The Doctor looked more accurately both to his meaning and his words; but keeping as he did, in my poor judgement, the golden mean between superstition and impiety, there was nothing in this that savoured of preciseness or weakness, nor of that scrupulosity which is a compound of both. He did not suppose that trifles and floccinaucities of which neither the causes nor consequences are of the slightest import, were predestined; as for example—whether he had beef or mutton for dinner, wore a blue coat or a brown—or took off his wig with his right hand or with his left. He knew that all things are under the direction of almighty and omniscient Goodness; but as he never was unmindful of that Providence in its dispensations of mercy and of justice, so he never disparaged it. Herein the Philosopher of Doncaster agreed with the Philosopher of Norwich who saith, “let not fortune—which hath no name in Scripture, have any in thy divinity. Let providence, not chance, have the honour of thy acknowledgements, and be thy Œdipus on contingences. Mark well the paths and winding ways thereof; but be not too wise in the construction, or sudden in the application. The hand of Providence writes often by abbreviatures, hieroglyphics or short characters, which like the laconism on the wall, are not to be made out but by a hint or key from that spirit which indicted them.”[1] [Footnote 1: The Readers of Jeremy Taylor will not fail to remember the passage following from his Great Exemplar. “God's Judgments are like _the writing upon the wall_, which was a missive of anger from God upon Belshazzar. It came upon an errand of revenge, and yet was writ in so dark characters that none could read it but a prophet.”—DISC. xviii. _Of the Causes and Manner of the Divine Judgments_.] Some ill, he thought, was produced in human affairs by applying the term unfortunate to circumstances which were brought about by imprudence. A man was unfortunate, if being thrown from his horse on a journey, he broke arm or leg, but not if he broke his neck in steeple-hunting, or when in full cry after a fox; if he were impoverished by the misconduct of others, not if he were ruined by his own folly and extravagance; if he suffered in any way by the villainy of another, not if he were transported, or hanged for his own. Neither would he allow that either man or woman could with propriety be called, as we not unfrequently hear in common speech, _unfortunately_ ugly. _Wickedly_ ugly, he said, they might be, and too often were; and in such cases the greater their pretensions to beauty, the uglier they were. But goodness has a beauty of its own, which is not dependent upon form and features, and which makes itself felt and acknowledged however otherwise ill-favoured the face may be in which it is set. He might have said with Seneca, _errare mihi visus est qui dixit_ _Gratior est pulchro veniens e corpore virtus;_