enough for the undertaking; but this insufficiency of funds was, for a time, at least, prevented by the munificence of the late Mr. Thomas Wedgwood, who contributed one thousand pounds towards the completion of the plan. Mr. Wedgwood was a philanthropist of expanded affections and enlightened mind; and he remarked that it was worth while to expend the sum subscribed, in order to assure us that elastic fluids would not be serviceable.'

Dr. Beddoes was now anxious to find a proper superindant of his new institution; when he accidentally discovered one in the person of Mr. Davy, who has since thrown so much new light on chemical science. Mr. Davy, who was then only nineteen years of age, was living in a remote part of Cornwall, with little access to philosophical books, and none to philosophical men;' and had received only such an education, as tended to qualify him for a country practitioner of medicine. But, though 'slow rises worth by poverty depressed,' yet genius will sometimes burst the barrier of contracted circumstances, and vindicate the native superiority of mind over the artificial distinctions of society. Mr. Davy had begun at this early period, to open new views upon the nature of caloric and of light.

Soon after Mr. Davy's arrival in Bristol, patients began to be received at the institution.' And though we cannot congratulate the public on its success in curing consumption, yet we think that it amply merited all the encouragement which it received, from the favourable situation in which it placed Mr. Davy for prosecuting his chemical researches.

But

In 1799, Dr. Beddoes published his Essay on pulmonary Consumption, of which his biographer gives a copious analysis. It is remarkable that in this work the author makes only a very slight and transient mention of his pneumatic remedies, whilst he talks of fox-glove, which had been only lately tried, with as much enthusiasm of praise as if it had been a certain specific for the pthisical malady. the sanguine temperament of Dr. Beddoes, particularly when operated upon by the vigorous impulses of philanthropic feeling, made him too apt to catch eagerly at dazzling novelties, and precipitately to grasp that phantom for truth, which he wished to be true. About this time Dr. Beddoes was as ardent in his belief of the virtues of the nitrous acid in syphilis, as of the fox-glove in consumption; and seemed not a little angry when the more sober

part of the public were unwilling to repose their faith in the supposed efficacy of these remedies.

In the year 1801, Dr. Beddoes published a miscellaneous volume on the medical and domestic management of the consumptive, on the powers of digitalis, and on the cure of scrophula.' This volume, like most of his other productions, relative to diseases and their modes of cure, was a mixture of fanciful hypothesis, enthusiastic anticipation, and acute remark. In the cure of scrophula he celebrates the virtues of the muriate of lime, which, as we are told by Dr. Stock, continued a favourite remedy with him to the end of his life.

Whatever might be Dr. Beddoes's medical deficience, he certainly did not abet that sordid charlatanry, which has sometimes been imputed to the sons of Esculapius. He did not wish to make his trade a mystery, but was anxious to render the knowledge of the means by which health might be preserved, so general, that men would no longer need a physician to prescribe for them a course of draughts, boluses and emulsions. The essays which he published under the title of Hygeïa were professedly designed to diffuse that kind of knowledge amongst the community which might diminish the stock of popular ignorance, which, by producing credulity, favours the success of artifice and imposture. Dr. Stock gives, as usual, a long and detailed account of this work. These essays certainly contain a good deal of eloquent writing, and many sagacious and forcible observations; and much praise is due to the motives which occasioned the composition.

In the summer of 1806, Dr. Beddoes was attacked by a severe illness; which, as his biographer says, answered in its more prominent features to the nosological character of Hydrops Pericardii.' The doctor himself, however, seemed unwilling to ascribe his malady to this cause, and persisted, for some time, that it was an affection of the liver. The symptoms however became too urgent not to dispel this delusion. On this occasion he appeared to derive considerable benefit from the application of a blister of boiling water to the chest. The violence of the malady disappeared, and the doctor apparently recovered his health.

In the course of this year, Dr. Beddoes, whose pen was never still, published the Manual of Health; or the Invalid conducted safely through the seasons' a work on which we cannot bestow any commendation.

It

abounds with frivolous remarks, and fallacious reasoning; and appears to have been written for profit rather than for fame. The doctor was certainly not unskilled in the art of book-making. In 1807 appeared our author's Researches, anatomical and practical, concerning fever, as connected with inflammation.' This work, like the other products of his active mind, contained proofs of his ingenuity, but made no real addition to the stock of medical information.

The last of Dr. Beddoes's literary labours was a letter addressed to Sir Joseph Banks on the subject of medical reform. He expired on the evening of the 24th of December, in the year 1808. The malady which brought him to his grave was an aggravation of the disorder which he had experienced in 1806. He was attended in his last illness by Dr. Craufuird.

