tradictory dispensations to the goodness of Providence? No. That impossible task is reserved for the Mathusians alone. Other writers on the attributes of the Deity, and the existence of moral and physical evil, have not found themselves embarrassed by any such difficulty. The evils of superfecundity are not to be found in Paley's Natural Theology; nor in Hawkins Browne's Poem De Animi Immortalitate, which is a beautifully succinct system of natural theology; nor in Dr. Thomas Brown's Lectures on the philosophy of the human mind. The latter has the following passage. "The respect which he feels for the virtues of women may thus be considered almost as a test of the virtues of man. He is and must be in a great measure, what he wishes the companions of his domestic hours to be-noble if he wish them to be dignified,-frivolous if he wish them to be triflers,and far more abject than the victims of his capricious favour, if with the power of enjoying their free and lasting affection, he would yet sacrifice whatever love has most delightful, and condemn them to a slavery of the dismal and dreary influence of which he is himself to be the slave." If there be truth in the Malthusian doctrine one half of mankind have not the power of enjoying this interchange of affection; the exquisite picture of virtue and happiness displayed in "The Cottar's Saturday Night," is blurred and discredited; the "cup of heavenly pleasure" therein so solemnly avouched+, is dashed to the ground, or adulterated with poisonous ingredients.

"Nature," says Mr. Malthus, "has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand; but has been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear them;" and every Malthusian is bound implicitly to believe that Nature has not adjusted the balance of food and numbers, but has endowed animated nature with a degree of fecundity immensely disproportioned to the space and productiveness necessary to sustain them. But the most exact observers of nature "vindicate the honour of God" by disproving the injurious assertion. "In every part of the universe," says Adam Smith" we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce; and in the mechanism

* Quid, quos dira fames, AD VICTUM UBI CUNCTA SUPERSUNT

Absumit miseros.

† “I've travelled oft this weary mortal round,

And sage experience bids me thus declare:

If Heaven a cup of Heavenly pleasure spare,

One cordial in this melancholy vale

"Tis when a youthful, loving modest pair

In other's arms breathe out the tender tale

Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale."

Theory of Moral Sentiments, vol. I, p. 216.

of a plant or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual and the propagation of the species." And to the same purpose a writer in the Quarterly Review, No. 86, p. 413. "But above all he (the geologist) observes with delight the constant progress of animated nature, ever varied, but ever adapted to the circumstances which attend it, and sees in all the arrangements whether of the organic or mineral world, the same marks of a First Cause, acting by uniform, invariable laws-bringing order and utility out of the seeming elements of chance and confusion-connecting the peak of the mountain and the bottom of the ocean in one chain of mutual dependence, and rendering the whole subservient to the existence of that abundance of life and enjoyment for which all has been beneficially contrived."

Doubtless there is moral and physical evil in the world; but is there any instance in which the constant pressure of evil is the express object of nature? Earthquakes destroy life, but they do not sadden and pollute it, like the Malthusian checks; nor is there any provision for their recurrence at such short intervals, as would blight hope, paralyze exertion, and immerse the world in abject gloom and misery. Nothing of this sort is to be found in the works of nature. We never discover a train of contrivance to bring about an evil purpose. No anatomist ever discovered a system of organization calculated to produce pain and disease, or, in explaining the parts of the human body, ever said, this is to irritate; this to inflame; this duct is to convey the gravel to the kidneys; this gland to secrete the humour which forms the gout; if by chance he come at a part of which he knows not the use, the most he can say is, that it is useless; no one ever suspects that it is put there to incommode, to annoy, or to torment."* Now the evils of superfecundity, if they existed, would be a tremendous instance of a train of contrivance, in ceaseless operation to bring about an evil purpose.

But, says the Reviewer, the magnitude of the evil is a totally irrelevant consideration. "If any explanation can be found, by which the slightest inconvenience ever sustained by any sentient being can be reconciled with the divine attribute of benevolence, that explanation will equally apply to the most dreadful and extensive calamities that can ever afflict the hunan race. The difficulty arises from an apparent contradiction in terms; and that difficulty is as complete in the case of a headache which lasts for an hour, as in the case of a pestilence which unpeoples an empire; in the case of the gust which makes us shiver for a moment, as in the case of the hurricane in

* Paley's Moral Philosophy.

which an Armada is cast away." To such extremity does the Reviewer urge, and not in vain, his demand on the docility of his readers! Yet he himself, in the same moment makes it "a question of more or less," since he thinks it would be unreasonable, and impious, in Mr. Sadler to complain of "three or four rainy summers in succession," or of a certain quantity of dry weather, or stormy weather," implying that a constantly operating tendency to earthquakes and famines, could not be reconciled with the attribute of benevolence in the Deity. The question of more or less is an essential part of one of the two propositions on which Dr. Paley rests the proof of the divine goodness; namely "that in a vast plurality of instances in which contrivance is perceived, the design of the contrivance is beneficial,"—" In each individual (animal) how many things must go right for it to be at ease; yet how large a proportion out of every species is so in every assignable instance !" "In our own species, in which perhaps the assertion may be more questionable than in any other, the prepollency of good over evil, of health, for example and ease, over pain and distress, is evinced by the very notice which calamities excite."

