bourhood he was esteemed a good and even a popular preacher. His Sermons, though not perhaps his own composition, were all short, substantial, and rather inclined to reason than feeling. They are the writings of a rational Christian divine, fond of the almost exclusive consideration of subjects connected with the peculiar doctrines of Christianity. Sherlock and Clarke seem to have been his favourite models, and were largely drawn upon for furnishing the weekly supply. What is much more to his credit, he was a conscientious clergyman. He was twenty years curate of Giggleswick, and afterwards curate of Horton. He used to think himself one of the oldest incumbents on one and the same vicarage in his diocese, and perhaps in England, being fifty-six years vicar of Helpstone. But his fame, in the estimation of both himself and others, was built upon his school. He was altogether a schoolmaster, both by long habit and inclination, and when at the age of eighty-three, or eighty-four, he was obliged to have assistance (which was long before he wanted it in his own opinion), he used to be wheeled in his chair to his school, and even in the delirium of his last sickness, insisted upon giving his daughters a Greek author, over which they would mutter and mumble, to persuade him that he was still hearing his boys' Greek. He was rather coarse, but strong and significant in his language. He fancied himself a poet, and was fond of mouthing out shreds and patches of Greek and Latin, and English verse. He corrected his boys chiefly by

66 to

similes taken from the most ordinary subjects of his observation. "To gabble like a mill-hopper;" "to mutter like a wheel-barrow on a causeway;' mumble like a bee in a fox-glove," are expressions which his scholars recollect to this day. He was from natural temperament, as well as from the habits of his profession, irritable and a disciplinarian, and carried his authority to his home, perhaps more from not being able to leave it at his school, than from any view of its necessity or use. The natural bent of his mind during his leisure was towards contemplation and country employments. He was found in the hay-field among his work-people, or sitting in his elbow-chair in the fields nibbling his stick, or with the tail of his damask gown rolled into his pocket, busying himself in his garden even at the age of eighty; and if he could not improve it, was not seldom detected in making a common destruction of walk, border, and grass-plat.

From these parents, all their children inherited an eminently substantial character; a ready application of their reasoning powers to the practice of life; a natural brilliancy of common sense, rather than of wit; a strong bias towards worldly considerations, regulated by a much stronger inclination to, and feeling of, superior duties, and a most liberal disregard of their own, in comparison with their neighbours' convenience. Their son William, though he sometimes used to suppose himself destined for an humble situation, was always designed for a learned profession for

many reasons. His mother desired that the only son of a man who stood so deservedly high in her estimation, as well as in that of her neighbours, should be distinguished; and his own inclination, joined to the praise of the neighbourhood, as is generally the case, led him to think his father an eminent man, and made him so proud of the profession of a teacher and a clergyman, that he adopted it almost insensibly. The first effort of that quickness and shrewdness of reply, which distinguished him so much afterwards, seems to have shown itself on this subject; for at a very early age, on being scolded by his mother, who finished with "God give thee grace;" " Ay, mother," he replied, "Grace o' God and Grace o' Canterbury will do for me." Besides, there had been in the family one eminent man, who had been vicar of Hunslet, in Leeds; a literary character, remarkably studious, and an author of some repute. His interference, and his fondness for his own calling, along with a library well stocked with old divinity, had given Dr. Paley's father a taste and a bias to the clerical profession; and these inducements might have their influence in determining the destination of the son.

It were to be wished that in the following part of these memoirs Dr. Paley might be found drawing in his own way as much of his own life and character as of his parents. But of his younger days he seldom spoke, except when he was disposed to amuse a leisure hour with his sisters in more advanced life. There seems to be not only a gap in this part of his

life found by most of his biographers, but a want of incident throughout. Few, perhaps, have written of a life so devoid of incident, and yet so eminently distinguished for talent and integrity; and fewer still have, perhaps, read what has been written without being forcibly struck with a paucity of fact and incident* to relieve the dry detail of intellectual advancement. It is pretty obvious, as is well observed †, "that the lives of men of letters do not usually abound with incident," because the life of a student, and one devoted to literature, is necessarily so distinct from the ordinary business of the world, that but little can occur to vary the outward circumstances of his time. Yet this observation does not quite satisfy those who were acquainted with Dr. Paley, because though wholly bent upon making the most of the powers and faculties of his mind, he was not a man to be turned from the most trifling outward circumstances. With a decided preference for mind, he was active and eager at all times to engage in the common bustle of

* Meadley, who seems to have rummaged every corner with indefatigable industry, and I believe (for I have had opportunities of knowing it through the kindness of his family) a scrupulous regard to accuracy as far as depended upon himself, is decidedly deficient in incident; and in his second edition, where every exertion is used to supply this defect, much is yet necessarily taken up with commenting on the writing and public sentiments of Dr. Paley. Of the Life, by Chalmers, little is to be said, except that the main facts are taken or corrected from Meadley, or from less authentic materials.

+ Mason's Gray.

life. Perhaps a part of his character, the most striking even to a cursory observer, was that union of religious sentiment, of moral principle, of strong literary taste and ability, with a more than ordinary attention to common-place subjects. Such was the elasticity of his mind, that he could go, or rather be led away, not as a mere matter of relaxation, or a temporary suspension of mind, but with all the vigour and application that he had been giving to his former subject, from writing a page of his Natural Theology, or expressing a deep sentiment in a visitation sermon, to arranging some flower-pots in his garden, or gathering vegetables or fruit for dinner. In one and the same letter he writes upon the principle and expediency of keeping the poor off the parish, and in the next paragraph gives an excellent receipt for cheap broth of Scotch cabbage and grits, and coarse beef. But not to trench farther upon what may be opened out in the following pages, it may be sufficient, in order to account for this want of incident in a character so distinguished for useful talents, to notice his abhorrence of all the arts by which public fame might have been obtained; his discreet vigilance in not obtruding himself into notice without a fit occasion, rather than any coy wish to be drawn out; his prevailing taste for private and domestic enjoyment; and the even tenor of his life which both natural inclination and the profession of a consistent clergyman led him to preserve. He was born at Peterborough, 1743, but in little more than a year removed to Giggleswick, the birth