plainly perceptible in Hume, Adam
Smith, and Reid. He was greater as a speaker even than as a writer,
and his lectures evoked much enthusiasm.

George Berkeley (1685-1753), bishop of Cloyne, was born at Dysert
Castle, near Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny, and was educated first at
Kilkenny school and afterwards at Trinity College, Dublin. Having
taken Anglican orders, he visited London, where he wrote nine papers
for the _Guardian_ and was admitted to the companionship and
friendship of the leading literary men of the age--Swift, Pope,
Addison, Steele, and Arbuthnot. This connection proved of great
assistance to him, for Pope not only celebrated him as possessing
"every virtue under heaven", but also recommended him to the Duke of
Grafton, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, who appointed him his chaplain
and subsequently obtained for him the deanery of Derry. In
furtherance of a great scheme for "converting the savage Americans to
Christianity", Berkeley and some friends, armed with a royal charter,
came to this country, landing at Newport in Rhode Island in January,
1729. All went well for a while: Berkeley bought a farm and built a
house; but when the hard-hearted prime minister refused to forward
the L20,000 which had been promised, the project came to an end, and
Berkeley returned to London in February, 1732. In 1734 he was
appointed bishop of Cloyne, and later refused the see of Clogher,
though its income was fully double that of his own diocese. In 1752
he resigned his bishopric and settled at Oxford, where he died in
1753.

Berkeley's works are very numerous. His _Essay towards a New Theory
of Vision_ (1709), which was long regarded in the light of a
philosophical romance, in reality contains speculations which have
been incorporated in modern scientific optics. In his _Three
Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_ (1713) he sets forth his
famous demonstration of the immateriality of the external world, of
the spiritual nature of the soul, and of the all-ruling and direct
providence of God. His tenets on immateriality have always been
rejected by "common-sense" philosophers; but it should be remembered
that the whole work was written at a time when the English-speaking
world was disturbed by the theories of sceptics and deists, whose
doctrines the pious divine sought as best he could to confute. In
1732 appeared his _Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher_, in which,
dialogue-wise, he presents nature from a religious point of