four years younger than himself. The Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) did not appear for ten years, but doubtless profited by the delay. Smith was rewarded for his services by a commissionership in the Scottish Custom-House, which he held from 1777 till his death in 1790.

The Wealth of Nations is not a great work of style. Smith wrote in a homely and colloquial manner, making his points in forcible and never elegant phrases. But this book was the first

The "Wealth of Nations (1776):

its economic importance.

systematic treatise produced in England on a most important subject, and, although not free from erroneous deductions, was the most valuable contribution ever made to a science, then almost in its infancy, but destined in the future to exercise an immense and beneficial influence on legislation and commerce. Its success is due, in a great measure, to Smith's clear logic and his abundance of popular illustration. His fundamental principles are briefly these: that gold and silver are by no means wealth either to individuals or communities, being only symbols and conventional representations of value; that labour is the true source of riches; and that any state interference with the distribution or production of commodities can only aggravate the evils it is intended to cure. He was the first to show, by apt and picturesque illustration, the wonderful results of the division of labour, both as regards the quantity and quality of the product. His moral and metaphysical theories have perished with the temporary phase of thought that gave them birth, but his Wealth of Nations will always remain the foundation and starting-point of the science of which its author was the pioneer.

BLACKSTONE

$ 17. The Adam Smith of the law is SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, who produced one of the most exhaustive and systematic of legal text-books. Like Johnson, he was a nursling SIR WILLIAM of Pembroke College, Oxford, and spent a great (1723-1780). part of his life as a don. In his youth he had a strong inclination for poetry; but, in 1741, he entered the Middle Temple and was called to the bar in 1746. While a member of the genial society of All Souls, where he introduced the custom of laying down wine for consumption in the college instead of drinking any haphazard vintage at the nearest inn, he became the first Vinerian Professor of Law; and his professorial lectures were the nucleus of his Commen taries on the Laws of England. The first volume of these was published in 1765, when he was Principal of New Inn Hall. In 1766 he resigned his University appointments, and left Oxford for London. The publication of the Commentaries ceased in 1769, Blackstone himself dying eleven years later. He sat in Parliament as member for the Wiltshire boroughs of Hindon and Westbury; and in 1770 he was appointed a Justice of the Common Pleas. His colossal work

His "Commentaries."

was the first instance of a systematic manual which combined and popularised all the elementary and historical knowledge requisite for the study; and this book, which has the merit of being exceedingly interesting, still retains its importance as a scientific epitome of English law. Numerous editions have been published, bringing up the work to the existing state of legal knowledge, and showing such modifications as have been made from time to time in our legislation. The great questions of right and property which lie at the root of all social organisations are lucidly treated, and the mingled web of Teutonic, Feudal, Parliamentary, and Ecclesiastical legislation is carefully unravelled and distinctly disposed.

§ 18. In the theological philosophy of the eighteenth century the greatest name is that of JOSEPH BUTLER, the son of a linendraper at Wantage. His father, a Presbyterian, sent him to a school at Tewkesbury, which was also a JOSEPH BUTLER seminary for dissenting ministers. While he was (1692-1752). here, engaged in finishing his studies, he wrote his

letters to Dr. Samuel Clarke-a precocious exhibition of metaphysical talent. In 1714 he abandoned the idea of the Presbyterian ministry, joined the Church of England, and went to Oriel College, Oxford, where he seems to have found the teaching unprofitable. He formed, however, a fortunate friendship with Edward Talbot, son of the Bishop of Salisbury, which led to future preferment. He took Holy Orders in 1718; in 1719, chiefly on the recommendation of Dr. Clarke, he was appointed Preacher at the Rolls Chapel; and in 1721 he received a prebendal stall at Salisbury. In 1721, when his friend Talbot's father was translated from Salisbury to Durham, he also became rector of Haughton-le-Skerne, and, in 1725, was presented to the "golden rectory" of Stanhope, in the moorland country at the head of the Wear. Here he stayed for eight years, publishing, in 1726, his Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel. In 1733 he was called to London to be chaplain to Lord Chancellor Talbot, his friend's eldest brother. În 1736 he was appointed a clerk of the closet to Queen Caroline and a prebendary of Rochester. The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature (1736) led, in 1738, to the bishopric of Bristol, with which, after 1740, he held the deanery of St. Paul's. On the death of Archbishop Potter in 1747 he refused the offer of the see of Canterbury, but accepted the mitre of Durham in 1750. He lived for only two years longer; he died at Bath in 1752, and is buried in Bristol Cathedral. The great monument of this excellent, if somewhat frigid, prelate's life is, of course, The Analogy of Religion, in which he ex- Butler's "Analogy" amines the resemblance between the nature and (1736). attributes of God, as proved by arguments drawn from the works of nature, and shows that natural religion is in no way incompatible with the notions conveyed to us by revela

