keeper, "giving security for his fidelity and attendance at such times as they appoint." In a parenthesis he intimated that a young preacher seem ed to him the fittest for such a situation; but by not binding them with respect to the object of their choice, submitted it to their discretion. When the trustees found themselves in circumstances which permitted them to carry the founder's design for a pub lic library into execution, they appointed a deputation to examine seve ral buildings and situations which were recommended as well adapted to their purpose; but none of them met with their approbation. At length, in September 1727, they purchased the piece of ground in RedCross Street on which the present building stands, for the sum of four hundred and fifty pounds, and appointed a committee to consult with proper persons respecting the erection of such a house, and to procure an estimate of the requisite expense. The estimate delivered in to them amounted to fifteen hundred and eighteen pounds, which they were empowered by the Court of Chancery to apply to the purpose out of the founder's estates. However, owing to mismanagement somewhere or other, the whole money was expended before the building was finished, and the trustees were compelled to desist from its completion. Thus circumstanced, they consulted about the propriety of making application to the Court of Chancery, for leave to appropriate an additional sum from the Doctor's estates; but were dissuaded by their legal advisers from adopting such a measure. They afterwards agreed, at a general meeting on the 25th of March 1729, to circulate the following notice among their members, with the view, doubtless, of its being communicated to their friends.

Dr. Williams's Library, being near finished, some additions of general advantage to the common interest it is apprehended may be made upon the foundation of that building, consistent with the Doctor's design of additions and of general use, which will require a considerable expense, and yet cannot be defrayed out of his estate according to the allowance made by the Court of Chancery for erecting the library. It is therefore proposed, that any who are inclined to forward that

service, would contribute what they see proper for such a service."

This appeal to 1.Deral-minded men fully answered their expectations. One gentleman defrayed the expense of wainscoting and furnishing the room on the left hand next the outer door, now the librarian's parlour; another paid for the iron gates and iron palisades before the windows; a third expended upwards of forty pounds, contributed by himself and friends, in finishing two stalls in the library; a charitable society (most probably the managers of the presbyterian fund) paid upwards of sixty pounds for fitting up and furnishing what is now called the committee room; and various gentlemen contributed sums of money towards finishing the library and useful additions to the building. The names of Thos. Hollis, Esq.; Joseph Andrews, Esq.; the Rev. Dr. Samuel Wright; Samuel Lessingham, Esq.; the Rev. Mr. Neal; the Rev. Mr. G. Smith; the Rev. Mr. J. Newman; and the Rev. Jos. Bayes, are conspicuous in the list of benefactors on this occasion. By such honourable exertions was this building completed to the state in which it continued till about the year 1760, when two of the trustees, Mr. South and Mr. Bowden, worthily emulated the liberal deeds of their predecessors, by presenting the _mahogany glazed book-cases in the large front room, as well as the mahogany glazed doors to that room and the library. Within our own times, the improved revenues of the founder's estates have enabled the trustees to render the whole establishment greatly more respectable and commodious. The trustees held their first meeting at the library on the 8th of December 1729; and on the 20th of April 1730 the first librarian was chosen, (with the original salary of ten pounds per annum, to which the trustees added fifteen pounds) and the institution opened to the public under the regu lations which the trustees thought it proper to prescribe. Since that day great accessions have been made to it, by bequests of whole libraries, donations of money for the purchase of books, and the respectable presents of numerous individuals. Our limits will not permit us to insert here the names of all the benefactors; but we may be allowed to mention that of

the Rev. Mr. Davies, who presented to the library many scarce and useful volumes; that of the Rev. Thomas Rowe, which stands at the head of a long list of valuable books; that of the Rev. Dr. Harris, who bequeathed 1959 volumes; that of the Rev. Mr. Archer, who bequeathed 473 volumes; that of the Rev. Mr. Sheldon, who bequeathed 314 volumes; that of Mr. Wastfield, who bequeathed a valuable collection of books; that of Thomas Hollis, Esq. which often occurs in the book of benefactions, under the title of an unknown hand; and those of Dr. Horsman, the Rev. Mr. Calamy, the Rev. Dr. Evans, the Rev. Dr. Lardner, Mr. Neal, the Rev. Mr. Walburgh, the Rev. Mr. Lowman,

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the Rev. Dr. Benson, William Mount, Esq., the Rev. Mr. Lindsay, and Thomas Brand Hollis, Esq. We could with pleasure enrich our list by the insertion of names of many living benefactors, who will be honoured by posterity, were we not checked by the recollection of the beautiful and classical apology which Dr. Jortin makes for not panegyrizing his patron Archbishop Herring, then alive, "that it was a custom amongst the ancients not to sacrifice to heroes till after sun-set." In the records of our gratitude those names are faithfully preserved; and far, very far distant be the period, when the trust shall have to offer the tribute of praise to their memory!

