rise up in appalling array before the judgment; and the heart, sickening at the spectacle, sinks in despondency within us. Such, I should suppose, would be the general feeling, except with very superior minds, who are above all disturbance from such causes; or with those

them. We consider such enquiries as at best but matters of curious research. Burke, who with far greater powers, has explored an analogous subject, and developed the sources of the sublime and beautiful, has perhaps been still less efficacious. What effect, indeed, would we require from such works? The object of these writers has not been presumptuously to lay down new laws of their own, for the direction of our taste and the regulation of our conduct; but carefully to investigate the processes, which nature has adopted for this purpose: and it is not till we are staggered, perplexed, and disgusted, by mischievous and phantastic theories, spun out of false principles, that we resort with a genuine relish to the true. If you should read the work I have quoted, after the perusal of this Letter, you will feel, I think, the full force of this observation.

"Nothing can be better founded than the principle of the theory there stated, or more natural and satisfactory than the solution it affords. It places the grounds of our moral approbation and our blame, not in a painful scrutiny into the consequences of actions,

fore him in reality, or strongly pictured in his mind.

I well remember that the praises, which Dr. Parr bestowed on my diligence, accuracy, and learning, such as it was, had an encouraging, and not a depressing effect; and in many instances his well-directed praises of useful and valuable works promoted further and higher exertions in the delighted authors, who had perhaps no personal claims to his notice.

Dr. Parr was not the only great man, who discerned the merit of Mr. Green as a philosopher. " Mr. Green was highly gratified," says his biographer p. 53, "by the warm approbation bestowed upon it by those, whose judgment he most valued; and, in an especial manner, by the commendation of that candid and en

happily-gifted beings, those fools of fortune, provoking rather our spleen than our envy, who enjoy the blessing of self-satisfaction and complacency, and, as they are completely callous from vanity to censure, are enabled by the same principle to swallow, without being cloyed, any measure of praise." P. 161.*

which we rarely regard, and which it is an effort to pursue, but in the sentiments and passions from whence they spring, and which they kindle; affections, which touch us by an involuntary sympathy, and find an echo in every breast. We enter into the feelings of those around us — without this their conduct could operate upon us no otherwise than if they were mere automata. We enter thus into their feelings, because, as susceptible of the same impressions ourselves, the occasion immediately suggests how we should feel so circumstanced. Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco, is the language of poetry and truth, and applicable to every sympathy, as well as to compassion. When the feelings of others are found, on this suggestion, in concord with our own, they touch us with delight, and excite our approbation; when otherwise, they affect us with disgust, and provoke our censure. Had we been so constituted, accordingly, as to feel for others as acutely as they feel for themselves, our approbation would have been indiscriminate; all conduct would have affected us alike; and no such consequence as moral distinction could possibly have

lightened scholar, Dugald Stewart, conveyed to him in a very flattering Letter soon after its appearance. Praise from such a quarter Mr. Green estimated highly as it deserved; nor do I think there existed any one, whose testimonial of applause could be, in his estimation, of greater or more intrinsic worth." According to Mr. Green's theory, this Letter, if it exhilarated him at first, ought to have soon produced a depressing effect; and about such an affect the biographer is silent. E. H. B.]

In the Bibl. Parr. 653, under the title of this tract, Mr. Green is termed a sensible man." "Among the academics, who, during

"In 1780," says Dr. John Johnstone, "Parr appeared before the public as an author of Sermons. He was invited by the Mayor of Norwich in his official capacity, to print one preached in the Cathedral, Dec. 25, 1779. and the other in

resulted. As we are naturally disposed, however, to enter into some affections and passions more readily than into others—into those, which directly act upon the mind, as joy or grief, than those, which result from some physical disposition of the body, as hunger or desire into those, which are common to all ages and temperaments, as emulation, than those, which are peculiar to some, as love-into those, which generate others congenial to themselves, as gratitude, than those, which generate the reverse, as resentment and into none, unless we are equally acted upon by the same common cause, in a degree equal to that of the person principally affected-so, to procure that perfect sympathy, which conciliates approbation, two different efforts are required, giving rise to two different sets of virtues, estimable and valuable, (like every thing else,) according to the delight they afford, and the difficulty of their attainment: 1st, that of the spectator, to enter into the feelings of the person principally affected, from whence we derive all the amiable virtues, which turn on sensibility: and 2dly, that of the person principally concerned, to reduce his feelings to the standard of the spectator's sympathy, from whence originate all the respectable virtues, which turn on self-command;