tion. Butler's reasoning has filled the greatest minds with admiration, and the study of his work has contributed to form some of the most accomplished dialecticians; but the closeness and coherence of his logic, which compels an unusual degree of attention and a rare faculty of following his analysis, places the Analogy out of the reach of ordinary readers. Added to this, his style, never very light-footed or careful of construction, induces a further difficulty. His moral theory is founded mainly upon the existence in every mind of a guiding and testing principle of conscience, furnishing an infallible and supreme criterion of the goodness or wickedness of our actions. Six years younger than Butler was WILLIAM WARBURTON, whose life extended over three-quarters of the eighteenth

WILLIAM WARBURTON (1698-1779).

His "Divine

"

century. He was a Nottinghamshire man, born at Newark, educated at Newark and Oakham, and destined for the law. His own inclination led him to take Holy Orders, and he was for many years rector of Brant Broughton, near his native place. He pushed himself into the most prominent controversial place of his day with an immense amount of truculent energy. The Alliance between Church and State (1736) was his first book, and was succeeded by the famous Divine Legation of Moses DemonLegation strated, which was published in two divisions, the of Moses first in 1738, the second in 1741. This vast work, (1738-41). full of digressions into all kinds of subjects, was intended as an answer to the deistical contention that the Mosaic dispensation included no belief in a future life; but the argument on which Warburton founded his structure was more ingenious than convincing, and the whole book was too long. Of the style, the best that can be said is that it is strong and sometimes pointed. Warburton had an acute wit and could not fail to use it to advantage, but there is no denying that he wrote heavily and had as ponderous a vocabulary as any writer of his century. He was eminently a disputant, a quarrelsome champion of his own opinions. When he rested from his controversies with the deists it was only to attack some other obnoxious philosopher or fellow-clergyman. The rest of his works form a voluminous catalogue, and to-day little but the Divine Legation is remembered of his writing. This was the cause of his preferment, which culminated, in 1759, in his translation from the deanery of Bristol to the see of Gloucester. His importance in the literary life of his day, although he bellowed like a bull for pre-eminence and deafened many of his contemporaries into acquiescence, is now limited to his friendship

His intimacy with Pope.

with Pope. He had defended the theological soundness of the Essay on Man in 1738 and 1739, in answer to the attack of a Swiss pastor named Crousaz; in consequence, Pope became his friend, and made him his literary executor. In 1747, while preacher at Lincoln's Inn, Warburton took upon himself the task, for

which he had no qualification, of revising Pope's edition of Shakespeare, and left confusion worse confounded. He married, in 1745, Miss Gertrude Tucker, a niece of the famous Ralph Allen of Prior Park.