SIR,

June 22, 1816. HAVE been, I dare say, by no means singular in entertaining some curiosity respecting the religious opinions of the author of Sandford and Merton, whose talents, so wisely and benevolently employed, during his comparatively short term of life, would have done credit to any mode of faith which he might have adopted. This curiosity was lately revived, by a circumstance which occurred in a course of very miscellaneous reading, I made what inquiries were in my power, and now offer you the result.

There are two biographies of Mr. Day. One, his friend Mr. Keir's Account, published in 1791, the other, by Dr. Kippis, in the Biographia Britannica, Vol. V. 1793, p. 21. From both it appears that he entered as a gentleman-commoner at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, at the age of sixteen." He must then have subscribed the thirty-nine articles, probably consider ing such a subseription as a mere form. He took no degrees at Oxford, and is described by Mr. Keir as proposing for the main object of his academical pursuits, the discovery of moral truths, which he investigated with the severity of logical induction and the depth of metaphysical research." (P. 6.)

The early, warm, and apparently unqualified admiration of J. J. Rousseau which Mr. Day indulged in the dedication of the Dying Negro, in 1773,

may, I suspect, sometimes have given occasion to a doubt whether he were a Christian. It is to be regretted that the only hint on this subject which Dr. Kippis affords, is where he refers, with high approbation, to the first volume of Sandford and Merton, for "some observations concerning the excellency of the Christian religion as adapted to the instruction and comfort of the poor, in a conversation between Mr. Merton, sen. and the tutor." This can hardly be considered as decisive, for Rousseau himself, who panegyrised Jesus Christ, in his letter to the Archbishop of Paris, would not have scrupled such a compliment to Christianity. Mr. Keir has, I think, settled the question, for had Mr. Day been an unbeliever in the Christian revelation, he could not have imitated too many unbelievers, who scrupled no Christian pretensions to serve their interest, but would have proved him self an honest Deist. Yet Mr. Keir describing "with what veneration the people in Mr. Day's neighbourhood beheld him," adds, "he con versed much with them in a familiar style adapted to their capacities, and eonfirmed them in their respective duties. Being at a considerable dis tance from the parish church where he resided in Surry, and finding that many of his neighbours were thereby prevented from attending the service on Sundays, he used to invite them to his house, where he read prayers to

While Mr. Day thus formed a church in his own house, in which he led the devotions and filled the office of a Christian instructor, the question naturally arises whether he could satisfy himself with the liturgy as it is still established on the credit of the theological__wisdom of the sixteenth century. I think he could not, and I ground my opinion on the sentiments which occur in his political pamphlet published in 1784, and entitled, The Letters of Marius. The three first letters are addressed to his friend Dr. Jebb, in which the following passages are introduced for the purpose of illustrating some political opinions. At page 3, he speaks of "a saving faith, according to the true orthodox form of Credo quia impossibile." At page 13, is the following passage:

"I have often thought it a wonderful fallacy of some divines to depreciate human reason in order to exalt religion: for unless that religion be imparted by particular inspiration to every individual, what other method is there of establishing it, then proofs adapted to his reason? The more therefore you convince him of the weakness and fallibility of that faculty, the more you must incline him, were he consistent, to doubt his power of judging concerning the particular evidence you propose." He adds, p. 15: "Here is the general fallacy both of divines and politicians: both begin by teaching you to distrust yourself, and address themselves, if I may use the expression, to the hypocondriacism of human nature. When their representations have succeeded to a certain degree, they give you to understand that the only cure for all your evils is to adopt their own particular system of faith or government."

The following passage, p. 19, contains language worthy of an enlightened Christian. I need not say how congenial to the views of that excellent man to whom these letters were addressed.