I have now examined all the Reviewer's arguments in support of the Malthusian, and against the Sadlerian law of population; and commit the result to the deliberate judgment of the reader; stipulating only that he shall be able to say with sincerity, Amicus Malthusius, or if it be so amicus Sadlerius, sed magis

If verse the debt of gratitude could pay
With what exulting eagerness of heart

Thy name should now be uttered!-'Tis the part
Of souls like thine, with friendship's fervid ray,
To wake more zeal than words can well convey,
Though tinctured by the Muse.-I toil in vain
To yield thy meed, yet thou wilt not disdain
The warmth that prompts the tributary lay.
Thy generous courtesy and noble grace,
Thy cordial manners and benignant deeds,
Have left on "memory's waste" a lasting trace,
As pleasant as the verdure that succeeds
The summer rain, whose balmy moisture feeds
The grateful soil and brightens Nature's face!

D. L. R.

THE XIV. ODE OF THE 1ST BOOK

OF HORACE TRANSLATED.

(Horace dissuades the Republic, which is represented under the allegory of a ship
from renewing the Civil War.)

O! venturous bark, shall billows bear
Thee back again to sea?

Fly not the port! Beware! Beware!
It still is on thy lee!

Beware! Beware! oh keep in mind

That thy rowers are torn away,

Thy main-mast split by the fierce south wind,
Thy yards sigh mournfully:

No undergirdings round thy keel,
It never can sustain

Shocks, which the rock itself may feel,

Of the imperious main;
And no entire sail hast thou,
Nor ev'n one God to hear a vow
When danger comes again.

Although thou art of Pontic pine,—
Haught daughter of the wood,-
And so canst boast a race divine:
What recks the boisterous flood?
What reason can the sailor see
In a painted stern for faith?
Beware! Beware! or thou wilt be
Sport of the wild wind's wrath!
Beware! oh, long my constant care,
And still my anxious woe,
Of the shining cyclades beware,
And the waves that interflow.

TO DEATH.

Hopes divine

Of faith and virtue born alone may cheer

Mortality's inevitable hour.

Nor phrensied prayer, nor agonizing tear

E.

May check thine arm or mitigate thy power;

Ruin's resistless sceptre is thy dower,

Thy throne, a world-thy couch, Creation's bier!

R.

SOME PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF WILLIAM GREEN, MARINER.

PART I.

I do not know who was in the right, when I was sent to Sea at twelve years old, in a most anomalous situation, of which I can give no account, being neither sailor, nor passenger, cabinboy, midshipman nor powder monkey; it seemed as if I had been transferred to the Captain, to do with me as he listed, and had he chosen to kidnap and sell me, I dare say my guardians would have made but slender enquiries regarding me. I had lost my parents when very young, and my guardians were in no way connected with me, which may go some way to account for my not liking them, or they me; they said I was headstrong and disobedient, and I said they were tyrannical and capricious, so to prevent recrimination and mutual fault finding, I was consigned to a Sea Captain. He was an odd preceptor for so young a pupil, and a very improper one, if my character was really as described by my guardians; for the ropes-end, was the end of his every argument, and the beginning was a fisty cuff. Navigation, he must have known, or he could not have carried his vessel from port to port, but of everything else he was profoundly ignorant, grossly irreligious, given to strong potations of brandy, &c. and oftentimes very savage. If I was not drowned or starved on board of that vessel, or hanged after I quitted it, it was not the fault of my Captain. It was indeed very fortunate, nay providential for me, that our second Mate (for we had two) was a well educated and behaved young man, who seeing my helpless condition and the way I was going, took me in hand, and taught me many things, especially arithmetic and geography, as well as a smattering of latin; all which accomplishments I have since learned, and about as much as could have been acquired in a public or private school, conducted as they then were. I do not think my Captain liked to see me taken notice of, and used to jeer my master about his pupil, and myself about the elegant accomplishments I was acquiring; he ended one day by declaring, that I had been sent on board his vessel to learn Seaman's duty, and that I should get in at the hawse-hole, and work my way aft, and not commence with the Captain's cabin larning (as he pronounced) of latin, and swore that if he caught me reading latin books again he would masthead me. Confined to geography and arithmetic, as far as intellectuals went, it may be supposed I perfected myself in the