been the trumpeter of rebellion to these men ; thou must answer for them. Upon this, my grenadier gave him a push with the butt-end of his musket, so that the spirit fell into the ditch. Whilst sprawling on his back, he told the soldier, thou hast not used me civilly; I doubt, thou art not a real friend to King George." We honour the grenadier for protecting his prisoner from insult-but we cannot, at the same time, help thinking that there is some justice in the Quaker's observation. When the Earl of Mar sent so large a detachment of his forces across the Frith, he appears not to have contemplated the probability of their marching into England. On the contrary, it was his wish that, after uniting themselves to the Lowland rebels and the English insurgents who might cross the border, they should proceed to the west of Scotland and embarrass the movements of the Earl of Argyle. Mr. Forster, then, by persuading the Highlanders to accompany him into Northumberland, materially deranged his plans. He, however, found himself strong enough to make head against the king's forces, and on Sunday the 13th of November he gave them battle at Sheriff-Moor, near Dumblain. The result of this engagement was indecisive. Both generals claimed the victory; but neither retained his ground, Mar retiring to Perth, and Argyle to Stirling. The latter, however, received at his headquarters daily reinforcements, while the numbers of the former decreased. Whilst affairs were in this posture, the Pretender landed in Scotland, and immediately repaired to Scone, whence he issued several Royal proclamations. During his residence in Scone, he received a loyal address from the Episcopal clergy of the diocese of Aberdeen. The mention of this circumstance gives occasion to Mr. Patten to record the remarkable fact, that, during the continuance of the Rebellion, " only two Presbyterian ministers in all Scotland complied to pray for the Pretender, and were afterwards turned out by the General Assembly; whilst only two Episcopal ministers prayed for his Majesty King George." The ill-fated Stuart was not long permitted to play the King in his hereditary dominions. Being pressed by the approach of the Duke of Argyle, he hastened to Aberdeen, where, accompanied by the Earl of Mar and a few others of his principal friends, he embarked on board a small vessel, and sailed for France, leaving the general body of his adherents to make the best terms they could with the conqueror. Thus terminated the Rebellion of 1715; an enterprise which originated in false political principles, which was sup ported by the spirit of clanship, and fostered by the intemperance of High-Church bigotry-but was happily defeated by the steadiness of the Whigs, backed by the plain good sense of the Scotch Presbyterians, and of that truly valuable portion of the community, the middle class of the English nation. ART. III.-Siris: a chain of philosophical Reflexions and Enquiries concerning the Virtues of the Tar Water, and divers other subjects connected together, and arising one from another. By the Right Rev. Doctor George Berkeley, Lord Bishop of Cloyne. 8vo. 1744. In whatever estimation the philosophical opinions of Bishop Berkeley may be held by the metaphysicians of the present day, it will be admitted, by all who are conversant with his writings, that he was a profound scholar, eminently skilled in logic and physiology, and deeply read in the ancient systems of those sciences. He has a higher claim than this to the veneration of posterity. He was a singularly good man, in whom a warm benevolence to his fellow creatures, and a zealous piety to God, were not merely the enthusiasms of his heart, but the presiding rules of his life. It is well known, that he conceived the project of converting the American savages to Christianity, by establishing a college in the island of Bermuda; and at a period, when the highest preferments were within his reach, offered, for the trifling stipend of one hundred pounds a year, to go out himself and devote the residue of his days to the furtherance of that pious object. His Minute Philosopher is an argumentative dialogue, containing a powerful refutation of the doctrines of atheism, fatalism, and the disbelief of revelation. The divine and the moralist may have recourse to it, as to an armoury of bright but vigorous weapons in defence of the sublime truths of Christianity, and the primary maxims of natural theology. No one in his generation ever laboured with greater zeal in his writings, or with a more wholesome example in his conduct, to uphold those true interests of man. He was the friend and companion of Swift and Pope, and, indeed, of all the eminent lights of his age. In conversation, he was airy, cheerful, and rapid, running with the ease and swiftness, which mark the man of the world from the mere man of letters, over a great variety of subjects. When grave and philosophical topics arose, he reasoned with strength and perspicuity, and, what is rare in colloquial discussion, with the utmost power of condensation. It is said, that his visit to Mallebranche was fatal to that philosopher, who, being at that time affected with a disease of the lungs, was roused to exer tions on the occasion, which not long afterwards terminated in his death. Warburton did justice to the virtue and genius of Berkeley, but was infected with the notion, which has been so generally current, that his philosophical system was visionary. In a letter to a friend,* he remarks of him, "he is, indeed, a great man, and the only visionary, I ever knew, that was." Such estimates are rashly adopted, and inconsiderately received. They soon become traditionary, and by being handed from one person to another, acquire the authority of indisputable axioms. This indolent acquiescence saves, it is true, a world of inquiry, and is admirably suited to the superficial thinking of an age, when so much more is said and written, than is known, of the literature or philosophy of the last century. It is quite enough, therefore, for those who think by rote or fashion, that Berkeley held the non-existence of matter. The tenet strikes vulgar and unlearned apprehensions, as a palpable absurdity, and is immediately classed with those abuses of reason and aberrations of genius, so common both in letters and philosophy. Johnson himself was not exempt from the common prejudice against the supposed theory of Berkeley. His summary refutation of it, by striking his foot with great force against a stone, and exclaiming, "I refute it thus," is recorded by Boswell. But he did not refute it, nor did he precisely understand Berkeley's argument. The bishop never