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to be taller. "Belief or disbelief," says Dr. Whitby, neither be a virtue nor a crime, in any one who uses the best means in his power of being informed. If a proposition is evident, we cannot avoid believing it, and where is the merit or piety of a necessary assent? If it is not evident, we cannot help rejecting it, or doubting of it; and where is the crime of not performing impossibilities, or not believing what does not appear to us to be true?" Throughout the world belief depends chiefly upon localities, and the accidents of birth. The doctrines instilled into our infant mind are, in almost every instance, retained as they were received-without inquiry; and if such a passive acquiescence deserve the name of an intelligent belief, which may well be questioned, it is manifest that we ourselves have no merit in the process. And yet, gracious Heaven! what wars, massacres, miseries and martyrdoms, to enforce that which it does not depend upon the human will, either to adopt or to repudiate !

Perhaps the world never made a more mischievous mistake, than by elevating the meritoriousness and the rewards of belief, which is not in our power, above the claims of good works, which depend entirely upon ourselves; a perversion operating as a premium upon hypocrisy, and a positive discouragement to virtue. Whatever desert there may be in mere belief, we share it with the devils, who are said, in the Epistle of James, "to believe and tremble;" a tolerably conclusive answer to those who maintain that good works are the inevitable result of faith.

We will put a case to the sincere bigot. If fifty, or five hundred, or five thousand, of the most learned and clearsighted men in the kingdom, were solemnly to warn him that his salvation or perdition depended on his believing the sky to be of a bright orange colour, what would be his reply, if he was an honest man? “Gentlemen, most implicitly do I believe that, to your eyes, the sky is of a bright orange colour; but, owing to some singularity or defect in the construction

of my visual organs, a misfortune for which I ought to be pitied rather than hated and anathematized, it has always appeared to me of a mild blue colour; nor can I ever believe, such being the case, that a God of truth and justice, will reward me with eternal happiness for uttering a falsehood; or condemn me to endless torments for avowing that which I most conscientiously believe to be true." Let the bigot, upon questions as to the colour of faith, infinitely more difficult of proof than the hues of visible objects, grant the indulgence he is thus described as claiming; let him do as he would be done by, and he will soon lose the reproach of his name, while enlightened and philanthropic Christianity will gain a convert. But, alas! it is so much easier to observe certain forms involving no self-denial, or to profess a belief, which may be simply an uninquiring assent, than to practise virtue, that the fanatics will always have numerous followers, who will hate the moralists even as the ancient Pharisees detested the Christians.

Shaftesbury, in his "Characteristics," has thus defined the different forms of belief:

"To believe that everything is governed, or regulated for the best, by a designing principle or mind, necessarily good and permanent, is to be a perfect Theist."

"To believe no one supreme designing Principle or Mind, but rather two, three, or more, (though in their nature good) is to be a Polytheist."

"To believe the governing mind or minds not absolutely and necessarily good, nor confined to what is best, but capable of acting according to mere will or fancy, is to be a Dæmonist!"

God forbid! that anything here set down, should be construed into an encouragement of unbelief, when its sole object is the discouragement of unchristian intolerance, by showing the real nature and value of faith. They who persecute, or even hate their fellow creatures for opinion's-sake, want the power rather than the inclination to restore the inquisition,

with all its diabolical cruelties. We are told in the 7th Psalm, that "the Lord ordaineth his arrows against the persecutors." They who practise, therefore, not those who deprecate persecution, are the real unbelievers. Hacknied as is the quotation, we cannot, perhaps, better close this article than with Pope's couplet :

"For modes of faith let zealous bigots fight:

His can't be wrong whose life is in the right."

BENEFICENCE—may exist without benevolence. Arising from a sense of duty, not from sympathy or compassion, it may be a charity of the hand rather than of the heart. And this, though less amiable, is, perhaps, more certain than the charity of impulse, inasmuch as a principle is better to be depended upon than a feeling. There is an apparent beneficence which has no connexion, either with right principle or right feeling, as, when we throw alms to a beggar, not to relieve him of his distress, but ourselves of his importunity or of the pain of beholding him and there is a charity which is mere selfishness, as when we bestow it for the sole purpose of ostentation. We need not be surprised that certain names should be so pertinaciously blazoned before the public eye in lists of contributors, if we bear in mind that "charity covereth a multitude of sins."

