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"No motive could be offered to the human mind more powerful than this last, and it is wholly Christian. It is equally calculated to silence the cavils of the captious sceptic, to work conviction on the mind of the man of thought and reflection, and to rouse the affections of the man of sensibility. Moreover, Christian motives make the unchangeable Deity the primary object of our attention, even when that Duty is directed to variable man. Nothing can tend more to our being steadfast and immoveable in our duty, in spite of human folly and ingratitude. And if you say, that this the nature of all religious motives, we need only observe in reply, that Christianity has greatly improved religion, that it has greatly strengthened our hopes of future happiness, by bringing life and immortality to light, and that, inasmuch as it has made such improvements, it has added to our motives for practising the Duty of forgiveness considered as a religious Duty.” ́ P. 211.

Our readers will now be enabled to form a tolerable estimate of the system pursued in the volume before us. It is the design of our author to establish this position; that all our passions, even those generally considered malevolent, are implanted in our breasts by a wise and a good Creator, to answer the best purposes, and to serve the most beneficial ends. It has pleased the Almighty to place his creatures here in a state of trial; to constitute the very notion of which, the existence and the prevalence of evil must be supposed. Now whatever averts evil in any particular state of things, is a good to that state; and though that which averts evil be itself an evil, yet if it averts a greater evil, it may still be considered as a good. Now to this system no objection can be raised from the notion that we encourage the practice of "doing evil that good may come," as this can only arise from the abuse of it. Anger, if duly applied, is productive only of good, and he that is thus angry does no evil, to produce this good. Yet anger is of itself an evil to its possessor, it is an evil in itself, though not in its use: like a poison, if administered in due proportions and at proper times, it is of eminent service, though even thus it is nauseous to the faste, and disagreeable to him who is driven to its use. The rock upon which moral philosophers have split in their theories of the passions, is the fancied perfection of man; which but ill accords with the existence much less with the necessity of those passions, which so easily and so generally degenerate into malevolence. Revelation declares him in a state of imperfection, not only from the contagion of example, but from a natural tendency to evil; those passions therefore are given him, which though in themselves evil, are if administered with caution, productive of general good.

We consider this volume as no ordinary nor common production, for Dr. Hey was the possessor of no ordinary nor common

mind. It is evidently the result of a calm and Christian meditation, enriched by much observation of human nature in all its va⚫ rious workings, and aided by all the precision of mathematical reasoning. Upon so intricate a subject we must expect to find some occasional subtilties in the decisions, and refinements in the classification of the passions. But when the author descends to practical remarks, his casuistry comes recommended by all the simplicity of a Christian: and in this point of view we earnestly recommend the study of this volume to all those, who are desirous of subjecting their unruly passions to the dominion of reason and the authority of Scripture. The further the reader advances into the volume before us, the better will he be pleased, and the more will he be interested in its contents; and he will rise from its study not only the wiser philosopher, but the sounder Christian and the better man.

It will be an additional incitement to his attention, to be assured that all the laws which its learned and venerable author has laid down to regulate and discipline these sterner portions of our moral frame, were such as resulted from a long and successful experience of their effect upon himself and his own mind: ἀληθεύειν ἐν ἀγάπη was not more the characteristic of his wri tings, than the rule of his life.

ART. II. Historical Memoirs of my own Time. By Sir N. William Wraxall, Bart. 2 vols. 8vo. Cadell and Davies. 1815.

FROM different parts of his works we have culled and put together the following short notices of the life of Sir N. W. Wraxall. He was born in 1751. In 1769 he went out to India in a civil capacity, and in 1771, at the age of twenty, was made judge advocate and paymaster of our army sent into the Guzerat. Returning from the East in 1772, he went to Portugal; and in 1773, 4, travelled through the Northern countries of Europe. In 1775, 6, he made a tour through the interior of France, and passed the three years 1777, 8, 9, in visiting the capital cities of Germany and the Low Countries. In 1780, he was brought in Member for Ludgershall: and that Parliament being dissolved in 1784, was elected to sit in the ensuing one for the Borough of Hindon. He appears, by his own account, to have given a constant attendance in his place, and to have been present at all the remarkable debates during those stormy and unsettled times. He usually divided with Lord North and the Coalition Ministry, except on the occasion of the celebrated India Bill, when he sided

VOL. IV. JULY, 1815.

with the minority. In 1794, he appears to have quitted public life; and has since employed himself, as he informs us in his motto, not in hunting or in agriculture, the usual pursuits of country gentlemen, but in writing an account from memory of what he had seen and heard. His publications are as follow. "A Tour round the Baltic, &c." "Memoirs of the Courts of Berlin, Dresden, Warsaw, and Vienna.” "A History of France under the Kings of the Race of Vallois." "A History of France from the accession of Henry the Third to the Death of Henry the Fourth" These works have been popular, and have each passed through several editions. Sir N. W. Wraxall represents himself as having had access to the society of the principal literati during the reign of Mrs. Montague and Dr. Johnson; and in political life, to have been acquainted with Lord Nugent, the Duke of Leeds, Lord North, the Duke of Dorset, and Lord George Germaine.

With these opportunities of collecting materials, Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall has thought fit to give to the world two octavo volumes, entituled, "Historical Memoirs of my own Time between the Years 1772 and 1784."

