slight benefit, to the striking and original character of Paley, that, when he was not more than two years old, he was transplanted from the place of his birth to the north, where, in the parish in which his ancestors had long resided, among a people of simple habits and primitive manners, he learnt to despise the factitious modes of artificial life, and to appreciate strong sense and native worth, in whatever rank they might be found. The wild and mountainous district of Craven was probably a more favourable nurse of his genius than Peterborough would have been; and when his father, in 1745, relinquished his minor-canonry in that cathedral, for the head-mastership of the Free Grammar School established at Giggleswick, Paley may have benefitted in more ways than one by the change.

It does not always happen that men of superior talent are distinguished by any remarkable precocity of genius. Every one knows that Swift was at first refused his degree, and that the high celebrity to which he afterwards attained was the result of the study and reflection of his riper years. Paley's early course steered between the two extremes. He was quietly laying in stores of knowledge, and acquiring habits of thought, but with little of that external brilliancy whose promise is often delusive, and whose light daily diminishes in lustre, instead of burning with increasing brightness as it proceeds. His classical education was by no means neglected by his father, but in classical acquirements he was never calculated to excel. The characteristic of his genius was not that of imagination. The discovery of truth, whether scientific or moral, was more interesting to him, even as a boy, than the eloquence of Cicero, or the grace of Horace. He had a strong predilection for mechanics, and in the patient investigation which such subjects demand his accurate and penetrating mind found precisely the culture most congenial to its powers and best adapted to bring them to perfection. Happily for Paley his corporeal indolence never interfered with his mental exertion. It may even be doubted whether it was not upon the whole favourable to the developement of his character. The time spent by him in the quiet recreation of angling, which during the whole of his after life formed one of his principal amusements, was probably far from being lost. While others would have given it entirely to vacancy, or at least to unprofitable musings, Paley may have retired within himself for more useful puposes. He may have given to contemplation the time which was lost to exercise, and reviewed in his hours of leisure the stores of sterling information laid up in his hours of business. To a mind thus prompt to dwell principally on what is real, it might be expected that the subject of Law would never be indifferent. Paley's interest for the study was early awakened by an accidental attendance at the assises in Lancaster before

he finally left school, and such was the impression made upon his fancy by the proceedings which he then witnessed that he is known to have instituted, on his return, trials among his school-fellows, over which he himself presided as judge. The taste thus early acquired was never afterwards lost. The practice of the courts of justice continued to be deeply interesting to his maturer faculties, and an attendance upon them one of the chief relaxations in which he habitually indulged.

Paley was entered early at the University. He had not completed his fifteenth year when he was taken by his father to Cambridge, and admitted a sizar of Christ's College, on the 16th of November, 1758. Part of the journey from Giggleswick was performed on horseback, and that part has been thus ludicrously described by Paley himself. "I was never a good horseman, and when I followed my father on a pony of my own, on my first journey to Cambridge, I fell off seven times. I was lighter then, than I am now, and my falls were not likely to be serious. My father, on hearing a thump, would turn his head half aside and say, 'Take care of thy money, lad.'" Paley continued all his life an awkward equestrian, and whenever he rode, which he often did for the benefit of the exercise, he never would suffer his companion, whoever he might be, to converse with him. "Pray do not talk to me till we get home," was his usual expression on such occasions, "I can only do one thing at a time: It is quite enough for me to ride."

The school of Giggleswick was exclusively a classical one, and the head-master, if he had ability, had not probably leisure, to lead his son forward in that course of mathematical knowledge which was necessary as a previous step to his distinguishing himself at Cambridge. During the year therefore which intervened between his admission at college and his residence there, he studied geometry and algebra with Mr. William Howarth, at Dishforth, near Topcliffe, Yorkshire. That he made the most of his time while under this gentleman's care is abundantly manifest, for though his mathematical studies were taken up thus late, and pursued at college for the first two years with much interruption, he was yet senior wrangler. Parental partiality is not often a safe criterion when an estimate is to be formed of a young man's powers; but when, in October, 1759, having just entered his seventeenth year, Paley commenced his residence at Cambridge, his father no doubt felt amply justified in the following declaration which he ventured to make to one of his pupils: "My son is now gone to college-he'll turn out a great man, very great indeed-I'm certain of it; for he has by far the clearest head I ever met with in my life."

Paley's first entrance upon a college life was fraught with peril.

To a disposition like his, naturally inclined to pleasure, and vividly susceptible of enjoyment, the charms of convivial society were for a time more powerful than the thirst of knowledge, and the delight of amusing and being amused sadly interfered with the serious labours of the study. He was beset with temptations on every side, for his company was courted, not only for his talents, but for his oddities; and his room was filled every day by loungers, who robbed him of that time which to him was so valuable, though to them it might be the commodity which they were most inclined to spare. It cannot however be believed that even this period of his college life passed entirely without improvement. He probably read at hours when he was least suspected, and he had a natural quickness of apprehension and power of selection, which enabled him to gain much in little time. Though he went to Cambridge so well-prepared, that Mr. Shepherd, the mathematical tutor, excused his attendance at the college lectures with the students of his own year, he was regularly present at the lectures on logic and metaphysics given by Mr. Backhouse. But the time at length came when he was roused effectually from his dream of indolence, and by means as honourable to his friend's candour, as creditable to his own resolution. This occurrence is related in an interesting manner by Paley himself. I spent," says he, "the first two years of my under-graduateship happily, but unprofitably. I was constantly in society, where we were not immoral, but idle, and rather expensive. At the commencement of my third year, however, after having left the usual party at rather a late hour in the evening, I was awakened at five in the morning by one of my companions, who stood at my bed-side and said, 'Paley, I have been thinking what a fool you are. I could do nothing, probably, were I to try, and can afford the life I lead : you could do everything, and cannot afford it. I have had no sleep during the whole night on account of these reflections, and am now come solemnly to inform you that, if you persist in your indolence, I must renounce yor society.'

