we travelled less distance than usual.Gusts of wind, and indeed continual strong breezes all night, covered us with sand, and proved inconceivably troublesome. It was here I saw many of those columns of sand, collected by a circular movement of the atmosphere, and appearing as a cone, lengthening and increasing in bulk to a prodigious height. The resemblance they bear to what the sailors term water-spouts, cannot fail of occurring to those who have noticed such phenomena at sea; and when they are multiplied in number, as is frequently the case, there is some. thing peculiarly interesting, and even grand in the spectacle.

The next day brought us to the banks of that delightful river, which, taking its rise in the lofty and almost impenetrable mountains of Arrarat, separates the countries of Syria and Diarbekeer, passes through Arabian Irak before its junction with the Tigris, and then empties its waters, in an united stream, into the Persian Gulph,

Anecdotes of the late BUBB DODING. TON. From Cumberland's Memoirs.

Ν

IN the adjoining parish of Hammersmith lived Mr Dodington, at a splendid villa, which, by the rule of contraries, he was pleased to call La Trappe, and his inmates and familiars, the monks of the convent ; these were Mr Windham his relation, whom he made his heir, Sir William Breton, privy purse to the king, and Doctor Thompson, a phy sician out of practice; these gentlemen formed a very curious society of very opposite characters; in short it was a trio consisting of a misanthrope, a courtier and a quack. Mr Glover, the author of Leonidas, was occasionally a visitor, but not an inmate, as those abovementioned. How a man of Dodington's sort came to

single out men of their sort (with the exception of Mr Glover) is hard to say, but though his instruments were never in unison, he managed to make music out of them all. He could make and find amusement in contrasting the sullenness of a Grumbletonian with the egregious vanity and self-conceit of an antiquated coxcomb, and as for the Doctor he was a jack-pudding ready to his hand at any time. He was understood to be Dodington's body-physician, but I believe he cared very little about his patient's health, and his patient cared still less about his prescriptions; and when, in his capacity of superintendant of his patron's dietetics, he cried out one morning at breakfast to have the muffins taken away, Dodington aptly enough cried out at the same time to the servant to take away the raggamuffin, and truth to say, a more dirty animal than poor Thompson was never seen on the outside of a pig stye; yet he had the plea of poverty and no passion for cold water.

It is about a short and pleasant mile from this villa to the parsonage house of Fulham, and Mr Dodington having visited us with great politeness, I became a frequent guest at La Trappe, and passed a good deal of time with him there, in London also, and occasionally in Dorsetshire. He was certainly one of the most extraordinary men of his time, and as I had opportunities of contemplating his character in all its various points of view, I trust my readers will not regret that I have devoted some pages to the further delineation of it.

In the higher provinces of taste we may contemplate his character with pleasure, for he had an ornamented fancy and a brilliant wit. He was an elegant Latin classic, and well versed in history ancient and modern. His favourite prose writer was Tacitus, and I scarce ever surprised

him

him in his hours of reading without finding that author upon his table before him. He understood him well, and descanted upon him very agreeably, and with much critical acumen. Mr Dodington was in nothing more remarkable than in ready perspicuity and clear discernment of a subject thrown before him on a sudden; take his first thoughts then, and he would charm you; give him time to pon. der and refine, you would perceive the spirit of his sentiments and the vigour of his genius evaporate by the process; for though his first view of the question would be a wide one and clear withal, when he came to exercise the subtlety of his disquisitorial powers upon it, he would so ingeniously dissect and break it into fractions, that, as an object when looked upon too intently for a length of time grows misty and confused, so would the question under his discussion, when the humour took him to be hyper-critical. Hence it was that his impromtu's in parliament were generally more admired than his stu. died speeches, and his first suggestions in the councils of his party better attended to than his prepared opinions.

Being a man of humble birth, he seemed to have an innate respect for titles, and none bowed with more devotion to the robes and fasces of high rank and office. He was decidedly aristocratic: he paid his court to Walpole in panegyric poems, apologizing for his presumption by reminding him, that it was better to be pelted with roses than with rotten eggs: to Chesterfield, to Winnington, Pulteney, Fox, and the luminaries of his early time, he offered up the oblations of his genius and incensed them with all the odours of his wit; in his latter days, and within the period of my acquaintance with him, the Earl of Bute, in the plenitude of his power, was the god of his idolatry. That noble Lord was himself too much a

man of letters and a patron of the sciences to overlook a witty head, that bowed so low, he accordingly put a coronet upon it, which, like the barren sceptre in the hand of Macbeth, merely served as a ticket for the coronation procession, and having nothing else to leave to posterity in memory of its owner, left its mark upon the lid of his coffin.