The book is divided into two parts. The first, which describes a period of eight years, extending from 1772 to 1780, occupies not much more than half the first volume; while the second part, including the history of four years only, from 1780 to 1784, forms the body of the work. This disproportion between the number of pages, and the respective portions of time therein described, is accounted for by the difference of materials, of which the two parts are composed. The latter division of his work contains a narrative of what the worthy Baronet saw and heard while in Parliament, between the conclusion of the American war and the establishment of Mr. Pitt in office. The first part is a mere collection of scattered anecdotes, picked up by the author while travelling as a young man through Portugal, France, and Naples; and which could not possibly involve a longer space of time than three years. But as he visited the former country in 1772, and as his Parliamentary Journal did not begin till 1780, he seems to have thought it adviseable, to avoid an awkward hiatus, to give to this first part of his work also the title of Historical Memoirs of my own Time between 1772 and 1780. Now a fastidious reader, on taking up a book with so grave a title as "Historical Memoirs of my own Time:" and after reading the following sentence, with which it opens: Having long meditated to compose some account of the national events which I have witnessed during part of my life, &c."-the fastidious reader, we say, may be somewhat surprised, perhaps disgusted when he finds himself transported to Portugal or Naples, and entertained with a string of heterogeneous anecdotes, given

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on the hearsay evidence of a young traveller. On reading further, he may accuse the author of inaccuracy and credulity: com plain that many of his stories are mere gossip: some old and now ascertained to be contrary to fact; many so marvellous as to be utterly unworthy of credit; and some carrying with them their own contradiction. Or perhaps observing that Portugal or Naples are the only countries our author has visited without publishing an account of his tour, he may even be led to conclude that Sir N. Wraxall has here foisted in his journal: either because too short to form a separate publication by itself, or in order to eke out his second volume of "Memoirs" to a statutable size. And thus may a Baronet of the United Kingdom stand charged with the scurvy offences of book-making, or publishing under false pretences.

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We, however, are inclined to be more charitable; and, instead of heaping all these heavy accusations on the head of an unfortunate author, are willing to think that he has only committed one mistake, from which all the others flow. And that is in terming it "Historical Memoirs," an unlucky title, as it involuntarily brings Sir N. into comparison with the names of Sully, Burnet and Clarendon and leads the reader to expect for that accuracy and research, dignity and decency, to which our author cannot, and evidently does not, intend to lay claim. We would rather have recommended to him the discretion of an ancient writer, one Palaphatus, who in narrating the current stories of his day, for which he knew of no authority but common report, sagaciously entitled it περὶ τῶν ἀπίςων ἱςοριῶν, « Matters of Doubtful Hise tory." Or on second thoughts as doubtful history might sound in the present day a solecism, we would have suggested to Sir Nathaniel as a taking title, "Anecdotes of celebrated Persons, scandalous and entertaining, or a Sequel to the new Atalantis," which would have suited the morals as well as the matter of his book. He might then, without fear of derogating from the dig nity of an historian, have told the listening world as how Joseph, King of Portugal, had a geographical phiz which would tell you the distance between Lisbon and Algiers: how his wife rode astride like a man, and went a hunting in a cocked hat, black leather breeches, and a red petticoat: how the same lady was an excellent shot flying: and how by the same token she was near lodging a bullet in the cranium of her husband. How Cardinal Fleury, at eighty years of age, made naughty proposals to the young Queen of France; and how one Roberts stood at the door of the House of Commons, and bribed a whole British Parliament. Nor do we thing that our Baronet would have lost credit by thus lowering his pretensions. Readers, like Sterne's travellers, may be classed under the simple, the sentimen

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tal, and the inquisitive. The simple reader is always content with what is put before him, provided he be saved the trouble of thinking; and is much given to believe what he reads, "because it is in a book." The sentimental reader is alike averse from the labour of investigation, but loves a little sprinkling of the marvellous and terrible; while the inquisitive reader, an animal of more sagacions nostril, is a dear searcher into truth and evidence. Now by our proposed change of title page, Sir W. would have carried with him the two former classes who form the great body of readers, and got rid of the curious and troublesome scrutiny with which the inquisitive reader put to the torture every work that bears the name of history.-Such stories as the following would then have passed current and undisputed to the great wonder of the simple and edification of the sentimental reader :

The meetings of the conspirators (against the life of Joseph, King of Portugal) were frequently held in a summer-house, situate in the garden of the Marquis of Tavora's palace, at Lisbon, with which it was connected by a long wooden gallery. It happened that a young Portugueze lady of noble extraction, but of reduced circumstances, who lived in the Marchioness's family as her companion: surprized at observing lights one evening in the summerhouse, and altogether without suspicion of the cause was attracted by curiosity to approach the place. As she advanced along the gallery that led to it, she heard voices in earnest conversation; and on coming nearer, soon discovered that of the Marchioness raised to a pitch of uncommon violence. She listened for a few seconds: and then apprehensive of being discovered in such a situation, she was about to return from whence she came, when the door suddenly opening, the Marchioness herself appeared. Their surprize was Imutual; and when the latter demanded, with much agitation, what cause had brought her to that place? she answered, that her astonishment at observing lights in the summer-house had led her to as'certain the reason. You have then no doubt,' said the Marchio∙ness, overheard our conversation, the young lady protested that she was perfectly ignorant of any part of it; and that as soon as she distinguished the Marchioness's voice, her respect led her to return -to the palace, which she was about to do when the door opened. But the Marchioness, who had too much at stake to be so easily satisfied or deceived, assuming a tranquil air, and affecting to repose confidence in her.'-• The Marquess and I,' rejoined she, have had a serious and violent quarrel, during the course of which he had the audacity to give me the lie. I burst out of the room unable to restrain my indignation, and no longer mistress of my emotions. Did not you hear him give me the lie at the time I opened the door?' I did, madam,' imprudently replied the unfortunate lady. Aware from that instant that the nature of their meeting was discovered, she instantly determined to prevent the possibility of its being further divulged. Next morning the body of the unhappy

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