ts, confusion from our
footsteps. Cause knowledge to extend its salubrious reign, goodness to
occupy our souls, serenity to dwell in our bosoms.... Let our eyes,
so long either dazzled or blindfolded, be at length fixed upon those
objects we ought to seek. Dispel forever those mists of ignorance, those
hideous phantoms, together with those seducing chimeras, which only
serve to lead us astray. Extricate us from that dark abyss into which
we are plunged by superstition, overthrow the fatal empire of delusion,
crumble the throne of falsehood, wrest from their polluted hands the
power they have usurped."

ROBERT TAYLOR.

Many of the readers of this number will, from their own memories, be
better able to do justice to him, whom Henry Hunt named "The Devil's
Chaplain," than we shall in our limited space. Robert Taylor was born at
Edmonton, in the county of Middlesex, on the 18th of August, 1784.
His family was highly respectable, and his parents were in affluent
circumstances; but, being a younger son in a family of eleven children,
it was necessary that Robert Taylor should follow some profession. His
father died when he was about seven years old, leaving him under the
guardianship of a paternal uncle. When seventeen years of age, he was
apprenticed to a surgeon, at Birmingham, and studied medicine afterwards
under Sir Astley Cooper and Mr. Clive, passing the College of Surgeons
with considerable _eclat_. When about twenty-three, he became acquainted
with the Rev. Thomas Cotterell, a clergyman of the Established Church,
of high evangelical principles, who induced him to quit physic for
metaphysics, and in 1809 Robert Taylor entered Saint John's College,
Cambridge, and in 1813 took his degree of Bachelor of Arts. He was
publicly complimented by the Master of the College as a singular honor
to the University in his scholarship, and was ordained on the 14th of
March, 1813, by the bishop of Chichester; from that time until 1818,
Taylor officiated as curate at Midhurst. Here he became acquainted with
a person named Ayling who held Deistical opinions, and who induced
Taylor to read various Free-thinking works; this soon resulted in an
avowal of Deism on the part of Taylor, who tendered his resignation to
his Bishop. His friends and family were much alarmed, and much pressure
was brought to bear upon him, and we regret to state that it had the
effect of producing a temporary recantation. This, however, brought
Taylor no re