few precious fragments of sounding inanity or dextrous sophistry. To such as these it was sport to see how the grave professor would glide over the surface of his subject with every appearance of profundity, or when pinned, as his opponent hoped, into a corner, would wind himself out with all the lubricity of an eel.-Still, he had a large mind; he endured, he encouraged, he delighted in the opposition of able men; he never flinched from the strokes of those who had more information than himself, secure in the consciousness of his own ability to encounter learning by invention. The same tolerance of contradiction, the same dexterity in parrying attacks, he brought with him into private conversation, which rendered him, when the poison of politics did not operate on his constitution, a most agreeable and amusing debater. In those happier hours, and they were not few, he would even smile at the pomp and magnificence of his own manner, and relax into all the playfulness and pleasantry which are almost inseparable from real genius.

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An acute man, without much for mal study, yet constantly exercised in theological disputations, cannot but acquire theological knowledge; and happy would it have been for the University could it have longer enjoyed his more mature and better digested lucubrations! happy for the state and the church had he never been drawn forth ex umbrâ academi into the light and sunshine of political life! But in the year 1782, a minister was at the helm, whose prejudices would have permitted him to bestow mitres on Priestley and Price, had not their own honesty "kept them back from honour." At no great distance from them, however, in religious and political principles, was a man educated in the bosom of the church, yet, by his own confession, indifferent to its Interests; ready on every occasion of advancement to subscribe to a body of Articles which he professed to despise; prepared, in the last place, and for the same end, to undertake the office of imposing the same subscrip

tion upon others, while he publicly avowed that such imposition was an unwarrantable restriction upon the consciences of men.

By this minister, himself, so far as he was a Christian at all, a dissenter and a patron of dissenters, whenever it was in his power to employ them, was our author appointed Bishop of Landaff. The appointment was in this respect consistent and judicious; for the minister knew his man, who, if he had no prejudice against, had certainly no predilection for the Church of England; but, according to his own account, a sincere regard for the Church of Christ." We have read of one who refused to be made a citizen of Athens because he was already a citizen of the world. Not so our liberal and catholic professor. He was willing to accept an office of high trust and honour in a society to which he felt himself indifferent at best, never reflecting that by the very fact of his appointment that society acquired an exclusive right to his active and zealous services in her cause. There is something, however, in his own account of the matter, which coming as it does from a vehement declaimer against ministerial cabals and political management in the disposal of high preferments, is more grossly revolting than any thing that we have ever met with in the most unblushing apologies for this species of unhallowed influence. The spiri tual nature of the office itself, the solemn obligations which it imposes, and all expression of difficulty and doubt in the aspirant's mind as to the fitness for undertaking such a task, sentiments which, though often pretended, ought always to be felt on such solemn occasions, are as completely forgotten as if the former had no existence, and the latter were neither fitting nor seemly.

"On the 12th of the same month the Duke of Rutland wrote to me, that he had determined to support Lord Shelburne's administration, as he had received the most positive assurances that the independence of America was to be acknowledged. He further told me that the bishopric of

Landaff, he had reason to believe, would be disposed of in my favour, if he asked it and desired to know whether, if the offer should be made, I would accept it. I returned for answer, that I conceived there could be no dishonour in my accepting a bishopric from an administration which he had previously determined to support. In this manner did I acquire a bishopric. But I had no great reason to be proud of the proinotion; for I think I owed it not to any regard which he who gave it me had to the zeal and industry with which I had for many years discharged the functions of an academic life; but to the opinion which, from my sermon, he had erroneously entertained, that I was a warm, and might become an useful partizan."

In this opinion of the motives and conduct of his patron the Bishop of Landaff was certainly right, and to his honour be it spoken, that he took the first opportunity of undeceiving him; for when in the confidence of unlimited compliance from a sense of recent obligations, this minister disclosed to the new prelate his favourite plan of pillaging the church, and converting it into a pensionary establishment, to his infinite disappointment he found that he had to encounter reasons which he could not answer and scruples which he could not overcome. Another instance occurs from which it may be inferred that he would have pursued as independent a course with respect to the ministry which advanced him as he did towards those who prevented his further promotion; and the consequence in all probability would have been, that had his own friends continued in office, demands refused, and expectations disappointed would have kept him, if not at Landaff, yet beneath the highest honours or emoluments of his profession.

It is one of the many singularities which entered into the strangely compounded understanding of Bishop Watson, that he should not have foreseen to what consequences a conduct like his own, in the present state of human nature, necessarily tended. No being but the Searcher of hearts can disco

ver in what exact proportions this eccentric and uncomplying temper was mixed up of native honesty and stub born independence on the one hand, or of pride, obstinacy, and disappointment on the other. In his own eyes, and in those of his enemies, no such mixture existed; he was in one unblended mass, either the most upright or the most perverse and wayward of mankind. But knowledge of mankind might have taught him that a conduct like his own, when fairly tried and developed, is precisely that which forfeits the esteem of all parties, and which no patron will ever reward.

