"Perēs. Thy kingdom is broken, and given to the Medes and Persians," vs. 28. That is, its defences are broken. by Jehovah, and it is given to the Medes and Persians This indicates, that at that moment the waters of the Euphrates had fallen to such a degree as to give the besieging army access to the city.

"Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with purple, and a chain of gold about his neck; and proclamation was made respecting him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom," vs. 29. Belshazzar presumed, it seems from this, that the kingdom was still to subsist for a season.

"In that same night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain; And Darius the Mede took the kingdom, being about three-score years old." vs. 31. The Persians having turned the river aside, entered the city by its vacant channel, and ascending the stairways to the streets, advanced ere the guests had dispersed to the palace, and put the monarch and nobles to the sword.

The pre-announcement of this event by the miracle of the hand-writing, in immediate connexion with its occurrence, thus had an office of great significance. It showed in the most impressive manner that the overthrow of the monarchy and the empire was the appointment and work of the Almighty. It demonstrated the absoluteness of his dominion, and the nothingness of idols. It verified the revelation he had made to Nebuchadnezzar of the fall of the dynasty and rise of another empire. It showed the displeasure with which he regards the impiety of monarchs and princes like Belshazzar and his courtiers, who deny his right and power, mock at his forewarnings, and pay to shapes of wood and stone the homage that is due to him; and exemplified the ease with which he can destroy them. And these great truths were impressed doubtless on the conquerors as well as the conquered, who survived and heard the story of the mysterious hand and writing by which the Most High warned Belshazzar and his court of the doom that awaited them, the night on which it was inflicted. It served, also, undoubtedly to strengthen the faith of his own people in their depressed condition, and confirm them in their fidelity.

ART. II.--THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A. CARLISLE, D.D.
Rev. John Forsyth, D.D., Prof. Rutgers College.

By

The Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlisle, Minister of Inveresk; containing Memorials of the Men and Events of his Times. Ticknor & Co. Boston, 1860.

ON various accounts this may be styled an extraordinary book. It relates to an extraordinary period. It is the production of an extraordinary man, and was written by him when four-score years old. And it may well be deemed an extraordinary circumstance that a volume which obtained a wide circulation the instant it issued from the press, should have been allowed to lie perdu for more than half a century. It is strange that a man who has been in his grave more than fifty years, and who died in an extreme old age, should at this late day become a literary celebrity. Dr. Carlisle was born in 1722; he was ordained Minister of Inveresk, a parish near Edinburgh, in 1748, where he died in 1805. These dates verify the observation already made that this autobiograph covers an extraordinary period,―one marked by immense changes in church and state, in religion and science, in political and social institutions. The author was the contemporary of Robertson, Blair, Erskine, Witherspoon, of Hume, Adam Smith, Ferguson, Home, Smollet, Wilkes, Townshend, Wilkie, Col. Gardiner, Macpherson (Ossian), Black, Gregory, of our own Franklin; he was personally acquainted with them all, and with most of them he lived on terms of intimate friendship. He was a man of very superior abilities, and of highly cultivated taste in all matters of literature and art, so much so, indeed, that even the most distinguished authors of that day relied implicitly on his judgment, and were guided by his advice.

In a simply literary point of view these Memoirs deserve the high encomiums which have been pronounced upon them both in Britain and our own country. Dr. Carlisle had been for many years a welcome habitué of the higher circles of society in Scotland and England; he had been brought into close contact with statesmen, politicians, scholars, writers, ecclesiastics; and with his ample opportunities

of seeing a great deal, he possessed great powers of observation, and of word-painting. His pictures of the scenes in which he mingled, and his personal portraits (except when his judgment was biased by religious prejudice) are very graphic. We get a nearer view of Robertson, Blair, Smollet, Home, Hume, and other notabilities of that day, of their personal appearance, their social habits, their little foibles as well as their better qualities, in a word, their individuality -in these recollections of their contemporary and companion, than is furnished by their more formal biographies. The following notice of Franklin has a special interest for Americans: We supped one night in Edinburgh with the celebrated Dr. Franklin, at Dr. Robertson's house (1760). Dr. Franklin had his son with him (afterwards Governor Franklin, of New Jersey); and besides Wight and me, there were David Hume, Dr. Cullen, Adam Smith, and two or three more. Wight, who could talk at random on all sciences without being deeply skilled in any, took it into his head to be very eloquent on chemistry, a course of which he had attended at Dublin. Perceiving that he diverted Franklin, who was a silent man, he kept it up with Cull n, then professor of that science, who had imprudently committed himself with him, for the great part of the evening, to the infinite diversion of the company, who took great delight in seeing a great professor foiled in his own science by a novice. Franklin's son was open and communicative, and pleased the company better than his father; and some of us observed indications of that decided difference of opinion between father and son, which, in the American war, alienated them altogether."