Dr. Parr's life, have been distinguished by classical, oriental, theological, or mathematical knowledge, by professional skill, or by parliamentary abilities," and whom Dr. Parr "recollected with triumph," is inserted the name of Mr. Green: -"Mr. Green, whose penetration, whose taste, whose large views in philosophy, and whose great talents for composition, entitle him to my respect, has quoted (p. 32,) some admirable lines from Pope, in order to illustrate the progress of our affections. I will give the reader an opportunity of comparing these lines with a passage, which they

the Church of St. Peter's Mancroft in that City, March 24, 1780.* Mr. Greene of Ipswich, who afterwards published some Remarks on Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, and on Godwin's System, was one of the persons in of

into which two descriptions of virtue, thus modifying the original passions of our nature, submitting the more selfish to the more enlarged, restraining the unsocial, and stimulating the benevolent, whatever has obtained the estimation of mankind as virtuous, is resolvable; and in reference to which, we approve or condemn whatever is the object of moral sentiment.

"On this theory all is regular, consistent, harmonious; in perfect concord with our feelings and experience; and exactly agreeable to the general economy of nature. It comes home to the bosoms of us all. We are not left, under this scheme, as on the system of expediency, to consume life in groping our way through it; as much agaze at its most ordinary duties, as at its highest functions, the sport of every gust; without any other direction than caprice, without any other impulse than fanaticism. Our appetites and

resemble strongly, but which Mr. Pope in all probability had not seen: Stob. Serm. 82. p. 481." Notes on the Spital Sermon p. 86. In p. 72, Dr. Parr remarks that "the consequence of the radical position that we are bound in justice to do all the good we can, and that all moral duty is comprised in justice,' are stated with great clearness by Mr. Green p 15. Dr. Parr also quotes Mr. G.'s pamphlet with approbation in pp. 73, 74,

* [Mr. Green has in a former page expressed his surprise that Dr. Parr should have mentioned Helvetius in the list of his tutors. But perhaps his surprise would have been less great, if he had observed the following note, which occurs in p. 41, of these two Sermons:-" Helvetius has made many striking remarks upon the importance of education, and has suggested some excellent rules for the method of conducting it. But he has fallen into VOL. II. M

fice at Norwich, when these Sermons were preached, and one of those, to whom they were addressed, thus returns thanks for them :- 'Mr. 'Greene presents his compliments, and returns 'his thanks to Dr. Parr for the high honour he

passions stand as the true original principles of action; each possessing, like the correspondent powers in physical nature, a certain determinate destination, which would be missed, and to a loss incalculable, in the suspension even of the meanest of them. As neither possessing, however, like those powers, a certain determinate force, nor acting on the same unchangeable substance; but varying in different tempers and conditions, and operating on all the varieties of life and society, our moral sentiments arise, a part of our nature, too, to regulate their impulse. While paramount to these, and arbiter of all, presides the understanding; not to supersede, but to superintend, their agency—not to sub

The passage containing the lines from Pope, is this:

"I am bound to produce all the good in my power; but by what incitements is it proposed to stimulate me in this arduous duty? The general good, I will allow, is an object highly desirable; and, though stripped of all, that can impart a lively interest to it, of time and place and person and circumstance, there is no man, I wish to believe, so strangely malevolent, who would not

gross and dangerous errors, when he assigns physical sensibility' and 'memory' as the 'productive causes of our ideas.' Hartley's hypothesis of vibrations has always appeared to me ingenious rather than satisfactory. But I am not acquainted with any writer, who inculcates with so much clearness and so much energy, the necessity of paying an early, a strict, and constant attention to the operations of the human mind. He has investigated the principle of association more deeply, explained it more accurately, and applied it more usefully, than his great and venerable preeursor, Mr. Locke." E. H. B.]