tious views, and renders vain all hope of worldly pre-eminence, exercising that profession during the greater part of his life in one christian society, and regularly occupied in the discharge of its duties, or in imparting to a few favoured pupils a portion of that store of knowledge which by the industry of many years he had been accumu lating; he cannot be expected to supply any of those events by which the biographer usually engages the attention and interests the passions of his readers. Yet such were the excellencies which endeared him while living to a large circle of friends, and which now that he is no more in this world, render him an object upon which their memory loves to dwell; such was the originality of the few productions which he committed to the press, but which owing solely to the particular nature of the topics on which they treat, are now not generally read or known; so ingenious and important were the opinions he had formed upon subjects connected with general science, as well as with his own profession, that the exertions of friendship to offer some public tribute to his memory, will, it is ardently hoped, not merely interest and gratify those who long knew and revered

him, but be the means of reviving attention to some truths, which though immediately connected with events that have long passed, will always be of general utility, of suggesting some hints which may lead to further inquiries, and of conveying both to the public and the private instructor, to the minister of religion and to the teacher of youth, some information which may be useful both to themselves and to those entrusted to their care.

The Rev. William Wood was born at Collingtree, a village near Northampton, on May 29, O. S. 1745. His father Mr. Benjamin Wood, was a member of the christian society at Northampton, of which Dr. Doddridge was the minister; and being a pious man, paid peculiar attention to the religious instruction of his children. While engaged in the usual occupations of his business, he was accustomed to employ them in reading to him some work of piety, to which he fixed their attention by frequent questions and remarks, and thus imprinted upon their tender minds lessons of the most salutary nature for the future conduct of life. Happy the children who are thus early taught the love and practice of religion! Erroneous

speculative opinions may indeed at the same time be frequently inculcated, but the more important instructions of practical truth will, in after life, counteract the influence of these, or give consistency and worth to the character if a purer system of faith shall have been adopted. Dr. Priestley was accustomed to speak in terms of the warmest gratitude of that near relative who instilled into his tender breast, with opinions which he afterwards abandoned as in the highest degree erroneous, sentiments of deep piety to God; and Mr. Wood also, who soon relinquished the calvinistic principles in which he was instructed by his father, and at length became a firm and consistent believer in the unity of God, most strictly considered, and in all those doctrines necessarily connected with that great truth, never ceased to feel and to acknowledge the debt he owed to his parent for this early assiduity in forming in him a religious character. What might not be expected from similar attention on the part of those whose lessons of early piety may be enforced by the most pleasing views of the divine character and government! How glorious the harvest which might arise from the seed of the

word of God, committed to the youthful heart without any mixture of tares!

Of Mr. Wood's childhood little else is known than, that he very early discovered considerable talents, and that he passed, with great credit, through the ordinary course of school education, under the late Dr. Stephen Addington, at Market Harborough. At the age of sixteen he entered the Dissenting Academy in Wellclose-square, London, at that time under the care of the Rev. Dr. D. Jennings, and the Rev. Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Morton Savage. In the following year, 1762, upon the death of Dr. Jennings, the academy was removed to Hoxton: Mr. Savage was appointed to the office of theological tutor, and with him were associated as tutors, the one in the belles lettres, the other in mathematics and natural philosophy, the Rev. A. Kippis, and the Rev. A. Rees. Among his contemporaries in the academy were, Mr. J. Alexander, author of a paraphrase on 1 Cor. xv. Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Samuel Wilton, Mr. Forsyth, late tutor at Daventry and Northampton, Mr. Beaufoy, late Member of Parliament for Yarmouth, and Mr. T. Jervis, formerly tutor to the present Marquis of Lansdowne,

and recently chosen to succeed to the pastoral office at Mill-Hill Chapel, in Leeds. With some of these he continued to maintain a pleasing intercourse through life; but with the last he formed a close and intimate friendship, which subsisted without interruption till death.

To the excellence of his conduct as a student, as also to the talents and virtues by which he was throughout life distinguished, this "friend of his youth, and companion of his early studies," has borne his affectionate and public testimony: (See Athenæum for May 1808.) and the writer of this memoir has perused with pleasure and advantage the notes which Mr. Wood had preserved of the able lectures delivered in the academy, and listened with admiration to the account of his own private studies, both upon those subjects which regularly claimed his attention, and those which, though they be essential to form the general and polite scholar, are unavoidably excluded from the necessarily contracted plan of an academical course. Mr. Wood had not chosen the work of the ministry as an idle occupation; he was well aware of the importance of that work, and of the necessity, not of natural talents