During one of his visits to Oxford in company with Robertson and Home, he stumbled upon an old acquaintance and compatriot (Douglass, afterwards Bishop of Salisbury and author of an able work on Miracles), preparing to take his Doctor's degree, and he thus describes part of the process:- "John Douglass, who knew we were coming, was passing trials for his degree of D.D., and that very day was in the act of one of his wall lectures, as they are called, for there is no audience. At that university, it seems, the trial is strict when one takes a Master's or Bachelor's, but slack when you come to a Doctor's Degree; and vice versâ at

Cambridge. However that be, we found Douglass sitting in a pulpit in one of the chapels, with not a soul to hear him but three old beggar-women, who came to try if they might get some charity. On seeing us four enter the chapel, he talked to us and wished us away, otherwise he would be obliged to lecture. We would not go away, we answered, as we wished a specimen of Oxford learning; on which he read two or three verses out of the Greek Testament, and began to expound it in Latin. We listened for five minutes, and then telling him where we were to dine, we left him to walk about." It must be owned that this was a very "slack" method of ascertaining the abilities and attainments of men who were ambitious of being numbered among the Doctors of Oxford.

We have already stated that our author was generally a sagacions observer of men, and that he handled a graphic pen when he undertook to paint their characters. Here is one of his portraits, viz. of Sir George Suttie, a lieutenant-colonel under the Duke of Cumberland, afterwards one of the members of Parliament from Scotland :-"This Sir George was much overrated. He was held to be a great officer, because he had a way of thinking of his own, and had learned from his kinsman, Marshal Stair, to draw the plan of a campaign. He was held to be a great patriot, because he wore a coarse coat and unpowdered hair, while he was looking for a post (under Government) with the utmost anxiety. He was reckoned a man of much sense, because he said so himself, and had such an embarrassed stuttering elocution that one was not sure but it was true. He was understood to be a great improver of land, because he was always talking of farming, and had invented a cheap method of fencing his fields by combining a low stone wall and a hedge together, which, on experiment, did not answer. For all these qualities he got credit for some time; but nobody ever questioned the real strength of his character, which was that of an uncommonly kind and indulgent brother to a large family of brothers and sisters, whom he allowed during his absence in a five years' war, to dilapidate his estate, and leave him less than half his income." This is exquisitely done, and is surpassed by nothing of the same sort even in the brilliant pages of Macaulay.

Dr. Carlisle testifies to the horror which the daring speculations of David Hume excited in the higher circles of Scottish society. "The Atheist" was the name by which he was commonly known; but our autobiographer, who lived on intimate terms with him, took a much more liberal view of his principles and character. "I was one of those," says he, "who never believed that David Hume's sceptical principles had laid fast hold on his mind, but proceeded rather from affectation of superiority, pride of understanding, and love of vainglory." He relates the following incident in confirmation of his notion that scepticism, after all, had not a very strong hold of Hume's mind. When his mother died, Mr. Boyle, a friend who lodged in the same house with him, went to his (Hume's) apartment, so soon as he had heard the news, and found him in the deepest afflic tion. After the usual topics of condolence, Mr. Boyle said to him, "My friend, you owe this uncommon grief to your having thrown off the principles of religion, for if you had not, you would have been consoled by the firm belief, that the good lady who was not only the best of mothers, but the most pious of Christians, was now completely happy." To which Hume replied, "Though I throw out my speculations to entertain and employ the metaphysical world, yet in other things I do not think so differently from the rest of mankind as you imagine." Dr. Carlisle evidently deemed this a most important confession, but it seems to us, that when he persuaded himself that David Hume might be in some sort a Christian notwithstanding he scattered firebrands, arrows, and death, saying 'am I not in sport?' he drew a very large conclusion from a very narrow premiss.

Hume, it appears, took much to the company of "the younger clergy," viz. Robertson, Blair, Home, Carlisle, Jardine, and others of their stamp, "not from any wish to bring them over to his opinions," but for the sake of literary conversation. This intimacy "enraged the zealots, who little knew how impossible it was for him (Hume), had he been willing, to shake their principles." It is not surprising that to such "young clergy" as those just named," the suppers of the sceptical philosopher proved so attractive. "He was,” says our author, "a man of great knowledge, of a social and benevolent temper, and truly the best-natured man in the