It is one of the most difficult pro blems in all casuistry, to determine what sacrifices of feeling or opinion, in the combinations of religious or political society, are compatible with perfect sincerity of heart, and how far it is required of persons placed in situations of trust and power to contract their regards and their exertions to the views of that particular association by which they have been entrusted. With respect to the first; if, in matters of trifling moment, no private wish, no individual opinion is to be sacrificed to the interests of the society to which we belong, no society can exist; if every thing is to be given up for that purpose, the rights of conscience are at an end, and unprincipled selfishness will swallow up every dignified and every independent feeling of the heart. With respect to the second; it is obvious that in no instance whatever are we permitted to oppress, or in any way do wrong to societies to which we do not belong, in order to serve the individual interests of that to which we do belong. But this is all.-To withhold positive assistance; to discountenance acces sions of power or numbers to rival associations, and not to hold ourselves indifferent, provided that the general interests of religion or of literature be promoted, by whom they are promoted-these are imperious and pressing duties, owing by every one who has accepted an office of power and trust towards the society to whom he is indebted for the office. It is the impli ed, and, in many instances, the ex

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On the cold reception of his collection of Theological Tracts among his brethren, he says, I was not at all mortified at this conduct of the two Archbishops, for I had but a poor opinion of the theological knowledge of either of their graces."

"I considered the acquisition of it (a bishopric) as no proof of personal merit, inasmuch as bishoprics are as often given to the flattering dependents, or to the unlearned younger branches of noble families, as to men of the greatest erudition; and I considered the possession of it as one great cause of personal demerit, for saw the generality of the bishops bartering their independence, and the. dignity of their order, for the chance of a translation, and polluting gospel humility by the pride of prelacy."

This refers to his crude and impracticable plan, which, after all, was not originally his own, but Burnet's, for equalizing the bishoprics of England. "This being accomplished," (mark, rentle reader! mark what follows, nd from whom,) "oblige him to a nger residence in his diocess than is ually practised, that he may do the

proper work of a bishop; that he may direct and inspect the flock of Christ that by his exhortations he may confirm the unstable; by his admonitions reclaim the reprobate; and by the purity of his life render religion amiable and interesting unto all."

Dr. Watson, when this portentous instance of human inconsistency, or rather audacity, escaped him, was a richer man than his equalizing plan would have rendered the Bishop of Landaff. He is now, to use an elegant and favourite word of his own, rotting in his grave, otherwise we should have presumed to ask, In more than twenty years, how many days has your lordship "resided in your diocess?"-At the distance of two hundred miles, how have you "directed and inspected the flock of Christ ?"

By what "exhortations have you confirmed the unstable-by what admonitions reclaimed the reprobate ?" -Have you the comfort of knowing that any single soul has been the better for all your ministrations in the diocess committed to you?

Surely the sect is not extinct who were wont to lay on men's shoulders burdens too heavy to be borne, while they themselves would not touch them with a finger!

The subject of disappointed ambition, as it had poisoned his mind with rancour and tinctured all his conver sation, is widely diffused over the volume before us. It is astonishing that a man of Dr. Watson's understanding should not have known, that the greatest triumph which can be given to an enemy, is to show that he has galled the object of his enmity. How dignified, how honourable, might his retirement have been, had he had the fortitude to look down with indifference on rewards which he no longer wanted! If he were not mortified to the world as a Christian, he might have contemned it as a philosopher; but he clung to it with a grasp no less eager on the verge of fourscore, than at the period and in the vigour of legitimate ambition. A signal instance of this spirit, in which he submitted himself to the miserable degradation

of being pitied by a stranger, we shall give in his own words :

"I was, while at Merthyr, most hospitably entertained by Mr. Crawshay an (iron-master.) This gentleman, in common with many others, expressed his astonishment at the manner with which I had been neglected by the court, and, making an apology for his frankness, told me, with evident concern, that he was sure I should never be translated. He also said, that I was considered as a man of far too independent a spirit for them, and had long been put down in the queen's black book. I was more delighted with this disinterested approbation of an iron-master" (by the way, he had offered his diocesan a loan of five or ten thousand pounds) "than by the possession of an archbishopric acquired by a selfish subserviency to the despotic principles of a court."-Still, however, the primacy was uppermost in his mind.

An inquiry into the religion of a mind thus worldly and ambitious, thus wayward and fretful, can neither be very interesting nor very pleasing; but we are invited to it by many passages in the present volume, and should scarcely satisfy the expectations of the public were we wholly to omit it. We begin then with a very remarkable passage, which strikingly corroborates an observation of Warburton, that long addiction to mathematical pursuits incapacitates the mind from weighing the various degrees of moral evidence. "I was early in life accustomed to mathematical discussion and the certainty attending it, and not meeting with that certainty in the science of metaphysics, of natural and reveal ed religion, I have an habitual tendency to hesitation of judgment, rather than to a peremptory judgment on many points. But I pray God to pardon this my wavering in less essential points, since it proceeds not from any immoral tendency," (certainly it did not, at any period of his life,) "and is attended by a firm belief of a resurrection, and a future state of retribution as described in the Gospels."

