other life. The author, in short, adopts, to some extent, Leibnitz's grand conception of a pre-established harmony between the moral and the physical world, and regards Providence as manifested in the designed interferences of laws with one another, not in suspension of those laws by direct acts of a controlling Divine power. There are several interesting remarks upon this view of things as applied to the great question of the efficacy of prayer; but it will probably be still felt by many, that one great moral difliculty remains untouched. If this be the true theory of prayer, the more fully, it will be said, we understand what we are really about when we pray, the better. It cannot be necessary for the right use of means that we should put out of mind the true account of their utility. How can one feel that it is other than an impediment to the earnestness of prayer, to have a full conviction present to his mind, that he is not now by his supplication exercising any influence on the Being whom he addresses, but that the answer which he is to expect is the pre-arranged result of causes, set in motion once for all at the creation of the world? may, indeed, tend to lessen this dif ficulty, to observe, that the present sympathy, so to speak, of the Deity with the suppliant, is just the same as if he were now answering the prayer which He long ago foresaw; but we doubt whether it will wholly remove it; and many minds will prefer recurring to the mysterious truth that time has no relation to the Deity's own existence; and considering that the representation of His acting now upon a present supplication, and his having foreseen things from the beginning, are both only analogical representations of a thing inconceivable to our minds -that what takes place, with reference to us in successive duration, has no succession in reference to the Deity. What seems to be really meant by the terms foresight, pre-arrangement, &c. in such cases is that the causes which (relating to us) are antecedent in time to a given effect, are arranged with a view to the prayer which (relatively to us) is long posterior to them.

It

But here again we become aware that we have followed the author too far into the clouds. The author passes now from the world without to the world within-from a survey of exter

nal nature to a survey of the human mind; and here again we are doomed to stumble at the very threshold over metaphysics.

The question of the freedom of the will is a controversy which at all times, and in all places, has divided men's opinions, wherever and whenever the human mind has raised itself in any degree to abstract speculation. Pagan science, when it expired, bequeathed this as a fatal legacy to the Christian schools, where, blended with the deeper interests of theological dispute, it has arrayed the divines of Christendom on either side as stern, if not angry, combatants in a protracted warfare, which has found a battle-field in every Church throughout the world; and which, whatever tendency it may have to enlarge our knowledge, has certainly done little to improve our charity. Mr. M'Cosh, we need hardly say, for he is a clergyman of the Free Kirk of Scotland, declares for necessity; but he makes large and candid admissions to the maintainers of liberty. He readily gives up, as an empty truism, Edwards' dogma, that "the strongest motive determines the will;" judiciously observing that the strongest motive can be fixed no otherwise than by determining the will; and (which is still more remarkable) he frankly allows the same writer's objections to a self-determining power to be no better than childish cavils. However, upon explanation, it appears that he holds the will to be self-determined in no other way than as the understanding is-i. e., to act always in accordance with its own fixed laws. Any other freedom than this he regards as involving a surrender of the great axiom, that every event must have a cause-meaning thereby a fixed antecedent, which will always necessarily be followed by the same effect. There is, we apprehend, some confusion of thought in the way in which this axiom is used as an argument against the freedom of the will-a confusion regarding both the character of the axiom itself, and the nature of the causes which it speaks of. The axiom is treated as if, in its general expression, it were engraven as an innate maxim on the mind; whereas the correct account seems to be, that its abstract form is only a generalisation of the particular intuitive references which, on the occurrences of particular events, we make severally in each case

to a particular cause. The value of the general expression consists in its correctly representing the particular intuitions of the mind, and therefore cannot legitimately be made a standard to control them. If an event can be specified which the mind does not intuitively refer to a necessary fixed cause, the axiom is thereby sufficiently shown not to cover that case. Now the maintainers of liberty assert that in the case of volitions there is no such reference; nay more, that in the phenomenon of self-reproach there is involved a consciousness that, all antecedents remaining the same, the act of volition might have been different from what it was; and that this is so necessarily involved in the moral judgment, that as soon as such a conviction is expunged, and the mind taught to regard the volition as the necessary result of laws imposed by some other being, the sense of responsibility vanishes. That, in order to moral responsibility, the will must be viewed as an ¿gxa̸—a self-acting principle-this author seems to admit; but in his sense the understanding is an agx. Yet no one blames himself for defects or errors of understanding.

