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It is written by Mr. Derham, rector of Upminster, in Essex. I do not know what Upminster is worth; but I am sure, had I the best living in England to give, I should not think the addition of it sufficient acknowledgment of his merit; especially since I am informed, that the simplicity of his life is agreeable to his useful knowledge and learning.

The praise of this author seems to me to be the great perspicuity and method which render his work intelligible and pleasing to people who are strangers to such inquiries, as well as to the learned. It is a very desirable entertainment to find occasions of pleasure and satisfaction in those objects and occurrences which we have all our lives, perhaps, overlooked; or beheld without exciting any reflections that made us wiser, or happier. The plain good man does, as with a wand, show us the wonders and spec. tacles in all nature, and the particular capacities with which all living creatures are endowed for their several ways of life; how the organs of creatures are made according to the different paths in which they are to move and provide for themselves and families; whether they are to creep, to leap, to swim, to fly, to walk; whether they are to inhabit the bowels of the earth, the coverts of the wood, the muddy or clear streams; to howl in forests, or converse in cities. All life from that of a worm to that of a man is explained; and, if I may so speak, the wondrous works of the creation, by the observations of this author, lie before us as objects that create love and admiration; which, without such explications, strike us only with confusion and amazement.

The man who, before he had this book, dressed and went out to loiter and gather up something to entertain a mind too vacant, no longer needs news to give himself amusement; the very air he breathes suggests abundant matter for his thoughts. He will consider that he has begun another day of life, to breathe with all other

creatures in the same mass of air, vapours, and clouds, which surround our globe; and of all the numberless animals that live by receiving momentary life, or rather momentary and new reprieves from death, at their nostrils, he only stands erect, conscious and contemplative of the benefaction.

A man who is not capable of philosophical reflections from his own education, will be as much pleased as with any other good news which he has not before heard. The agitations of the wind, and the falling of the rains, are what are absolutely necessary for his welfare and accommodation. This kind of reader will behold the light with a new joy, and a sort of reasonable rapture. He will be led from the appendages which attend and surround our globe, to the contemplation of the globe itself, the distribution of the earth and waters, the va riety and quantity of all things provided for the uses of our world. Then will his contemplation, which was too diffused and general, be let down to particulars, to different soils and moulds, to the beds of minerals and stones, into caverns and volcanos, and then again to the tops of mountains, and then again to the fields and valleys.

When the author has acquainted his reader with the place of his abode; he informs him of his capacity to make himself easy and happy in it by the gift of senses, by their ready organs, by showing him the structure of those organs, the disposition of the ear for the receipt of sounds, of the nostril for smell, the tongue for taste, the nerves to avoid harms by our feeling, and the eye by our sight.

The whole work is concluded (as it is the sum of fifteen sermons in proof of the existence of the Deity) with reflections which apply each distinct part of it to an end, for which the author may hope to be rewarded with an immortality much more to be desired, than that of remaining in eternal honour among all the sons of men.

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