"I was so struck with the visit and the visitor that I lay in bed great part of the day, and formed my plan. I ordered my bedmaker to prepare my fire every evening, in order that it might be lighted by myself. I arose at five, read during the whole of the day, except such hours as chapel and hall required, allotting to each portion of time its peculiar branch of study; and just before the closing of gates (nine o'clock) I went to a neighbouring coffeehouse, where I constantly regaled upon a mutton chop and a dose of milk punch. And thus, on taking my batchelor's degree, I became senior wrangler."

It has been considered derogatory to Paley's character as an in

genuous man, that, when he kept his first act preparatory to taking his degree, he was about to support an opinion, which the representations of the master of his college induced him afterwards to controvert. But, after all, the technical support of an hypothesis in the schools may prove nothing with respect to a man's internal conviction. Paley found in Johnson's Quæstiones Philosophicæ, a book commonly used at that time in the University, an æternitas pœnarum contradicit divinis attributis? and it was probably without much reflection on the subject that he proposed to answer the question in the affirmative. He might have defended his thesis without pledging himself to controvert in after life the eternity of future punishment, and thus run counter to the general doctrine of the church. We know that the contrary opinion obtains among some amiable and even pious men, whose minds are overpowered by the awful contemplation of interminable suffering: and it must be confessed that the dogma has been descanted upon in such unqualified terms, by some orthodox believers, as to surround it with supernumerary horrors. They have deepened the appalling representations of Scripture, and brought the scenes of penal woe before us with a minuteness of detail, which may in some instances have excited a salutary alarm in the breast of the determined profligate, but which has, it is to be feared, in minds of a different texture, suggested doubts of the doctrine itself, and even of the revelation from which it proceeds. Perhaps the least obnoxious view of the subject is to be seen in the Memoirs of Dr. Watson,' a man whom no one will feel disposed to accuse of being over-orthodox, or ready to adopt any opinion without due examination, because it happens to be that of the Church. "Paley," says the Bishop, "had brought me for one of the questions he meant for his act, Eternitas pænarum contradicit divinis attributis? I had accepted it; and indeed I never refused a question either as moderator or as professor of divinity. A few days afterward, he came to me in a great fright, saying, that the master of his college (Dr Thomas, Dean of Ely) had sent to him, and insisted on his not keeping on such a question. I readily permitted him to change it, and told him that, if it would lessen his master's apprehensions, he might put in non before contradicit, and he did so. Dr. Thomas, I had little doubt, was afraid of being looked upon as a heretic at Lambeth, for suffering a member of his college to dispute on such a question, notwithstanding what Tillotson had published on the subject many years before.

"It is, however, a subject of great difficulty. It is allowed on all hands that the happiness of the righteous will be, strictly speaking, everlasting; and I cannot see the justness of that criticism which would interpret the same word in the same verse in different

senses. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into everlasting life.' Matt. xxv. 46.* On the other hand, reason is shocked at the idea of God being considered as a relentless tyrant, inflicting everlasting punishment which answers no benevolent end. But how is it proved that the everlasting punishment of the wicked may not answer a benevolent end, may not be the means of keeping the righteous in everlasting holiness and obedience? How is it proved that it may not answer, in some other way unknown to us, a benevolent end, in promoting God's moral government of the universe?"

In the present day, our senior wranglers are sure of obtaining some situation, either of immediate emolument or of future promise, not unworthy of their talents or their application. But in the year 1763, when Paley obtained the highest honour which a mathematical University can confer, he was only recommended to an academy at Greenwich as second usher. But the time which he spent there was neither without advantage nor pleasure. As classical assistant he had an opportunity of improving his acquaintance with the Latin tongue, in which he was probably not so well versed as he could wish. And the vicinity of Greenwich to the metropolis brought within his reach many sources of enjoyment of which he did not fail to avail himself. His attendance on the courts of justice in particular supplied an inexhaustible fund of amusement and instruction: and such was the contentedness of his disposition, and the moderation of his desires, that, fully satisfied with being constantly and usefully employed, he neither sought nor wished for more.

If there be one species of composition which we should have supposed most uncongenial to the character of Paley's mind, it is that which has been given to the world by Macpherson, as the genuine offspring of the Gaelic poet. And yet the first production of his pen was a Poem in the manner of Ossian.' There are probably few imaginative men who have not luxuriated, in early life, amidst the rushing winds, and tumbling billows, and gleaming lakes, and headlong torrents, and blasted heaths, of this northern witchery. But it is not from the future author of the 'Moral Philosophy,' and of the 'Hora Paulina,' that we should expect the wild vagaries of fancy, the dim and unreal forms which float around the visionary brain.— Paley, however, soon found a literary occupation more consonant to his genius. In 1765, he entered the lists with the senior bachelors of the year for one of the prizes adjudged by the University to the

The English reader will recollect that, in the authorised version of the 'New Testament,' the latter clause of the verse runs thus: "but the righteous into life eternal." The Bishop's version however is closer to the original, the same epithet being applied in the Greek both to "punishment" and to "life."