It is vain to allege in answer to this that we practically do discover laws necessarily regulating the will. The thing is true, but it is no answer; for so far as the will is thus regulated, it affords no matter for moral judgments. No one praises a man for preferring pleasure to pain, where everything else is equal; and though the habitual indulgence of criminal desires may produce a character (i. e., a relation between those desires and the will) of incurable proclivity to vice, our censure of such a character always proceeds on the notion of its having been formed by voluntary indulgence; and the natural strength of passion and natural weakness of understanding are always allowed as excuses diminishing guilt. Thus, in proportion as the will approaches the state of mechanical action, it ceases to be the object of the peculiar sentiments of praise or blame. The agent may be disliked or admired, but not commended or censured. Indeed, it seems strange that those who speak so much of the character determining the will, should forget that the character, as

distinguished from mere natural disposition, is the creature of the will.

But again, it is probable that many advocates of the freedom of the will may complain that the meaning of this famous axiom is mistaken when it is thus applied. They will say that the cause which that axiom contemplates is an efficient cause-a will; whereas the antecedents to which it is applied in the argument are mere antecedents. They will accordingly be ready with a distinction. We grant, they will say, that every volition must have an antecedent of some sort-namely, the presence of one or more motives; but we deny that such antecedents are invariable antecedents, having a necessary connexion with the act of will, so as that, with the same antecedents, we shall always have the same consequents. Even in the world of matter, they will urge, this necessary connexion does not exist between physical antecedents and consequents, but only between effects and efficients. No cause but the efficient strictly fulfils the condition of absolutely invariable antecedence. All others are but causes analogically. There is nothing more than a high probability that the best ascertained physical antecedents will always be attended with the same consequents. We must, then, either hold that the Deity, as a strict efficient, produces every particular volition of our minds, or else give up the axiom as inapplicable to the present question.

Desiring that this review should lead our readers to obtain and peruse the book itself, we have been led on to dwell more largely upon the incidental errors which the student might not perceive of himself, than upon the merits and beauties which he cannot fail to discover. The issue has been, that we have exhausted our space before our work is done. But before we conclude, let us express our opinion once for all. This argument is the effort of no common mind. The author cannot stir any question he treats of without throwing up the deeply-seated seeds of thought. He is in general a powerful and convincing reasoner, and like his master, Chalmers, he is apt to clothe his severest logic in a gorgeously embroidered robe of imagery and eloquence.

FULLER accounts for the strange alterations which surnames undergo, till their original form can be longer recognised, by the consolatory reflection, that " they are not the best families who spell best.' In our experience as reviewers, we are often led to observe that they are not the best men who write the best books. Still, whether his book be good or not, it is something for an author to impress his readers with the feeling that he is himself an amiable and well-meaning man. It is something, too, to have such a resource as literature to fill up hours which would otherwise be passed perhaps idly and unprofitably. The volume before us is plainly the work of a person having but little practice in the arts of book-making. He regards Johnson with great admiration, and is anxious to call attention to some points in his character, but is every now and then misled by one or other of the idols of the heathen. A sentence of Carlyle's, or Sidney Smith's, or Leigh Hunt's, is sure to lead him right or wrong whereever the meteor light may shed its glimmer. We wish he would write without his books. He is best when he most relies on his own natural good sense, and is alone with Johnson or Boswell. The book would be a better book than it is, if he had not the weak, though kindly, habit of praising everybody and everything. It is unfortu nate for him that he thinks it desirable, before telling us his own impression of Johnson, to read all that Macaulay, or Sidney Smith, or anybody else has written on the subject.

Still the book is an entertaining book, and will be found an exceeding. ly pleasant travelling companion on a journey. It has a hundred agreeable stories some of them resting on the best grounds of authenticity-several doubtful enough, still not by any means to be altogether rejected, as the stories invented about a great man are in general framed from a true conception of his character, and believed

because likely to be true. We cannot expect the author of a volume of ana to sift the evidence of every story he tells, and, as a volume of ana this book is to be regarded.

Trotter's "Memoirs of Fox" supply our author with a motto to his first chapter-"We continued our reading of Johnson's' Lives of the Poets.' How often at midnight, as Mr. Fox listened with avidity, he apologised to me for keeping me from my rest! but still, delighted with our reading, he would say, Well, you may go on a little more. Some half-dozen testimonials, which might have been spared, follow. They are certificates of character for Johnson, written in the tone and temper of an Edinburgh or London man of some notoriety recommending an obscure friend to some situation in Ireland or the Colonies, and furnishing him with as many virtues as he can remember or invent. This chapter might have been spared. Johnson is not in want of the praises of Mr. Anderson, or Mrs. More, or others whom we find quoted, and whose gifts and graces are recorded in notes which, in some cases, communicate to us, for the first time, the very existence of the parties called as witnesses for Johnson. The next chapter is better. It is called "Johnson's Early Religious Life." Something is told us of the formal and austere habits of Johnson's mother. Religion was made unpleasant to him; still it was impressed on his memory, and the lessons learned in earliest childhood influenced his after life. This topic is pursued through three or four chapters, and then we pass to a division of the book entitled "Johnson's Humanity," which is dealt with somewhat more successfully than the former. These formal divisions give an author but little aid, and are of no use whatever to the readers in any but a work of pure science. If in this book the leading incidents of Johnson's life had been told with some reference to dates of time and place, it would

have been infinitely more convenient in every way, and would have rendered some of the mistakes into which the author has fallen almost impossible. However, we have no right to suggest alterations which would imply a change in the whole plan of the book. A reviewer must take what he finds, and deal with it as he can. If the child that we endeavour to foster will not live, it is not our fault; but whatever may become of it, we have no right to change it at nurse.

