and alarming expressions; Mr. Bentham loves division and subdivision - and he loves method itself, more than its consequences. Those only, therefore, who know his originality, his knowledge, his vigor, and his boldness, will recur to the works themselves. The great mass of readers will not purchase improvement at so dear a rate, but will choose rather to become acquainted with Mr. Bentham through the Reviews-after that eminent philosopher has been washed, trimmed, shorn, and forced into cleanli. ness."

Of the Church of Englandism, etc., 1818, the London Quarterly Review says: "It is fortunate that this book (as we have said) is not attractive; it is too obscure to be generally understood, and too ridiculous to be admired; and however mischievous the intention, the tendency will be very innoxious. Of its worst part, the indecent levity with which all that is sacred is treated in it, we have not spoken. Those offences must be answered for at a higher tribunal; but we would seriously recommend it to the author to consider whether the decline of life cannot be better spent than in captiously cavilling at the doctrines of religion, and in profane ridicule of its most holy rites."

Malthus.

THOMAS ROBERT MALTHUS, 1766-1834, was the author of a large number of works on Political Economy.

Malthus was a native of Surrey; he was educated at Cambridge, and took orders in the Church of England; from 1805 until his death, he was Professor of Modern History and Political Economy in Haileybury College.

The principal works of Malthus are: An Essay on the Principle of Population, etc.; An Inquiry into the Nature and Progress of Rent; and Principles of Political Economy. His Essay on Population excited great attention when it first appeared; and the principles which it lays down have not ceased to engage the attention of philosophers ever since. He controverts the theory of Godwin and others upon the progress and perfectibility of human nature, and endeavors to establish, as a fundamental principle, that population tends to increase in geometrical ratio, while the supply of food and other necessaries can be increased only in arithmetical. The corollary is, of course, that at some future day the supply of food will not suffice the population. This theory has lately received fresh impulse by its relation to the so-called struggle for existence underlying Darwin's Origin of Species.

Ricardo.

DAVID RICARDO, 1772-1823, is another prominent writer on Political Economy.

Ricardo accumulated a large fortune in the stock-brokerage business, and was a Member of Parliament for the four years preceding his death. Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1817, belongs to the same class with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Malthus on Population, and Mill's Principles, leading works on the subject. Several of the principles laid down by Ricardo have been controverted or shown to be erroneous, but the work still retains its value as an able treatise.

Besides the Principles, Ricardo was the author of several minor works and pamphlets, prominent among which are the pamphlet on The High Price of Bullion a Proof of the Depreciation of Bank Notes, and a Reply to Bosanquet's Observations on the Report of the Bullion Committee. This Report, it will be remembered, was the celebrated one in which Francis Horner took so distinguished a part. Ricardo's Tract

on Protection to Agriculture has been pronounced his best by McCulloch. His chief error, as a theorizer, seems to have been his view of rent, which he assumes to be the value of the difference between the best and the worst lands in cultivation.

JOHANN GASPAR SPURZHEIM, 1776-1832, acquired great notoriety by his writings on Phrenology.

Spurzheim was a native of what is now Rhenish Prussia. While studying medicine in Vienna, Spurzheim became acquainted with Gall, then professor. The two were thenceforth for many years intimately associated in investigating and lecturing upon the functions of the brain. In 1813 they parted company. From that time until his death in 1832, Spurzheim lived chiefly in England, lecturing and writing. He also visited the United States.

Spurzheim's claims to distinction as a physiologist are unmistakable. He is generally regarded as the discoverer of the fibrous structure of the brain. Unfortunately, he was led away by phrenological speculations. Many of his works were published in French. Of those published in English the best known are: The Physiological System of Drs. Gall and Spurzheim, a treatise on Insanity, Phrenology, Anatomy of the Brain, etc.

JOHN PLAYFAIR, 1748-1819, was one of the scientific writers of the period.

Playfair was a native of Scotland. He studied at St. Andrew's; was at one time a minister in the Church of Scotland. and afterwards Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. To young students, Playfair is principally known by his edition of Euclid. As a man of science he is known by numerous contributions to the transactions of the Edinburgh Royal Society and to the Edinburgh Review. Among such contributions are the review of La Place's Mecanique Celeste, Remarks on the Astronomy of the Brahmins, and on Physical Astronomy (in the Encyclopædia Britannica). A celebrated dissertation, left unfinished, and published in the supplement to the Encyclopædia, is on a General View of the Progress of Mathematical and Physical Science since the Revival of Letters. Professor Playfair was a clear thinker and a clear writer, and in personal manners appears to have been extremely affable and popular.