We have perused some parts of this life of Dr. Beddoes with considerable interest; and that interest would have been more generally felt if his biographer had been more succinct in his narrative, less diffuse in his accounts of the Dr.'s publications, and more parsimonious of his praise. Those, who write lives, which they wish to be read, and to be read at once with instruction and delight, should scrupulously avoid all exuberance of panegyric. It is very difficult to confine an appetite for eulogy within the bounds of truth. But it is truth which constitutes the ornament and the usefulness of personal as well as of general history. We do not say that Dr. Stock has falsified facts; or has designedly puffed the object of his veneration into a magnitude greatly above his natural dimensions; but impelled at once by the ardour of friendship and the emotions of reverence, he has thrown over the characteristic features of Dr. Beddoes such a blaze of indiscriminate encomium, that they can no longer be distinctly seen. To utter a paradox, they are shrouded in obscurity by being enveloped in light.

Dr. Beddoes was certainly a man of genius, but as is often the case with men of genius, the force of his own convictions made him more positive and dogmatical than became a professed champion of investigation and friend of truth. He was often so enthusiastic as to mistake his own chimerical suppositions for solid facts. Thus he sometimes evinced less penetration than more ordinary men. When he began a process of reasoning, he was too apt to jump to the conclusion, without regarding the intermediate obstacles. He did not sufficiently consider

that Truth, like Time, has a tardy, though a certain pace, Truth is never still; it is perpetually proceeding onwards to its destined goal; though its steps are often so slow, that they escape the notice even of a vigilant eye. Imperceptible motion is mistaken for actual quiescence.

Dr. Beddoes was too impatient to seize those results, which instead of being a sudden acquisition, must be the gradual accumulations of observation and experience. It is in vain even for genius to attempt to surprize nature in her Protean forms.

The sanguine anticipation of prodigies to be performed in the morbid state of organic life by the operation of drugs, appears to have continued with Dr. Beddoes unabated to the last moments of expiring life.

The vi

sionary ecstacies even of medical hope might have been excusable in the impetuosity of youth; but we cannot so easily palliate their indulgence in the maturity of years. The life of Dr. Beddoes was not certainly prolonged to that of Nestor; nor had he seen three generations of men perish like the leaves. He died at the age of fortynine; but forty-nine years were surely a sufficient length of life for the repeated failure of his fondest anticipations to correct the wanton luxuriance of his projects, and to have sobered his judgment by the calm admonitions of experience. But there are minds in the philosophical world, as well as in the world of common life, to whom the lessons of experience seem to be read in vain. They go on in the same round of delusions in which they set out. When one phantom of speculation vanishes, another springs up to fascinate the attention, and reanimate pursuit. Nor is the chace intermitted, nor the cheat discovered, till mortality at last arrives to terminate the fatuity of hope.

ART. IV.-Christian Liberty, a Sermon, preached at St. Mary's, before his Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester (Chancellor of the University), and the Univer sity of Cambridge, at the Installation, June 30, 1811. By Samuel Butler, D.D. late Fellow of St. John's College, and Head Master of Shrewsbury School. London, Longman, 1811, 12mo. 5s.

CHRISTIAN liberty has been often more recommended than practised, nor even where it has been strenuously enforced, has it always been clearly understood. Though

this liberty was sanctioned by Christ, taught by the apostles, and practised by the Christians of the primitive times, ecclesiastical history proves it to have been held in bondage almost ever since the age of Constantine. It was indeed in part, but only in part, restored at the reformation. The reformers talked with great vehemence and force about Christian liberty when they opposed the church of Rome, but they entirely lost sight of it in their disputes with each other. Then, all the liberty which they cherished, was confined to themselves. It admitted of no general extension, no comprehensive participation. The reformers of particular churches amongst the Protestants compressed the line of salvation and of truth within the narrow precincts of their own opinions. The 'procul este profani,avaunt ye heretics,' was pronounced aloud by the chiefs of the different sects to those of an opposite persuasion, or who refused to say Amen to their confession of faith. Thus the first separatists from the Catholic church showed, that the cause of their dissension was not so much a sentiment of affection for the great and comprehensive principle of Christian liberty, as the lust of dogmatical pride, private interest, and individual domination.

When Protestants undertook to abridge the liberty of their brethren, and began to say, thus far shall ye inquire and no farther, here ye shall yield an implicit assent to the opinions of a chamber of fallible divines, they were not so consistent even as the Catholics; for the Catholics, profess ing to have an infallible guide in the head of their church, acted in strict unison with that profession in requiring an absolute submission to his decrees. Where infallibility is sincerely believed to exist, it cannot be right to gainsay its assertions. But while some of the leading members of the Protestant communions disclaimed all infallibility, and magnified the unlimited right of private judgment, they thought proper to establish a pretended infallible rule in their own articles of belief, and would not suffer any private judgment to be exercised which opposed the rule which they had established. Thus they made some change in the form of the ecclesiastical government, but they retained the exercise of the tyranny. They beat down the pope, but they set up an idol of their own making in his place. They refused to travel to Rome to kiss his toe, but they crouched to the dogmas of men as selfish, as proud, and as fallible as he. The right of private judgment in the interpretation of the Scriptures, which is the great principle of Protestantism, was soon renounced in