Of Johnson's "humanity," by which our author seems to mean his general kindness of disposition, he had nothing of the bear about him, as Goldsmith said, but the skin. A great many instances are given, but they are such as would be found in the case of almost every man; and we think it would have been easy to have brought from Boswell's book alone proofs much more decisive than those which our author has selected. We prefer quoting from the book before us the account of Johnson's generous support of the halfdozen helpless persons who found a shelter in his house, because neglected by the world:

"One of the most extraordinary and continued acts of kindness in Dr. Johnson's life, was that which opened his house as a residence to several persons of indigent circumstances. Let us first tell the case of Mrs. Williams. She was the daughter of a Welsh physician, and excited the compassion of Dr. Johnson, on coming to London to have an operation performed on her eyes. He took her into his house for the greater convenience in this performance, and, on its failure (for she became totally blind), he never desired, so long as he was in possession of a house, that she should depart from under its roof. She was poor, and mainly supported by the voluntary contributions of others. Dr. Johnson obtained for her pecuniary aid from Mrs. Montague (a lady whom he solicited also on behalf of a Mrs. Ogle, Davies, a bankrupt bookseller, &c.); from Garrick also he asked a benefitnight at the theatre, and was eager in disposing of the tickets (from this she derived £200); and he greatly assisted her in some literary undertakings: Sir John Hawkins stating, that by her quarto volume of 'Miscellanies,' to which Dr. Johnson was known to contribute much from his pen, she increased her little fund to £300. Lady Knight thinks that, ultimately, she possessed an annual income of about thirty-five or forty pounds a year.

"But with all the alleviations provided for her, and with much cheerfulness under

the sad deprivation of sight, she seems to have been of an irritable and peevish temper. All agree in their testimony of this, though some endeavour to palliate it. She would frequently quarrel with Johnson's favourite negro servant, and then would taunt him with the money spent on Barber's education, saying, 'This is your scholar, on whose education you have spent £300.' On one occasion, Boswell, who had long observed her asperity of manner, says, 'Mrs. Williams was very peevish, and I wondered at Johnson's patience with her now, as I had often done on similar occasions. The truth is, that his humane consideration of the forlorn and indigent state in which this lady was left by her father, induced him to treat her with the utmost tenderness.' Johnson himself writes of her, when he had procured her accommodation in the country on account of illness-Age, sickness, and pride haye made her so peevish, that I was forced to bribe the maid to stay with her by a stipulation of half-a-crown a week over her wages.' He had supplied her with all conveniences to make her excursion and abode pleasant and useful. The next year, in a letter to Mrs. Thrale, he writes- Williams hates everybody; Levett hates Desmoulins, and does not love Williams; Desmoulins hates them both; Poll (Miss Carmichael) loves none of them.' During her illness he ever spoke tenderly of her, and in his diary this affecting record is made :-"This has been a day of great emotion; the office of the Communion for the Sick has been performed in poor Mrs. Williams's chamber. At home I see almost all my companions dead or dying. I hope that I shall

learn to die as dear Williams is dying, who was very cheerful before and after this awful solemnity, and seems to resign herself with calmness and hope upon eternal mercy.' To Dr. Brocklesby he writes:- Be so kind as to continue your attention to Mrs. Williams. It is a great consolation to the well, and still greater to the sick, that they find themselves not neglected, and I know that you will be desirous of giving comfort, even where you have no great hope of giving help. On hearing of her death he was much affected, and composed a solemn prayer on the event. To Mrs. Montague, who had allowed her a pension, he writes to communicate the tidings of her death, and says 'You have, madam, the satisfaction of having alleviated the sufferings of a woman of great merit, both intellectual and moral.' To Mr. Langton he writes-'I have lost a companion (Mrs. Williams), to whom I have had recourse for domestic amusement for thirty years, and whose variety of knowledge never was exhausted; and now return to a habitation vacant and desolate.' And in another, to the same friend, he alludes to Mrs. Williams, whose death, following that of Levett, has now made my house a solitude. She left her little substance to a charity

school. She is, I hope, where there is neither darkness (in reference to her blindness), nor want, nor sorrow.'

