of entire freedom from the bad temper of the dogmatist. Those which are wholly of a practical character, breathe a fine spirit of vital seriousness, of evangelical plainness and sobriety. They have the same direct, forthright character, the same unadorned strength, which are wrought into the other writings of the author; and he who can read them without edification, has, we think, great reason to suspect himself of a diseased state of mind and of moral feeling.

The additional volume of sermons, with which we are now favored, and the title of which stands at the head of this article, was published about three years ago by Edmund Paley, who doubtless enjoyed the best opportunities of examining his father's manuscripts for the purpose of selection. When it was announced that a new series of discourses had been thus prepared and given to the public, we feared that the enterprise might better have been forborne. The friends of great men and popular writers not unfrequently commit the mistake of making too free use of their papers after their death, and eagerly send forth to the world what it would have been more judicious to have withheld; as if they thought,' says one, a heap of stones or rubbish a better monument, than a little tomb of marble.' Our apprehensions were, that such might be the case with respect to this publication, especially as it was known that the other volume had been, in some measure, collected and prepared by Paley himself, and therefore might be supposed to contain those sermons, which he judged most worthy of being committed to the press. An examination of the present volume has, however, entirely relieved us from this fear; for, at least, it does no dishonor to the naine of Paley, and is a truly valuable addition to the works of a favorite author, for which the public will have reason to be grateful. As a whole, it will not probably be deemed equal in merit to its predecessor; but it bears throughout marks of the strong hand of Paley, and no one can fail to recognise here, the same acute mind, the same tone of hearty sincerity and christian seriousness, the same powerful sagacity of observation, the same perspicuity of statement, illustration, and defence, by which he had before been instructed and delighted. Some of the last sermons in the collection are the protographs of several chapters, which appear in the Natural Theology, the Moral Philosophy, and the Evidences of Christianity. The remarks are here, however, expanded, in some respects, into more detail, than in the form which they took as parts of those works, and in the sermon on Suicide, we find the doctrine of expediency, and of regard to general consequences, stated almost in

the same words as in the Moral Philosophy. With the republication of these, however, we find no fault; since in their present form they not only contain new matter, but afford us an agreeable insight into the manner in which Paley turned his sermons to account in the composition of his larger works.

Our limits will not permit us, nor is it necessary, to treat at length of the merits of particular sermons in this excellent collection. They who have read Meadley's Life of Paley, will remember that the sermon on Honesty, is there spoken of, in terms of the highest commendation, as the production of a master's hand, and as having been listened to with great and uncommon interest. It is published in the book before us, and we turned to it with highly raised expectations. But we confess they were disappointed. It is a very judicious and useful discourse; but it is not, by any means, to be ranked among Paley's best efforts of this kind. The sermons on the Analogy between our Natural and Religious Progress, on the Advantages of Old Age, and on Different Degrees of Future Rewards and Punishments, seem to us to claim the highest place in this volume, and to be in the author's best mode of thinking and writing. In the following extract from the last of these, a principle is set forth, which ought to be much more regarded than it is, when we speak of the retributions of a future life.

'Now the actual conduct of different persons being different, and the same conduct differing in merit and demerit, according to the daily opportunity and temptation which the agent experienced, all which circumstances are subject to a multiplied variety, it must follow, that guilt and virtue in different individuals differ in every possible degree; that whatever reason there is to expect from the Divine Being that he will reward virtue and punish vice at all, we have the same reason to expect, as far as the light of nature goes, that he will adapt his rewards and punishments in exact proportion to the virtue or guilt of those who stand at his judgment seat. Very true, it is not thus in human judicature. The same punishment is inflicted upon crimes of very different color and malignancy; and crimes of the same denomination have very different guilt in different persons and different circumstances. But this is a defect in human laws, and proceeds from a defect of power. We have no knowledge of each other's motives and circumstances, to be able to ascertain with precision our mutual merit or guilt; or, if we could, there exists not within the compass of human treatment that precise gradation of punishment which is necessary to a perfect retribution of so much pain for so much guilt;but no such defect, either of knowledge or power, can be imputed to the Deity. He knows the secrets of our hearts, the true motive and the exact value of every virtue, all the circumstances of aggravation and mitigation which attend every crime, and he can form and mould his creatures, so as to make them susceptible of every degree of happiness, and of every degree of misery.' pp. 305–306.

The sermon on The Stirring of Conscience, contains some excellent practical considerations on the corruptions, to which

'the court of chancery within the breast,' as it has been well called, is exposed.

'Any course of sin whatever weakens the power of conscience, not only as to that sin, but as to all. Either the person reflects that it is to no purpose to guard against other sins, whilst he knowingly, constantly, and wilfully goes on in this; or else the principle itself of conscience, by being so often overpowered and beaten back in this instance, has lost its spring and energy in all instances. Almost all, even the greatest sinners, have begun with some particular vice. The first encroachment upon innocence and upon conscience, was made by some single species of offence to which they were tempted; but the rottenness spread. A general and complete depravity of character may grow, and often does grow, out of one species of transgression; because conscience, which has been put to silence, not by one or two oppositions, but by a course of opposition to its remonstrances, ceases to execute its office within that man's breast; so that a conscience, which was once alive, may be reduced to a state of death and insensibility.' p. 12.

The thirteenth discourse under the title, Religion not a mere Feeling, but an Active Principle, is worthy of the subject. We give a single quotation from it.

