the ice of Zembla, but as repulsive and as cold. Those who can envy a sovereign so painful a prerogative, know little of others, and less of themselves. Had Doctor Dodd* been pardoned, who * Many thinking persons lament that forgery should be punished with death. If we consider forgery as confined to the notes of the bank of England, it has been universally objected to them that they have hitherto been executed in so slovenly a manner, as to have become temptations to the crime. This circumstance has been attended with another evil not quite so obvious; it has given ground for a false and cruel mode of reasoning; it has been argued, that an offence holding out such facilities, can only be prevented by making the severest possible example of the offender; but surely it would be more humane, and much more in the true spirit of legislation, to prevent the crime rather by removing those facilities which act as temptations ving to it, than by passing a law for the punishment of it so severe that the very prosecutors shrink from the task of going the full extent of its enactments, by perpetually permitting the delinquents to plead guilty to the minor offence. In the particular case of Dr. Dodd, these observations will not fully apply; and the observation of Thurlow to his sovereign was in this correct, that all partial exceptions should be scrupulously avoided. I have however heard the late honourable Daines Barrington give another reason for Dodd's execution. This gentleman also informed me that he was present at the attempt to recover Dodd, which would have succeeded if a room had been fixed upon nearer the place of execution, as the vital spark was not entirely extinguished when the measures for resuscitation commenced; but they ultimately failed, owing to the immense crowd which prevented the arrival of the hearse in proper time. A very feasible scheme had also been devised for the doctor's escape from Newgate. The outline of it, as I have had it from the gentleman mentioned above, was this: There wasacertain woman in the lower walk of life, who happened to be in features remarkably like the doctor. Money was not wanting, and she was engaged to wait on Dodd in Newgate. Mr. Kirby, at that time the governor of the prison, was inclined to show the doctor every civility compatible with his melancholy situation; amongst other indulgen. shall say how many men of similar talents that cruel pardon might not have fatally ensnared. Eloquent as he was, and exemplary as perhaps he would have been, an enlarged view of his case authorizes this irrefragable inference; that the most undeviating rectitude, and the longest life of such a man, could not have conferred so great and so permanent a benefit on society, as that single sacrifice, his death. On this memorable occasion, Europe saw the greatest monarch she contained, acknowledging a sovereign, within his own dominions, greater than himself; a sovereign that triumphed not only over his power, but over his pity-the supremacy of the laws. ces, books, paper, pens, and a reading desk had been permitted to be brought to him; and it was not unusual for the doctor to be found by his friends, sitting at his reading desk, and dressed in the habiliments of his profession. The woman above alluded to was, in the character of a domestic, in the constant habit of coming in and out of the prison, to bring paper, linen, or other necessaries. The party who had planned the scheme of his escape, soon af ter the introduction of this female had been established, met together in a room near the prison, and requested the woman to permit herself to be dressed in the doctor's wig, gown, and canonicals; she consented; and in this disguise the resemblance was so striking, that it astonished all who were in the secret, and would have deceived any who were not. She was then sounded as to her willingness to assist in the doctor's escape, if she were well rewarded; after some consideration she consented to play her part in the scheme, which was simply this, that on a day agreed upon, the doctor's irons having been previously filed, she should exchange dresses, put on the doctor's gown and wig, and occupy his seat at the reading desk, while the doctor, suddenly metamorphosed into his own female domestic, was to have put a bonnet on his head, take a bundle under his arm, and walked coolly and quielly out of the prison. It is thought that this plan would have been crowned with success, if the Doctor himself could have been persuaded to accede to it; but he had all along buoyed himself up with the hope of a reprieve, and like that ancient general who disdained to owe a victory to a stratagem, so neither would the doctor be indebted for his life to a trick. The event proved that it was unfortunate that he should have had so many scruples on this occasion, and so few on another. The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass * but that which surpasses themthey censure. * Sir Joshua Reynolds had as few faults as most men, but jealousy is the besetting sin of his profession, and Sir Joshua did not altogether escape the contagion. From some private pique or other, he was too apt to take