PALEY

In the second half of the century the most distinguished theologian was WILLIAM PALEY, who may be described as a more popular Butler. He was born at Peterborough, educated at Giggleswick, where his father was head WILLIAM master from 1745 to 1799, and, after wasting the first (1743-1805). part of his time at Cambridge, turned over a new leaf, became senior wrangler in 1763, and fellow of Christ's in 1766. Later on Edmund Law, Bishop of Carlisle, the father of his closest friend, gave him preferment in his diocese. It was as archdeacon of Carlisle, between 1782 and 1795, that he published the Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), the Hora Paulina (1790), and the View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794). The last ten years of his life were spent as rector of Bishop-Wearmouth, where, in 1802, he published the Treatise on Natural Theology. He also held the sub-deanery of Lincoln during the same period. His works cover an immense field of learning; but, on the whole, it may be said that Paley adapted the works of previous writers for popular use, and that his only claim to originality is the Hore Paulina, in which he stated the case for the genuineness of St. Paul's Epistles by establishing undesigned coincidences between them and the Acts of the Apostles. In the Moral Philosophy he investigated the principles of human action in the individual and community, and in the Evidences of Christianity, so familiar to the Cambridge undergraduate, he gave a rather late answer to Hume's attack on miraclesHume had died eighteen years before-defending the Resurrection and the Christian miracles very clearly and ingeniously. For the Natural Theology, in which he applied the facts of natural phenomena to the proof of God's existence, omnipotence, and benevolence, he studied anatomy and physiology, and, in the result, which was the fruit of a painful old age, showed himself an expert man of science. As a Christian apologist Paley deserves all his subsequent reputation. In style, he is a lucid writer of very correct English, free from heaviness, but suffering somewhat from its passionless uniformity.

$ 19. GILBERT WHITE'S Ñatural History of Selborne stands apart from the philosophy and controversy of the Johnsonian age. This Izaak Walton of the eighteenth century was born, lived, and died at the Hampshire village GILBERT of Selborne. He went to school under the elder (1720-1793). Thomas Warton at Basingstoke; he was a fellow

WHITE

of Oriel from 1744 to his death; he took Holy Orders and held a sinecure living in Northamptonshire; and there is a legend that he fell in love with the future Mrs. Chapone, but was refused. Otherwise he lived quietly in his native village,

"Natural

(1789).

observing its birds and flowers with a wonderful affection, and scandalising his contemporaries by the easy way in which he kept his fellowship and his living in addition to his History of ample patrimony. The Natural History of Selborne Selborne" (1789) consists of a series of letters to his friends, Thomas Pennant and the Hon. Daines Barrington, in which he has registered all his observations of animal and vegetable life, of scenery and the weather, and a thousand details invisible to previous naturalists. His interest and enthusiasm in his pursuits captivate the dullest reader, and the charming book has made many naturalists. White's gentle and playful humour; his pleasant touches of credulity, as, for example, his obstinate desire to find proofs that swallows hibernate under water; the association of his intense personality with the beautiful scenes he loved so well-every feature of his character, in short, heightens the charm and fascination of his book. He originated a new departure in literature. The grave natural philosophy of Ray and Willoughby gave place to a no less scientific and more practical method of study.

A.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

THEOLOGIANS.

From what has been said already of the theology of this period, it will be clear that the devotional and practical spirit had passed, with William Law, out of English religious literature. The constant arguments which perplexed the not otherwise pious eighteenth century turned its theologians into metaphysicians and controversialists. Mysticism died out, and was succeeded by a matter-of-fact, eminently prosaic treatment of religion. When the philosophers turned to writing commentaries, they took their stand on the ground of common-sense and utility; they wrote and preached heavily and with no lack of polysyllables, but with no attempt at ecstatic periods or lyric perorations. During the whole of the eighteenth century theological style had undergone a careful pruning, and every ten years left it barer than it was before. Butler is an unique exception; but his crowded manner is no model. Paley, who wrote more elegantly, is, at the

same time, the most colourless of all writers; in his simple, unadorned sentences we are as far removed as

possible from the brilliant rhetoric of Taylor and the great divines. At the end of the century the spirit of mysticism revived with the Evangelical movement and prepared the way for the growth of a new theology on the old lines. In the meantime the theology of the period with which we are dealing is rather dull; its general latitudinarianism, its argumentative handling of mysteries, its obvious lack of sprituality, and its monotonous slavery to correctness of diction, give it a superficial formality which is always lifeless; while its tendency to deal with religion on the side of current controversy renders its value, in many cases, ephemeral. Butler is an Anglican Father; Horsley had a great reputation in his own time; but the rest cannot command our enthusiasm on any other ground than their devotion to a precise logic.

HUGH BLAIR (1718-1800) was a Presbyterian minister in Edinburgh, whose vapid and rhetorical sermons