Sir Humphry Davy.

SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, 1778-1829, is considered the greatest of English chemists and discoverers.

Davy was born in Cornwall. He began as apprentice to an apothecary, and at the age of forty-two was President of the Royal Society, and the first man in the world in his own department of research. His discoveries, besides advancing theoretical science, led directly to many practical results of the greatest importance in mechanics and the useful arts.

His works, which have been published in 9 vols., 8vo, are for the most part purely scientific. He occasionally, however, enlivened his leisure hours, or usefully occupied those in which his strength was not sufficient for severe studies, with works of a lighter kind, sufficient to show that he might have made himself a great man in letters if he had not chosen rather to be supreme in science. "Had not Davy been the first chemist,

he probably would have been the first poet of his age."-Coleridge. Among his lighter works are: Consolations in Travel, or the Last Days of a Philosopher; and Salmonia, or Fly Fishing,-the last named being written when the author was unable through sickness to engage in his customary scientific pursuits.

JAMES WATT, 1736-1819, strictly speaking, cannot be classed among the prominent British authors. His printed works are few, and not very important. His name will rather be handed down to all future generations by reason of his works as an inventor.

By his construction of the first practical steam-engine, and his many subsequent improvements, Watt did more to develop the industrial resources of his country than any one other man. He found England a comparatively weak and poor country, and he died leaving it the richest and most influential in the world. It is more than probable that England, but for Watt's steam-engine, would not have been able to contend successfully single-handed against Napoleon.

Watt was a man not merely of great ingenuity in the construction of machinery, but of sound understanding and extensive reading. By his industry he repaired the defects of his early education, and imbued himself thoroughly with the spirit of philosophic inquiry. The only publication by him that is of general interest is his paper on the Constituent Parts of Water, published in the Philosophical Transactions, 1784. In this paper he took the first step beyond Dr. Priestley in determining the composition of water.

The life of Watt by Muirhead contains extracts from his correspondence which throw full light upon the growth of the invention of the steam-engine and the history of Watt's successive patents. This life presents the interesting record of a clearheaded, persevering man who wrought silently and slowly but surely the greatest revolution in modern industrial life.

"Those who consider James Watt only as a great practical mechanic, form a very erroneous idea of his character. He was equally distinguished as a natural philosopher and a chemist, and his inventions demonstrate his profound knowledge of these sciences, and that peculiar characteristic, the union of them for practical application."-Sir Humphry Davy.

SIR CHARLES WILKINS, 1740-1836, is associated in fame with Sir William Jones, mentioned in a preceding chapter. These two eminent Englishmen were the main founders of the Oriental Society at Calcutta, and the first to introduce the claims of Sanscrit to the notice of European scholars.

Wilkins was a native of Somersetshire. In 1770 he emigrated to India, and was appointed Writer in the Bengal establishment. In 1786 he returned to England, became Librarian of the Fast India Company, and Examiner for the Oriental Department at Haileybury and Addiscombe.

Wilkins's works are numerous and valuable. The most important are his translation of the Bhagarat Gîta (the dialogues between Krishna and Arjuna), of the Hitopadesa (Sanscrit Fables), the episode of Dushvanti and Sankuntála (from the Mahâbharata), a Grammar of Sanscrit, and the Radicals of the Sanscrit language. He was also a liberal contributor to the famous Asiatic Researches, and had begun a transla

tion of the Institutes of Menu, but abandoned it on hearing that Sir William Jones had already undertaken the same.

Since the days of Wilkins and Jones, Sanscrit studies have made great progress, thanks to the labors of Bopp, Lassen, Weber, Benfey, Roth, Whitney, and others; but all these and their successors will continue to regard Jones and Wilkins as the parents not only of Sanscrit, but of comparative philology.