Mrs. Desmoulins was another inmate of Dr. Johnson's house, and a recipient of his charity; she also was the daughter of a physician, who left a large family in poverty, she herself having made an imprudent marriage, and now become a widow. Johnson allowed her half-a-guinea a weekabove a twelfth part of his pension-and also lodged her daughter under his roof. On Good Friday, 1779, we find this record in his diary:I maintain Mrs. Desmoulins and her daughter; other good of myself I know not where to find, except a little charity.' We find him also writing to the Rev. Dr. Vyse, to ask for the situation of Matron of the Chartreux for her, and he says She is in great distress, and therefore may probably receive the benefit of a charitable foundation.' Such an appointment (which she did not obtain) would have relieved Dr. Johnson, but, at the same time, he was well aware that it would have added to her comfort and self-respect, albeit to be a pensioner of Dr. Johnson's was not without honour. She did not live altogether in peace with the other inmates, for Johnson records, To-day Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Desmoulins had a scold, and Williams was going away; but I bid her not turn tail, and she came back, and rather got the upper hand.' Again, to Mrs. Thrale, he writes :'Mr. Levett and Mrs. Desmoulins have vowed eternal hate.'

:

"Passing over Miss Carmichael, of whom so little is known, come we to the unfortunate Mr. Robert Levett. In the story of this man there is much of mingled goodness and romance. An Englishman by birth, and the eldest of ten children, he commenced life as a waiter at a coffee-house in Paris, where some surgeons, who frequented the house, took a liking to him, themselves taught him something of their art, and obtained free admission for him to the lectures of their ablest professors in pharmacy and anatomy. In London he became a popular practitioner among the humbler classes, who, of course, could afford to pay him only very small sums, and often paid him in kind. As regards his marriage, he was made the victim of an artful and profligate woman, and yet he was nearly sixty years of age at this time. Johnson writes to Barretti:-'Levett is lately married; not without much suspicion that he has been wretchedly cheated in his match;' and he used further to say that, compared with the marvels of this transaction, the Arabian Nights seemed familiar occurrences. pears that she persuaded Levett, although he became acquainted with her under the poorest circumstances, that she was unrighteously kept out of a large fortune; yet, before he had been married four months, a writ was taken out against him for debts

It ap

contracted by her. Then he was obliged to be secreted, but ere long she ran away from him, was tried at the Old Bailey for robbery, acquitted, and a separation took place; from that time, Johnson taking him to his home. All this misfortune only moved the compassionate heart of Johnson; and he was remarkable for standing by those who were distressed, and relieving those who could never recompense him. He seems to have been a man of ungainly appearance, for Boswell contrasts the awkward and uncouth Robert Levett' with the brilliant Colonel Forester, of the Guards, who wrote the Polite Philosopher,' when showing that Dr. Johnson associated with persons most widely different in manners, abilities, rank, and accomplishments. At the same time, Boswell thought well of him, for, in a letter to Johnson, he says 'I wish many happy years to good Mr. Levett, who, I suppose, holds his usual place at your breakfast-table.' Levett seems to have held the matutinal appointment of lord of the tea-kettle, and, in the absence of the other inmates, to have become tea-maker. Johnson, who always treated him with 'marked courtesy,' as though he was an equal or more; and, when absent, writing kindly to him, would observe, that 'Levett was indebted to him for nothing more than house-room, his share in a penny loaf at breakfast, and now and then a dinner on a Sunday.' This was no mean debt, but how insignificant when compared with that contracted from the constant experience of Johnson's condescension and courtesy. He resided for about twenty years under this great man's roof, 'who,' says Stevens, 'never wished him to be regarded as an inferior, or treated him like a dependent.' His temper, notwithstanding, seems to have been irritable and, perhaps, sullen. It has already been seen that Levett hates Desmoulins;' and we find again Dr. Johnson himself saying, 'Mr. Levett and Mrs. Desmoulins have vowed eternal hate; Levett is the more insidious, and wants me to turn her out;' and again, 'Mrs. Williams is come home better, and the habitation is all concord and harmony, only Mr. Levett harbours discontent. It was not long, however, before Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Desmoulins had a violent quarrel, so continually was dissension arising among those who may be almost termed his pensioners.

"Yet Johnson held him in great esteem, and regretted him in his death. To Mr. Laurence he communicates the intelligence of our old friend's' death, and remarks'So has ended the long life of a very useful, and very blameless man.' To Mrs. Thrale he writes My home has lost Levett, a man who took interest in everything, and therefore ready at conversation;' to Mrs. Porter-The loss of friends will be felt, and poor Levett has been a faithful adherent for thirty years; and to Captain Langton'At night, at Mrs. Thrale's, as I was mus