him.

In this unambitious manner does Paley prosecute his high theme,
drawing, as it were, philosophy from the clouds. But it is not
merely the fund of entertaining knowledge which the Natural Theology
contains, or the admirable address displayed in the adaption of it,
which fits it for working conviction; the "sunshine of the breast,"
the cheerful spirit with which its benevolent author goes on his way
([Greek: kudei gaion],) this it is that carries the coldest reader
captive, and constrains him to confess within himself, and even in
spite of himself, "it is good for me to be here."

...We mourn over the leaves of our peaches and plum-trees, as they
wither under a blight. What does Paley see in this? A legion of
animated beings (for such is a _blight_) claiming their portion of
the bounty of Nature, and made happy by our comparatively trifling
privation, We are tortured by bodily _pain_,--Paley himself was so,
even at the moment that he was thus nobly vindicating God's wisdom
and ways. What of that? Pain is not the object of contrivance--no
anatomist ever dreamt of explaining any organ of the body on the
principle of the thumb screw; it is itself productive of good; it
is seldom both violent, and long continued; and then its pauses and
intermissions become positive pleasures. "It has the power of shedding
a satisfaction over intervals of ease, which I believe," says this
true philosopher, "few enjoyments exceed." The returns of an hospital
in his neighbourhood lie before him. Does he conjure up the images of
Milton's lazar-house, and sicken at the spectacle of human suffering?
No--he finds the admitted 6,420--the dead, 234--the _cured_, 5,476;
his eye settles upon the last, and he is content.

There is nothing in the world which has not more handles than one; and
it is of the greatest consequence to get a habit of taking hold by the
best. The bells speak as we make them; "how many a tale their music
tells!" Hogarth's industrious apprentice might hear in them that he
should be "Lord Mayor of London"--the idle apprentice that he should
be hanged at Tyburn. The landscape looks as we see it; if we go to
meet a friend, every distant object assumes his shape--

"In great and small, and round and square,
'Tis Johnny, Johnny, every where."

Crabbe's lover passed over the very same heath to his mistress and
from her; yet as he went, all was beauty--as he returned all was
blank. The world does not more surely provide d