"The first apostles of Christianity were mild and lowly, like the founder of their faith. They addressed themselves to the reason of men and propagated their religion by persuasion. They abjured the luxuries and the

cated only by prayers and blessings the malice of their enemies. But mark the change! The instant a royal convert has given the clergy entrance to a court, they abjure every principle of their religion. Then we lose sight of a suffering, and begin the era of a triumphant church. The immediate successors of fishermen and mechanics consent to be clothed in purple and scarlet, to wallow in all the sensualities of the most abandoned age and country, and to disgrace the simplicity of the most spiritual reli gion, by the rites and ceremonies of the grossest. The power of consulting about the interpretation of the articles of their religion, which was expressly given to the whole body of Christians, is, in a short time, monopolized by the clergy; and the power of choosing their pastors and bishops, a right equally deducible from equity, history, reason, and the scriptures, taken from the laity, and shared between the hierarchy and the civil power. And this system of practice and belief, so grossly adulterated, so totally unlike the original, is called Christianity, and enforced by racks, and flames and gibbets; the ancient supporters of eivil, and now the wel come auxiliaries of ecclesiastical pow er. What may we suppose would have been the state of Christianity, at the present hour, had not the daring and original genius of Luther reduced it something nearer to its original principles in the sixteenth century? What may we suppose will be its state in the twentieth, should no new Luther arise to teach our clergy the distance between the house of the Lord and the courts of princes, the difference between the service of God and mammon?"

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Mr. Day presently supposes an objector to exclaim, "you are writing upon government and political liberty, why then deviate to the abuses and corruptions of Christianity?" He an swers, because the history of Christianity, a perfect and recorded succession of facts, which every man may consider at his leisure, is the best if lustration in the universe of the subject on which I am writing. Because if neither the immediate doctrines of heaven itself, nor its positive com

HE doctrine of eternal torments has

Tmore appearance of grandeur than any other article of the orthodox creed. Sometimes it is displayed in all the horrible minuteness and variety in which it is possible to contemplate pain; at others more artfully veiled to heighten its effect, and expressed by distant hints and broken images which make even a sceptic shudder. It en

decreed."

According to Mr. Keir's Account, (p. 97,) On the 28th day of December 1789, as Mr. Day was riding from his house in Surry, to his mother's seat at Barehill, [Berks,] an end was put to his valuable life at the age of forty-one years. His horse having taken fright, threw him to a considerable distance. By this fall his brain suffered such a concussion that he never afterwards spoke."

What Mr. Day has justly attributed to Dr. Jebb, may be recorded as his own praise, “a consistency of life and manners, the delicate colouring of private honesty and integrity, to fill up the flowing outline of public profession, and to make it worthy of a people's admiration.” We scarcely know how to turn from the con-, templation of such characters; one sacrificing to the claims of conscience the fair prospects of early years, and devoting himself, for an honourable subsistence, to an arduous profession which would also afford him the means of extensive benevolence: the other, with an ample fortune, sparing of personal gratifications, that he might abound in benefits to others--both blessed with consorts who cherished their memories, as they had encouraged and assisted their exertions, and possessed and deserved their tenderest affections. If the world is to improve, the time must surely arrive when, as to such men-the people will tell of their wisdom, and the congregation will how forth their praise.

IGNOTUS.

this world with the thunders of the next." It rouses the most ignorant to energy if not to eloquence. It "makes mad the guilty, and appals the free." But admitting that it is attended with all these advantages, I think it may be argued that there is nothing in it essentially poetical-nothing which has a tendency to purify or refinenothing which can elevate the mind above itself, and add to the stock of its sublime conceptions.

There is, I apprehend, no poetry in the mere excitement of terror, or in the display of mental or bodily suffering. Pain and horror, considered in the abstract, can be objects only of pity and disgust; and the more they are realized to the mind, the more they tear or oppress it. It is a mistake to suppose that because they have been associated with magnificent and pleasing images, they have any thing in themselves on which our contemplations can repose. No doubt sorrow has been made the source of some of the most delicious sensations which we are capable of enjoying. But then it has been by associations not its own

by the tender and solemn images with which it has been encircled, and the sympathy we delight to indulge. Thus meditations on the instability of all earthly things derive their touching interest from our perceptions of a resting place that can never perish. We feel that our consciousness of mortality proves us to be immortal. There is a melancholy "ill bartered for the garishness of joy," but we do not love it because it is painful. The memory of buried friendship-the