WILLIAM MARSDEN, D. C. L., 1754-1836, the eminent oriental scholar, was a native of Dublin. He entered the service of the East India Company in 1771, and spent the eight following years in Sumatra. While there he applied himself with great diligence to the study of the Malay. On his return to England, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was for some years Chief Secretary to the Board of Admiralty. He published several important works, the fruits of his oriental studies: The History of the Island of Sumatra: Dictionary of the Malay Language; Grammar of the Malay Language; Marco Polo's Travels in the Thirteenth Century, etc.

ROBERT MORRISON, 1782-1831, the first Protestant missionary to China, did signal service to letters as well as to Christianity, by his life-long devotion to the missionary cause. Besides his translation of the Bible into Chinese, and his Dictionary and Grammar of the Chinese Language, he published Horæ Sinicæ, or Translations from the Popular Literature of the Chinese; Dialogues translated from the Chinese into English; and A View of China for Philological Purposes.

V. RELIGIOUS AND THEOLOGICAL WRITERS.

Scott the Commentator.

Thomas Scott, D. D., 1747-1821, was the author of a Commentary on the Bible which has been more read than any other like work in the English language.

Dr. Scott, according to his own statements, entered the ministry with mere worldly views, and without having experienced a change of heart. After he had been preaching for some time, he was converted, and he became ever after an earnest advocate of what are known as evangelical views.

His first work was The Force of Truth, in which he describes his own religious experience. During the course of his long ministry, he wrote many other books and pamphlets on religious and theological subjects. But the main work of his life was the preparation of his Commentary on the Bible, which first appeared in 1792. It was usually printed in 6 vols., 4to.

This great work was entirely his own composition, and was characterized by a sound sense and a general sobriety of judgment and clearness of statement which made it an almost universal favorite. No Commentary on the Scriptures probably has ever been read half so much as Scott's. It is wanting in critical scholarship, and it skips the hard places, but it gives a clear, bold outline of the general scope of each passage. It is now practically superseded by works of a more critical

character.

Robert Hall.

Robert Hall, 1764-1831, was, by unanimous consent, the greatest pulpit orator of his day, excepting possibly Dr. Chalmers.

Robert Hall was one of the few who have shown great precocity of talent and yet have risen to eminence in after life. "Before he was nine years of age he had perused and reperused, with intense interest, Edwards on the Affections and on the Will, and about the same time had read, with a like interest, Butler's Analogy."- Olinthus Gregory. He was born in Arnsby, Leicestershire, the son of a Baptist minister, and was educated, first at the Academy at Northampton under John Ryland, and afterwards at the Baptist College at Bristol. He was set apart as a preacher at the age of sixteen, and began actually to preach at that early age.

He went afterwards to King's College, Aberdeen, to continue his studies for three years more, and while there he had the companionship of Mr., afterwards Sir James, Mackintosh. The two formed an intimate friendship, which continued through life. "They read together; they sat together, if possible, at lecture; they walked together. In their joint studies they read much of Xenophon and Herodotus, and more of Plato; and so well was all this known, exciting admiration in some, in'others envy, that it was not unusual, as they went along, for their class-fellows to point at them and say, 'There go Plato and Herodotus.' There was scarcely an important position in Berkeley's Minute Philosopher, in Butler's Analogy, or in Edwards on the Will, over which they had not debated with the utmost intensity."

Mr. Hall was settled as assistant pastor in the church at Broadmead, Bristol, when nineteen years old, and remained there eight years. In 1791, at the age of twenty-seven, he took charge of the Baptist congregation at Cambridge, where he remained for fifteen years. In consequence of excessive mental application, he suffered an attack of insanity, which lasted from 1804 to 1806. On recovery, he was obliged to abstain from pulpit labor for two years. In 1808 he resumed pastoral labor, in a comparatively retired church in Leicester, where he remained about eighteen years. In 1826 he returned to the scene of his first labors, at Bristol, and continued at that post until his death.

The accounts given of the effects of his preaching partake of the marvellous.

"From the commencement of his discourse an almost breathless silence prevailed, deeply impressive and solemnizing from its singular intenseness. Not a sound was heard but that of the preacher's voice-scarcely an eye but was fixed upon him — not a countenance that he did not watch and read, and interpret as he surveyed them again and again with his rapid, ever-excursive glance. As he advanced and