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Coppee, Henry

"English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Designed as a Manual of Instruction"

Among his numerous
writings, those principally valuable are: _Horae Paulinae_, and _A View of
the Evidences of Christianity_--the former setting forth the life and
character of St. Paul, and the latter being a clear exposition of the
truth of Christianity, which has long served as a manual of academic
instruction. His treatise on _Natural Theology_ is, in the words of Sir
James Mackintosh, "the wonderful work of a man who, after sixty, had
studied anatomy in order to write it." Later investigations of science
have discarded some of his _facts_; but the handling of the subject and
the array of arguments are the work of a skilful and powerful hand. He
wrote, besides, a work on _Moral and Political Philosophy_, and numerous
sermons. His theory of morals is, that whatever is expedient is right; and
thus he bases our sense of duty upon the ground of the production of the
greatest amount of happiness. This low view has been successfully refuted
by later writers on moral science.


CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY: SCOTT.


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