hypothesis of Hume is, that 'no testimony for any kind of miracle can ever amount to a probability, much less to proof.' To this Dr. Campbell opposed the argument that 'testimony has a natural and original influence on belief, antecedent to experience;' in illustration of which, he remarked, 'that the earliest assent which is given to testimony by children, and which is previous to all experience, is in fact the most unlimited.' His answer is divided into two parts: first, that miracles are capable of proof from testimony, and religious miracles not less than others; and secondly, that the miracles on which the belief of Christianity is founded, are sufficiently attested. Campbell had no fear for the result of such discussions, and hence he proceeds in the following strain:

I do not hesitate to affirm that our religion has been indebted to the attempts, though not to the intentions, of its bitterest enemies. They have tried its strength, indeed, and by trying, they have displayed its strength; and that in so clear a light as we could never have hoped, without such a trial, to have viewed it in. Let them, therefore, write; let them argue, and when arguments fail, even let them cavil against religion as much as they please; I should be heartily sorry that ever in this island, the asylum of liberty, where the spirit of Christianity is better understood (however defective the inhabitants are in the observance of its precepts) than in any other part of the Christian world; I should, I say, be sorry that in this island so great a disservice were done to religion as to check its adversaries in any way than by returning a candid answer to their objections. I must at the same time acknowledge, that I am both ashamed and grieved when I observe my friends of religion betray so great a diffidence in the goodness of their cause (for to this diffidence alone can it be imputed), as to show an inclination for recurring to more forcible methods. The assaults of infidels, I may venture to prophesy, will never overturn our religion. They will prove not more hurtful to the Christian system, if it be allowed to compare small things with the greatest, than the boisterous winds are said to prove to the sturdy oak. They shake it impetuously for a time, and loudly threaten its subversion; whilst, in effect, they only serve to make it strike its roots the deeper, and stand the firmer ever after.

In 1776, Dr. Campbell published his Philosophy of Rhetoric, which is, perhaps, the best work on that subject that has appeared since the days of Aristotle. Most of the other treatises of this kind, are little less than compilations; but Campbell brought to the subject a high degree of philosophical acumen and learned research. Its utility is also equal to its depth and originality: the philosopher finds in it exercise for his ingenuity, and the student may safely consult it for its practical suggestions and illustrations. The work, however, is too philosophical for a text book, and hence its want of general popularity. Campbell's other works are, a Translation of the Four Gospels, worthy of his talents, some sermons preached on public occasions, and a series of Lectures on Ecclesiastical His tory, which were not published till after his death.

A manly and independent spirit, and a firm reliance on the ultimate triumph of truth, characterized Dr. Campbell's entire career; and hence he opposed the penal laws against the Catholics, and, in 1779, when the country was agitated with that intolerant zeal against Popery, which, in the fol lowing year, burst out in riots in London, he issued an Address to the People of Scotland, remarkable for its cogency of argument, and its just and enlightened sentiments. For this service to true religion and toleration, the mob of Aberdeen broke the author's windows and nicknamed him ‘Pope Campbell.' In 1795, when far advanced in life, Dr. Campbell received a pension of three hundred pounds from the crown, on which he resigned his professorship, and his situation as principal of Marischal College. He enjoyed this well-earned reward, however, only one year, dying, as we have already observed, in the year that followed.

RICHARD HURD, a clergyman of taste and learning, was born in 1720, and educated at the university of Cambridge. He early became distinguished for his literary attainments, and having entered the church, advanced rapidly through its various preferments until he reached the bishopric of Worcester, in the enjoyment of which he died, in 1808, in his eighty-ninth year.

Dr. Hurd was a man of modesty, and true piety; and though the personal friend and disciple of Bishop Warburton, he was of an entirely different character. He was so far from being influenced by motives of ambition in the attainment of ecclesiastical dignities, that he even declined the archiepiscopal see of Canterbury, when tendered to him by the king. His principal work is an Introduction to the Study of the Prophecies, being the substance of twelve discourses delivered at Cambridge. Bishop Hurd was the author also of a commentary on Horace, and the editor of the works of Cowley.

RICHARD PRICE, an able dissenting minister, was born in Glamorganshire, in 1723. He was educated for the clerical office among the dissenters, and began early to preach, first at Newington, in Middlesex, but afterwards settled at Hackney. His eminent talents attracting much attention, he was elected, in 1764, a member of the royal society, and soon after obtained the degree of doctor of divinity from a Scottish university, and that of doctor of laws from Yale College, in Connecticut. He died on the nineteenth of March, 1791, just before he had attained the sixty-eighth year of his age.

Dr. Price published, in 1758, A Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals, which attracted attention as an attempt to revive the intellectual theory of moral obligation, which seemed to have fallen under the attacks of Butler, Hutcheson, and Hume.' Price, after Cudworth, supports the doctrine, that moral distinctions being perceived by reason, or the understanding, are equally immutable with all other kinds of truth. On the other side, it is argued that reason is but a principle of our mental frame, like the principle which is the source of moral emotion, and has not

peculiar claim to remain unaltered in the supposed general alteration of our mental constitution. Soon after the appearance of his important work on 'Morals,' the author published three other useful treatises on the following subjects: Providence and Prayer, The Evidences of a Future State, and The Importance of Christianity.

Though a devoted and successful preacher, Dr. Price found time to give much attention to the political questions of the day; and was an able writer on finance, and political economy. In 1772, he published an Appeal to the Public on the National Debt, and in 1776, during the party disputes which attended the beginning of the American war, appeared his famous Observations on the Nature of Civil Government. As preacher at the meetinghouse in the Old Jewry, he delivered, in 1789, a discourse On the Love of our Country, in which he enlarged on the French Revolution with party prejudices, and with democratic zeal, and asserted the right of the people to cancel their obligations of obedience to their rulers for misconduct. These allusions to the fate of the French monarch were attacked by Burke, in his 'Reflections on the French Revolution' with great severity. It must, however, be confessed, that, as a political writer, Price carried his ideas of equality and liberty much farther than the vices and passions of men will, with safety, allow.

ADAM SMITH, born at Kirkaldy, in Fifeshire, on the fifth of June, 1723, succeeded Dr. Hutcheson, after an interval of a few years, as professor of moral philosophy in the university of Glasgow; and not only inherited his love of metaphysics, but adopted some of his theories, which he blended with his own peculiar views. His father held the situation of comptroller of the customs, but died before the birth of his son. After receiving instruction at Kirkaldy he was sent to Glasgow university, where he distinguished himself by his acquirements, and obtained a nomination to Baliol College, Oxford, at which he continued to prosecute his studies with great ardor for seven years. Having returned to Scotland, he gave, in 1751, a course of lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, which recommended him to the vacant chair of professor of logic in Glasgow, and this situation he, the next year, exchanged for the more congenial one of moral science.

In 1759, Dr. Smith published his Theory of Moral Sentiments, and in 1764, he was prevailed upon to vacate the professor's chair, and accompany the young Duke of Buccleuch, as travelling tutor, on the continent. They were absent two years, during which they visited many parts of France and Italy, and on Smith's return to Scotland he retired to his ancestral house at Kirkaldy, and there pursued a severe system of study, which resulted in the publication, in 1776, of his great work on political economy, entitled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Two years after his 'Inquiry' appeared, he was made one of the commissioners of customs, and his latter days were spent in ease and opulence. He died in July, 1790, and after his death some essays and other miscellanies that

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