"Oh! Nature! sovereign of all beings! and ye, her adorable daughters, Virtue, Reason, and Truth! remain forever our reverend protectors. It is to you that belong the praises of the human race; to you appertains the homage of the earth. Show us, then, oh! Nature! that which man ought to do, in order to obtain the happiness which thou makest him desire.--Virtue! animate him with thy beneficent fire! Reason! conduct his uncertain steps through the paths of life. Truth! let thy torch illumine his intellect, dissipate the darkness of his road.... Banish error from our mind, wickedness from our hearts, 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