and thought fit for College, he had even studied the truth of the Christian Revelation, He was excited to this investigation by accidentally meeting with an attack upon that religion, the perusal of which struck him most forcibly. The author complained, in the bitterest terms of invective, against the clergy in particular, for their ignorance, bigotry, disingenuity, and persecuting spirit; and he treated the whole order, Christians and Christianity, with a degree of scurrilous abuse, which appeared to our young student as a strange abuse of the liberty of the press, and a most unwarrantable perversion of the terms, truth, candour, and philosophy, which occurred in almost every page, and which the author asserted to be the sole objects of his work. The perusal of this extraordinary book, led our anxious student to enquire into the evidences of Christianity, which, considering his years, he did with astonish ing success.

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He read various books upon the subject, but was best pleased with Leslie's short method with the Deists, and Gibson's (Bishop of London) Pastoral Letters, because they treated the subject in a narrow compass, and yet placed it in a clear light, and on its proper basis.

He was a few months after this removed to one of our Universities, where he pursued his studies, for the space of three years, with much applause. He regularly attended the private literary societies of his fellow stu

dents, which he contributed to set upon a more respectable footing than such societies generally are. By the acknowledged superiority of his own acquirements and circumstances, he was enabled to repress, with ease and dignity, the ebullitions of vanity and self conceit, so common among boys of that age. When he heard, as at firft he sometimes did, those conceited orators throw out a sneer at religion, aprove of some licentious or sceptical opinions, and ridicule some respectable characters in the University and the State, he usually remarked, that if such things were allowed, he must deny himself the pleasure of attending their meetings; and he should consider it as his duty to endeavour, as much as in him lay, to put an end to them altogether that they were neither qualified to judge of religion, nor of the characters they affected to despise: that their opposition to them was the effect of ignorance and licentiousness, which, as students of philosophy, and enquirers after truth, they ought to be ashamed of: and, lastly, that modesty, and docility, and not pride and self conceit, ought ever to be the distinguishing characteristics of persons in their situation. In this way he quickly restrained the petulance of his companions, and rendered their meetings both respectable and useful.

During the second season of his residence at college, he was severely afflicted by the death of his mother, which happened at

Bath, in consequence of a violent cold, which was followed by a fever. Of this loss he cannot yet speak without the severest emotions of distress. To her he considers himself as chiefly indebted for the foundation of those principles, and of that practice, which have afforded him an inexhaustible fund of comfort in his passage through life, and which he would not now resign for all the gold of Ophir or Peru. At the age of nineteen, he was sent to Oxford, where he spent several years, very much to his own satisfaction and improvement, in an unreserved intercourse with the learned men of that celebrated University. At the At the age of 22, he was called from this pleasant retreat of science and the muses, by the death of his father, which was sudden and unexpected; and thus, with a very ample fortune, he became complete master of himself, without a single relation nearer than a distant cousin.

He long and sincerely lamented his father's sudden death; and he felt his situation so new and so unexpected, that it was sometime before he entered actively into the management of his affairs. Having at length, in the year 1779, put his matters in a proper train, he set out on a tour to the continent of Europe, during which he improved the knowledge he had acquired by study, in the still retirement of academic groves, by an accurate and extensive observation of men and things. He spent B

about two years in France * and Italy, and had free access to the literati in both countries; in conversing with whom, however, he had often occasion to lament a tendency to sneer at religion, without understanding it, and to ridicule every thing, as superstitious and narrow-minded, which was serious or manly.

He afterwards went to Germany, where he spent full three years, mostly in the Universities, and in the society of the learned. This was a period which afforded him much useful information, and much matter for serious regret. In France he had found infidelity and licentious philosophy to be very general; but they struck him as the transient effects of corrupt morals, and national levity. It was in Germany that he first saw infidelity assume her most odious and dangerous shape; that he saw her come forward, in the artful garb of an enquirer after truth and sound philosophy; and that he saw scepticism and irreligion systematically disseminated, to the destruction of all serious principles of conduct in this life, and to all comfortable prospects in a future. Materialism was the universal doctrine; and annihilation the universal belief, of many societies called philosophical. These doctrines, when spread, as they were most artfully, among the

For this, it being a time of war, he required a special passport, which however in that period was easily procured.

vulgar, produced effects the most baneful. They caused unbounded licentiousness, as far as the severity of German law would allow, both in principle and practice, and exhibited to our astonished traveller the genuine effects of infidel philosophy and sceptical science, to be, the annihilation of human hapness in this world, and of still higher expectations in another.

This was a season of much serious reflection to Mr Christian. He investigated, with much assiduity, every subject of philosophy, moral and physical, in order to discover whether there was really any just ground, in reason or in fact, for the opinions he thus found to be industriously, though secretly, disseminated in various states of Germany. He underwent this trouble, for the purpose of distinguishing between truth and falsehood, both in their origin and effects; and pursuing his enquiry, with the most candid and patient attention, he at length concluded, from what he considered as the most unquestionable evidence, that the origin of such notions as he had remarked was generally to be found, 1. in ignorance, or the misconception of some principle of science: 2. in pride, and the affectation of singularity; and, 3. in moral licentiousness, which naturally produces an impatience of all external restraint and subordination. These sources he found sometimes to be separate, and sometimes combined; and for