He had his serious hours and graver topics, which he would handle with all due solemnity of thought and language, and these were to me some of the most pleasing hours I have passed with him, for he could keep close to his point, if he would, and could be not less argumentative than he was eloquent, when the question was of magnitude enough to interest him. It is with singular satisfaction I can truly say that I never knew him flippant upon sacred subjects. He was, however, generally courted and admired as a gay companion rather than as a grave

ope.

I have said that the dowager Ladies Stafford and Hervey made part of our domestic society, and as the trivial amusement of cards was never resorted to in Mr Dodington's house, it was his custom in the evenings to entertain his company with reading, and in this art he excelled ; his selections powever were curious, for he treated these ladies with the whole of Fielding's Jonathan Wild, in which he certainly consulted his own turn for irony rather than their's for elegance, but he set it off with much humour after his manner, and they were polite enough to be pleased, or at least to appear as if they were.

Dodington had a lyre, but he had hung it up, and it was never very high-sounding; yet he was something more than a mere admirer of of the Muse. He wrote small poems with great pains, and elaborate letters with much terseness of style, and some quaintness of expression:

I have seen him refer to a volume of his own verses in manuscript, but he was very shy, and I never had the perusal of it. I was rather better acquainted with his diary, which since his death has been published, and I well remember the temporary disgust he seemed to take, when upon his asking what I would do with it, should he bequeath it to my dis cretion, I instantly replied, that I would destroy it. There was a third, which I more coveted a sight of than of either of the above, as it contained a miscellaneous collection

of anecdotes, repartees, good sayings, and humorous incidents, of which he was part author and part compiler, and out of which he was in the habit of refreshing his memory, when he prepared himself to expect certain men of wit and pleasantry either at his own house or elsewhere. Upon this practice, which he did not affect to conceal, he observed to me one day, that it was a compliment he paid to society, when he submitted to steal weapons out of his own ar-, moury for their entertainment, and ingenuously added, that although his memory was not in general so correct as it had been, yet he trusted it would save him from the disgrace of repeating the same story to the same hearers, or foisting it into conversation in the wrong place or out of time. No man had fewer oversights of that sort to answer for, and fewer still were the men, whose soci al talents could be compared with those of Mr Dodington.

SCOTTISH REVIEW. Controversy concerning the Election of a MATHEMATICAL PROFESSOR.

3. Examination of ditto. 4. Report of Proceedings in the General Assembly,

5. Observations on the Nature and Tendency of the Doctrine of Mr Hume concerning the relation of Cause and Effect, 2d edition, 8vo. 53.

6. Short Criticism on the Terms of the Charge against Mr Leslie, 8vo. Is.

7

A Letter to the Author of the Examination of Mr Stewart's Statement of Facts. By Professor Playfair, 8vo. 2s.

Having, in our last, given an historical view of the leading facts connected with the affair of Mr Leslie, we shall now, according to promise, endeavour to give an impartial statement of the arguments employed on both sides. Here it might seem the most natural order, to begin with the party which made the reference.But, as in consequence of the severe animadversions of their opponents, this party was constrained to assume rather a defensive attitude, and to employ themselves chiefly in repelling the charges advanced against them, it will be found much more convenient to begin with the statement of the complainers; and it shall be our object to compress our voluminous materials into as moderate a compass as possible. With the arguments, we shall endeavour to preserve the spirit in which they have been urged, but beg it to be understood, that we do not consider ourselves responsible for, or as in any degree giving our assent to, the language which may be put into the mouth of either party.

It is now some years since a gene. ral combination was formed among a party of the Edinburgh clergy, for

ment of Facts.

2. Postscript to ditto.

present livings all professorships which should fall vacant beyond the

circles

circles of medicine and law. There can be no occasion for attempting any proof of this fact, since to all who have had the least occasion to ob.. serve the conduct of these gentle men, it is perfectly notorious. The respectability of their public character, their situation on the spot, the assistance they could afford each other, and the success they had had met with in some late instances, all offered the fairest prospect of their views being crowned with suc cess. But a sudden reverse had been experienced. In consequence of the favourable reception given by the Town Council to the representations of Messrs Stewart and Playfair, and of the approaching appointment of a layman to the Mathematical chair, their golden hopes were on the point of being frustrated, and a rule established, which, if not prevented, must render this favourite scheme wholly abortive.

Here then we find a clue which may guide us to the secret history of this extraordinary transaction. Mr Leslie's book had been ten months

before the public,-it had passed through the hands of reviewers of the most opposite principles, it had been read and applauded by the most eminent men of science throughout Britain, it had been crowned by the Royal Society: but of all these none had ever criticised a word as the least exceptionable in a religious point of view; not one even of Mr Leslie's accusers had ever suspected or hinted any such thing, till the precise moment, when that gentleman's interest happened to come into opposition with theirs. From all which, we may fairly infer, that Mr Leslie's only offence against religion was the holding a professorial chair, to which one of their number had thought fit to aspire.