every opportunity of depi depreciating the merits of Wilson, perhaps the first landscape painter of his day. On a certain occasion, when some members of the profession were discussing the respective merits of their brother artists, Sir Joshua, in the presence of Wilson, more pointedly than politely remarked, that Gainsborough was indisputably and beyond all comparison, the first landscape painter of the day; now it will be recollected that Gainsborough was very far from a contemptible painter of portraits as well; and Wilson immediately followed up the remark of Sir Joshua by saying, that whether Gainsborough was the first landscape painter or not of the day, yet there was one thing in which all present, not excepting Sir Joshua himself, would agree, that Gainsborough was the first portrait painter of the day without any probability of a rival. Here we see two men respectively eminent in the departments of their art giving an undeserved superiority to a third in both; but a superiority only given to gratify the pique of each, at the expense of the feelings of the other. The late Mr. West was perfectly free from this nigra succusloliginis. This freedom from all envy was not lost upon the discriminating head, and benevolent heart of our late sovereign. Sir William Beachy having just returned from Windsor, where + The blood of the black cuttle fish, (i. e. envy. PUB. Men are more readily contented with no intellectual light than a little; and wherever they have been taught to acquire some knowledge in order to please others, they have most generally gone on to acquire more, to please themselves. So far shalt thou go, but no farther,' is as inapplicable to wisdom as to the wave. The fruit of the tree of knowledge may stand in the garden, undesired, only so long as it be untouched; but the moment it is tasted, all prohibition will be vain. The present is an age of inquiry, and truth is the real object of many, the avowed object of all. But as truth can neither be divided against herself, nor rendered destructive of herself, as she courts investigation, and solicits inquiry, it follows that her worshippers must grow with the growth, strengthen with the strength, and improve with the advancement of knowledge. Quieta ne movete,* is a sound maxim for a rotten cause. But there is a nobler maxim from a higher source, which enjoins us to try all things, but to hold fast that which is good. The day is past, when custom could procure acquiescence; antiquity, reverence; or power, obedience to error; and although error, and that of the most bold and dangerous kind, has her worshippers, in the very midst of us, yet it is simply and solely because they mistake error for truth. Show them their error, and the same power that would in vain compel them now to abjure it, would then as vainly be exerted in compelling them to adore it. But as nothing is more turbulent and unmanageable than a half enlightened population, it is the duty no less than the interest, of those who have begun to teach the people to reason, to see that they use that reason aright; for understanding, like happiness, is far more generally diffused, than the sequestered scholar would either concede or imagine. I have often observed this in the uneducated, that when another can give them true premises, they will draw tolerably fair conclusions for themselves. But as nothing is more mischievous than a man that is half intoxicated, so nothing is more dangerous than a mind that is half informed. It is this semi-scientific description of intellect that has organized those bold attacks, made, and still making, upon Christianity. The extent and sale of infidel publications are beyond all example and belief. This intellectual poison* is circulating through the low he had enjoyed an interview with his late majesty, called on West in London. He was out, but drank tea with Mrs. West, and took an opportunity of informing her how very high Mr. West stood in the good opinion of his sovereign, who had particularly dwelt on Mr. West's entire freedom from jealousy or envy, and who had remarked to Sir William, that in the numerous interviews he had permitted to Mr. West, he had never heard him utter a single word detractory or depreciative of the talents or merits of any one human being whatsoever. Mrs. West, on hearing this, replied with somewhat of plair sectarian blunt ness:-- Go thou and do likewise.' * Disturb not what is quiet. -Рив. * Mr. Bellamy, in a very conclusive performance, the Anti-deist does not attempt to parry the weapon, so much as to disarm the hand that wields it: for he does not explain away the objections that have been advanced by the deist, but he labours rather to extirpate them, and to show that they have no other root but misconception or mistake. Mr. Bellamy's endeavours have had for their object the manifestation of the unimpeachable character and attributes of the great Jehovah, and the inviolable purity of the Hebrew text. Every Christian will wish success to such labours, and every Hebrew scholar will examine if they deserve it. I do not pretend of presume to be a competent judge of this most important question; it is well worthy |