BENTLEY-Doctor. In the lately published life of this literary Thraso, the editor has omitted to insert an anecdote which is worth preserving, if it were only for the pun that it embalms. Robert Boyle, afterwards Earl of Cork, having, as it was generally thought, defeated Bentley in a controversy concerning the authenticity of the letters of Phalaris, the Doctor's pupils drew a caricature of their master, whom the guards of Phalaris were thrusting into his brazen bull, for the purpose of burning him alive, while a label issued from his mouth with the following inscription, “Well, well! I had rather be roasted than Boyled."

BIGOT-Camden relates that when Rollo, Duke of Normandy, received Gisla, the daughter of Charles the Foolish, in marriage, he would not submit to kiss Charles's foot; and when his friends urged him by all means to comply with that ceremony, he made answer in the English tongue-NE SE BY GOD—i. e.—Not so by God. Upon which the king and his courtiers deriding him, and corruptly repeating his answer, called him bigot, which was the origin of the term. Though modern bigots resemble their founder in being wedded to the offspring of a foolish parent, viz. their own opinion, they are unlike him in every other particular; for they not only insist upon kissing the foot of some superior authority, the Pope of their own election, but they quarrel with all the world for not following their example. Generally obstinate in proportion as he is wrong, the bigot thinks he best shows his love of God by hatred of his fellow creatures, and his humility by lauding himself and his sect. Vain is the endeavour to argue with men of this stamp

For steel'd by pride from all assaults,
They cling the closer to their faults,
And make self-praise supply an ointment
For every wound and disappointment,
As dogs by their own licking cure
Whatever soreness they endure.
Minds thus debased by mystic lore,

Are like the pupils of the eye,
Which still contract themselves the more,

The greater light that you supply.
Others by them are praised or slander'd,

Exactly as they fit their standard,
And as an oar, though straight in air,
Appears in water to be bent,

So men and measures, foul or fair,

Viewed through the bigot's element,

(Such are the optics of their mind,)
They crooked or straightforward find.

But, ought we not to treat even the most intolerant with forbearance? On this subject, hear what Goethe says, when writing of Voss the German Poet." If others will rob the poet of this feeling of universal, holy complacency; if they will set up a peculiar doctrine, an exclusive interpretation, a contracted and contracting principle, then is his mind moved, even to passion; then does the peaceful man rise up, grasp his weapon, and go forth against errors which he thinks so fearfully pernicious; against credulity and superstition; against phantoms arising out of the obscure depths of nature and of the human mind; against reason-obscuring, intellectcontracting dogmas; against decrees and anathemas; against proclaimers of heresy, priests of Baal, hierarchies, clerical hosts, and against their great common progenitor, the devil himself."

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Ought we to accede to the apparently fair, but radically false and unfair maxim, which, impudently enough, declares that true toleration must be tolerant, even towards intolerance? By no means; intolerance is ever active and stirring, and can only be maintained by intolerant deeds and practices."

BIRTH-Low.-An incitement to high deeds, and the attainment of lofty station. Many of our greatest men have sprung from the humblest origin, as the lark, whose nest is on the ground, soars the nearest to heaven. Narrow circumstances are the most powerful stimulant to mental expansion, and the early frowns of fortune the best security for her final smiles. A nobleman who painted remarkably well for an amateur, showing one of his pictures to Poussin, the latter exclaimed-" Your lordship only requires a little poverty to make you a complete artist." The conversation turning upon the antiquity of different Italian houses, in the presence of Sextus V. when Pope, he maintained that his was the most illustrious of any, for being half unroofed, the light entered on all sides, a circumstance to which he attributed his having been enabled to exchange it for the Vatican.