Before publicly denouncing Mr Leslie as an atheist, before taking a step which was to blast complete

ly his character and prospects; were they not bound to give him some intimation of their proceedings, and some opportunity of justifying himself? Ought they not first to have procured a private conference, to have stated their objections, and requested an explanation? This is the rule of Scripture, and it is a rule every way worthy of its high origin al. Ought he not at least to have been made a party, and to have been heard publicly in his own de fence? No! At the moment of presenting the protest, Mr Leslie had never heard of the violent measures pursuing against him, unless through common report, or the friendship of individuals.

In the same view, we find the Mi. nisters attempting to revive their almost forgotten claim of avisamentum; a privilege which had never been exercised in the case of a Mathematical professor, nor, for many years past, in the case of any professor. It was at best a case of civil right, which was to be pursued in the competent court; nor could any thing be more preposterous, than making it, as it certainly was, the basis of a reference to the General Assembly. Besides, it was a right which had been actually exercised in the present case. Their advice, though neither asked for nor desired, had been given, and that in a manner the most solemn and imposing that could be imagined. had been given too, under the form of instrument, and stood engrossed in the council records.

a

It

In the doctrine of Mr Leslie's note, there was really nothing in the least exceptionable. The subject of his work was entirely physical; the passage to which the note relates was wholly employed in refuting an hypothesis of physical intermedia, which, by the bye, had been always considered as one of the strong holds of the Atheist. The note, there

fore

fore, being a continuation of this passage, must, by all rules of fair in. terpretation, be understood to refer solely to physical causes. To have used the term in any other sense would have been a violation of all the common rules of reasoning; it would have been a species of insanity. Now, that between physical causes and effects there exists no necessary connection, is a doctrine which bas been held, and zealously supported, by Bacon, by Barrow, by Clarke, by Butler, Reid, Gregory, Ferguson, Robison; in short, by all the greatest names in divinity and philosophy. It is a doctrine of which Mr Stewart himself, many years ago, published a full illus. tration; and which he had taught in his class without the least exception being taken by any one, When, in addition to this, we have a declara. tion from Mr Leslie, that he had considered cause solely as a subject of physical examination, and a solemn protestation against any irreligious inferences which might be drawn from his doctrine, we must acknowledge every reasonable ground of opposition to be completely obviated.Even if this explanation had not appeared strictly philosophical, still it would be unfair not to give more credit to his solemn declaration than to our own doubtful comments on his words.

On the circumstances which attended the giving in the representation and protest, we quote the following strictures of Mr Stewart :

Let Mr Leslie's accusers reflect on the circumstances of their own conduct, on the morning of his election. Let them remember, that it was at the critical moment when this gentleman,-a person who had never offended them, or at least whose only conceivable offence was his competition with one of their colleagues, when he was flattering him self with the confident hope of obtaining at length, the reward of a virtuous and laborious life, devoted from his earliest years to the pursuits of science, and not

many days after the suffrages of the Royal Society of London had entitled him to lift up his head in this metropolis,

as a man who had done honour to his native land;-it was at this moment, that all his future prospects were to be blasted for ever; the well-earned prize which he was about to receive, snatched from his grasp; and he himselfstigmatised as a disgrace to his parent church, proclaimed to be unworthy of belonging to any other, and pointed out and good in every quarter of the globe. Let me remind them, in the last place, that this charge of Atheism was deliberately and publicly preferred, with all the imposing solemnity of legal forms, within a few hours of the time when Mr Leslie's explanatory letter had been read in their hearing; and that in the act of presenting their written remonstrance to the Patrons of the University, the letter was not only suppressed, but no intimation was given that such a letter existed. Short Statement, p. 101.

to the scorn and execration of the wise

Let us now consider a little the nature of that doctrine, the denial of which has rendered Mr Leslie the object of such a deadly persecution.Mr Leslie is accused of denying "all such necessary connection between cause and effect as implies an operating principle in the cause.". Without enquiring whether Mr Leslie will admit this as a fair interpreta tion, we may rest assured, that the proposition which he is thus accused of impiously denying, expresses, in the clearest manner, the opinion which his accusers entertain on the subject. They must believe a necessary conneetion to exist in cases, where Mr Leslie can trace only an invariable sequence. Now, as we had before occasion to observe, Mr Leslie could not possibly be supposed to refer to any other than physical causes. They must therefore be understood as expressing their own, and requi ring him to express his conviction, that between physical causes and effects there exists a necessary connection. And yet they could hardly be

igno