"The passage from thought to action, from religious sentiments to religious conduct, seems a difficult attainment. I said before, the very beginnings are blessings. Holy thoughts, though occasional, though sudden, though brought on, it may be, by calamity and affliction, though roused in us we do not know how, are still the beginnings of grace. Let no man therefore, despise serious thoughts; let no man scorn or ridicule them in others; least of all the man who has none himself; for there is still a wide difference between him who thinks, though but occasionally, of his duty and of his salvation, and him who never permits himself to entertain such thoughts at all. One, it is true, may be far from having completed his work; the other has not begun his. Those very meditations which he despises in other men, because he sees that they have not the influence which they ought to have upon their lives and conversation, are, nevertheless, what he himself must begin with, what he himself must come to, if ever he enter truly upon a christian course. It is from good thoughts and good resolutions that the christian character must set out; it is with these it must begin; it is by these it must be formed. We cannot, however, always be thinking about religion. That is true; but the thing wanted of us, the thing necessary for us, the thing required in the text, is, not that religion be constantly in our thoughts, but that it have a constant influence upon our behaviour; and that is a very intelligible distinction, and takes place in common life.' pp. 74-75.

The following passage from the sermon on Repentance is but one among many instances of Paley's familiar style and apt illus

trations.

'Almost every man can be sorry for his sins; every man can deplore and forsake them. Most men, indeed, make some shortlived efforts to become virtuous; but perseverance is what they want, and fail in. Yet in one sense there is one essential change made in every sinner who repents; which change consists in this, that whereas before he was growing worse, he is now growing better. His improvement may be slow; but

be it ever so slow, there is still this difference between growing better and growing worse. It resembles to my apprehension, the case of a patient in a fever. We say that his distemper has had a turn; yet take him an hour or a day past the turn, or so much before, and you will observe little alteration; for the alteration is, that whereas he was before growing worse, and weaker, by almost insensible degrees, so now he is growing better and stronger, though by degrees equally slow. And this the physician accounts a great alteration; and so it is, although it be long before he be well, and though he be in perpetual danger of a relapse, during the progress of his recovery. And the physician pronounces expressly, that there has been a turn in the disorder, that the crisis is past, not because his patient is now well, who before was ill, but because he finds him now gradually growing stronger and well, who before was gradually becom ing ill.' p. 194.

In the latter of the two sermons on Good Friday, is a brief, clear, and judicious view of the Doctrine of Reconciliation, though it contains nothing new on the subject.

The Charges are a valuable part of the volume. They belong to occasions and topics, on which Paley's peculiarities of mind appear to much advantage. Some of them are adapted exclusively to the forms and duties of the English Church, and have not much interest for us. But they are all full of the practical wisdom which was an essential part of the author's intellectual character. In the Charge on Afternoon Lectures may be found a discriminating judgment on the merits of Doddridge's Expositor; and in that on Sunday Schools we were pleased to meet the following notice.

"The late General Washington, who appears to have bent his mind to the subject of public education with peculiar attention, made provision in his will, both for the education of the poor children of his neighborhood, and the neighborhood of his estates, and also for the education of the young slaves until the period of their legal manumission should arrive.'— p. 438.

Amidst the clamor of attack and defence that resounds on every side, it is refreshing to turn to a volume, in which religion appears in its plain and sober character; in its peacefulness and purity; in alliance with our best feelings and most elevated thoughts, calm, dignified, and rational, serious without gloom, earnest without extravagance, and drawing its most solemn lessons and most powerful motives from the momentous connexion between well doing here and well being hereafter.

We should be glad to see some of the sermons in this volume printed in the form of tracts for popular use. We believe there are few which would do more good.

ART, V.-The Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, Emperor of the French. With a Preliminary View of the French Revolution. By THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY,' &c. Philadelphia, Carey, Lea & Carey, 1827. 3 vols. 8vo. pp. 516, 400, 438.

*

IN a former number of our work, we reviewed the life and character of Napoleon Bonaparte. We resume the subject, not for the purpose of speaking more largely of the individual, but that we may consider more distinctly the principle of action which governed him, and of which he was a remarkable manifestation.

The passion for power was Bonaparte's ruling principle. Power was his idol. He worshipped no other. To gain supremacy and unlimited sway, to subject men to his will, was his chief, settled, unrelenting purpose. This passion drew and converted into itself the whole energy of his nature. The love of power, that common principle, explains, in a great degree, his character and life. His crimes did not spring from any passion or impulse peculiar to himself. With all his contempt of the human race, he still belonged to it. It is true both of the brightest virtues and the blackest vices, though they seem to set apart their possessors from the rest of mankind, that the seeds of them are sown in every human breast. The man, who attracts and awes us by his intellectual and moral grandeur, is only an example and anticipation of the improvements, for which every mind was endowed with reason and conscience; and the worst man has become such by the perversion and excess of desires and appetites which he shares with his whole race. Napoleon had no element of character which others do not possess. It was his misery and guilt that he was usurped and absorbed by one passion; that his whole mind shot up into one growth; that his singular strength of thought and will, which, if consecrated to virtue, would have enrolled him among the benefactors of mankind, was enslaved by one lust. He is not to be gazed on as a prodigy. He was a manifestation of our own nature. teaches on a large scale what thousands teach on a narrow one. He shows us the greatness of the ruin, which is wrought when the order of the mind is subverted, conscience dethroned, and a strong passion left without restraint to turn every inward and outward resource to the accomplishment of a selfish purpose. The influence of the love of power on human affairs is so constant, unbounded, and tremendous, that we think this princi* Vol. IV. No. V. p. 382.

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