From the silence of this passage on other doctrines of revelation, it might have been inferred that he was a So

cinian, but from that imputation he has sufficiently redeemed himself in other parts of the present volume. His religion, according to himself, was that of the New Testament, as distinct from all commentaries, systems, or articles of human invention; and thence alone he appears to have discovered the divinty of the second and third persons of the Holy Trinity. On the subject of the Atonement, even when it might seem most naturally to have presented itself, he observes a deep and awful silence.* Impregnated as was his ample and expansive understanding with the sublime philosophy of Newton, he seems to have contemplated the Deity, together with eternity and infinite space, something in the spirit of that mighty masterStill it was "the science of religion"

still his feelings were rather those of an excursive curiosity wandering over the improvements of intellect in eternity, and an endless supply of ob jects for it to grasp, than what may properly be called Christian faith or hope. A passage, written almost at the close of his life, confirms our opi nion on this subject.

"Though the light of Revelation hath not, perhaps cannot make it appear what we shall be, yet a due reflexion on the necessity of dying, accompanied with the blessed hope of being raised from the dead, and of ascending a step higher in the gradation of intellectual existence, may make us expect with composure and comfort the inevitable change, when we shall become, like the angels of God, immortal, placed, it may be, among the lowest ranks of angelic beings, but neither debarred the means nor deprived of the hope of rising to the highest.""

The general style of this volume, and of all the Bishop's English works, is such as nearly to place them above the petty cavils of criticism-clear and energetic, with occasional strokes of coarseness, and a general air of bra

that in one of his Discourses, published in It is but justice to his memory to add, 1815, he determines, though with some hesitation, in favour of a proper satisfac tion for sin in the sufferings of Christ

vura, which exactly accorded with the tone of his conversation and the expression of his countenance. The great and only considerable defect of it is a pepetual tendency to scraps of Latin, which were meant to pass for proofs of erudition among his admirers, though they are generally taken from very ordinary and trivial sources. To know how to quote well from the writers of antiquity is one of the greatest artifices of literature; whereas to court vulgar applause by vulgar citations, is a mark at once of bad taste and of low ambition in a scholar.

On the portrait here exhibited of this perfectly original character the following reflexions naturally arise. He was governed through life by the two leading principles of interest and ambition, both of which were thwart ed in his political conduct by a temper so wayward, and a presumption so overweening, that the disappointment produced by their collision embittered his mind, and exasperated his latter days to a very high degree of malignity. Accomplished as he was in academical learning, he had no ingenuous and disinterested love of knowledge: he read only that he might teach, and he taught only that he might rise. When he felt himself neglected, he avowedly and professedly abandoned all study, because (says he) "eagerness in the pursuit of knowledge was part of my temper, till" (and only till) "the acquisition of knowledge was attended with nothing but the neglect of the king and his ministers." Disgusted therefore, and disappointed, as much as broken in constitution, he withdrew into the wilds of Westmoreland without a library, and to this privation he voluntarily submitted almost thirty years. Lord Falkland was wont to commiserate the situation of country gentlemen in rainy weather; but who can pity a bishop, wealthy enough to purchase a magnificent library, and with a vigorous and excursive under standing to make use of it, who spontaneously abandoned himself to oblivion of all his former pursuits of literature during those long periods of rain and snow which prevail on the banks of Winandermere? To the con

solation of a meagre and spiteful political pamphlet, and the ennui of his own corroding reflexions, he chose to resign himself-he was his own tormentor.

Infinite and unspeakable are the consolations which this prelate, during his long retirement, might have found in the pursuits of practical religion; and great the services which he might have rendered to Christianity in general by plain and popular tracts, which from him would have required little exertion. He had a clear, familiar style, great force of thought, and great power of illustration. It might have occurred to him, that though he was in effect without a bishopric, he was still a bishop; though he had abandoned his chair, he was yet professor of divinity; though he had placed himself at a distance from his cure of souls, he was yet a clergymar. He might have remembered, that all his brethren, who in former times had been expelled from their sees by civil convulsions, had in poverty and exile been exemplary for diligence in preaching, writing, and study; and that he stood single and alone in the history of episcopacy, as a man who, in voluntary banishment, and in possession of all the emoluments of his profession, had degraded himself to a mere layman.* If it should be urged that the exhausted state of his mental faculties as well as his bodily health precluded such exertions, the work now before us bears ample testimony to the contrary. Let but the subject of politics be started, and he would write and debate almost to the last with all the vigour of his best days.

But there his treasure was, and there his heart was also. The awful

This is the more to be regretted, because the few specimens of his power as a preacher, which he has left behind him in the Miscellaneous Volumes of his works, A. D. 1815, (for we desire to distinguish them from his political discourses,) are compositions of the very first order, and when aided by his person, voice, and manner in the pulpit, always produced a powerful impression. His discourse on the first and second Adam, and the nature of equalled in originality of thought, and death as affected by each, is almost unvigour of expression.