denied all that Johnson proved, namely, the sensation of solidity. He admitted that we had those sensations or ideas, which are commonly called sensible qualities, such as solidity, extension, &c. &c.; and he only denied the existence of that matter, or inert senseless substance, in which they are supposed to reside. Johnson's argument, if it deserves the name, was founded on the erroneous assumption, that solidity is matter. With equal justice might it be said, that when Jack Lizard, on his return from Oxford, with his smattering of philosophy, pinched his sister's lap-dogs, to prove that they could not feel it,--the Aristotelian philosophy was confuted, when the animals howled under the operation;— for neither Aristotle, nor the schoolmen, ever maintained the opinion which Addison ridicules, that lap-dogs, when pinched, could not feel the pain. However inadequate Berkeley's tenet may be to solve the problem, to which he applied it, it is by no means deserving of contemptuous treatment. He first advanced it in his Principles of Human Knowledge, a truly original and masterly work, in which, by several distinct gradations of proof, he arrives at * Letters from a late eminent Prelate, &c. &c. &c. London, 1809. what he calls the non-existence of matter. But this proposition, to be understood, must not be nakedly stated. Berkeley held, that what are vulgarly considered to be sensible objects, are only ideas created in the mind by the immediate power of the Deity, who, by a constant adherence to this mode of agency, has established that which we will call a law of nature. These ideas are the shadows or images of things, and were termed "species,"" forms,"" phantasms," by the ancients; subsequently, by Des Cartes, "ideas;" and by Hume, "impressions." Nor is Berkeley's a merely sceptical theory, for he ascribes ideas to the perpetual interventions of the Deity. He is, therefore, somewhat unfairly classed, by Hume *, with the sceptics of the ancient academy, and with Bayle amongst modern philosophers. Berkeley, in his theory, intended nothing more than the refutation of the doctrine of general or abstract ideas, concluding, with Aristotle and others, that the sensible qualities of objects, such as hard, soft, hot, cold, &c. are merely secondary, and do not exist in the objects themselves, but are perceptions of the mind, underived from any archetype or model. From secondary qualities, he followed up his reasonings to those primary ones of extension and solidity, which are acquired from the sense of sight and feeling; for if all the qualities perceived by the senses be not in the object, but in the mind, the same conclusion must extend to all those ideas, which are wholly dependent on the sensible ideas, or the ideas of secondary qualities. "Nothing," says Hume, who borrowed his argument from Berkeley, "can save us from this conclusion, but the asserting that the ideas of those primary qualities are attained by abstraction; an opinion, which, if we examine it accurately, we shall find to be unintelligible, and even absurd. An extension, that is neither tangible nor visible, cannot possibly be perceived. And a tangible or visible extension, which is neither hard nor soft, black nor white, is equally beyond the reach of human conception. Let any man try to conceive a triangle, in general, which is neither Isosceles nor Scalenum, nor has any particular length or proportion of sides; and he will soon perceive the absurdity of all the scholastic notions with regard to abstraction and general ideas." But Berkeley, whilst he annihilated matter by bereaving it of all its intelligible qualities, both primary and secondary, did not acquiesce in the scepticism of Hume, nor was satisfied, like that dialectician, with terminating all his reasonings in a certain, unknown, inexplicable something, as the * See note N. to Hume's Essay on the Academical, or Sceptical Philosophy. In cause of our perception. He referred what are commonly called ideas, to the living and immediate operations of the Supreme Being, who, by the constancy of his intervention, has established one great and permanent law of nature. truth, there can be little doubt, that his notions of sensible qualities were taken from the Aristotelian philosophy; and it will be still more evident, if we extract a passage from a celebrated Scotch disciple of that philosophy, Alexander Ross, a name, probably, more known from two lines in Hudibras, than from his profound and accurate metaphysics. His Philosophical Touchstone, written in reply to Sir Kenelm Digby's Discourses of the Nature of Bodies, contains this passage: If qualities be unknown, then tell me what it is we know; for substances we know not, but as they are clothed with their accidents, or qualities. Take away heat, colour, light, levity from the fire in your kitchen, and how shall you know there is fire there ? And what will your cook say, if you bid him dress your supper with fire wanting those qualities? We have no knowledge but by the senses, to which neither the form nor the substance are obvious but by their qualities *." Yet there seems to be 66 a material distinction between the leading tenet of Berkeley, as to the non-existence of a material world, and the opinions of Aristotle, as they are developed in the passage which we are about to cite from his Metaphysics, and which shew him, we think, to have been aware of the admirable distinction of Des Cartes (a distinction, unfortunately, not recognized by Berkeley), between the primary and sensible qualities of matter. “ Το μεν ουν μητε τα αισθητα είναι, μητε τα αισθήματα, ισως αληθες· του γαρ νοεμενε παθος τουτο εσι το δε τα ὑποκειμενα ἁ ποιει την αισθησιν, αδυνατον· ου γαρ δη αισθησις αυτη εαυτής εστιν, αλλά εστιν τι έτερον παρα την αισθησιν, ὁ αναγκη προτερον είναι της αισθήσεως το γαρ κινουν του κινουμενα φυσει προτερον εστι κάν ει λεγεται προς άλληλα ταυτα ουτα, ουθεν nlTov." lib. iv. c. 5. Probably it is true, that the things immediately perceived, as well as the perceptions themselves, do not really exist; but, that the subjects, which cause the perceptions, should not exist, is impossible. For perception doth not exist of itself; but there is something besides perception, which must necessarily precede it. For the mover of any thing must naturally precede the motion which it causes; nor is this the less true, though it be objected, that these two are relative to each other." 66 او Enough, we think, has been said, to shew, that, if Berkeley erred, he erred with many of the soundest philosophers of the ancient and modern schools. For, though we have pointed *The Philosophical Touchstone, by Alexander Ross. 1645. |