Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 1.djvu/99

88 The missionaries from the English Society, who resided within a hundred miles of Rhode Island, agreed among themselves to hold a sort of synod at Dr. Berkeley's house, twice in a year, in order to enjoy the advantages of his advice and exhortations. Four of those meetings were accordingly held. He was uniformly anxious to impress upon the minds of the missionaries, the necessity and advantage of conciliating by all means the affections of their hearers, and persons of other religious persuasions. In his own example he exhibited, in a remarkable degree, the mildness and benevolence becoming a christian: and the sole bent of his mind seemed to be, to relieve distress and diffuse happiness to all around him. Before leaving America, he gave a farm of a hundred acres, which lay round his house, and his house itself, as a benefaction to Yale and Haward Colleges; and the value of that land, then not insignificant because cultivated became afterwards very considerable. He also gave much of his own property to one of these colleges, and to several missionaries books to the value of 500/. To the other college he gave a large collection of books, purchased by others, and trusted to his disposal. He took a reluctant leave of a country where the name of Berkeley was long revered, more than that of any other European. On his return to England, he restored all the private subscriptions which had been advanced, in furtherance of his plan In 1792 he published his Minute Philosopher," a work of great talent, and at once amusing and instructive. It consists of a series of dialogues, in the manner of Plato, in which he attacks with most complete success, the various systems of atheism, fatalism, and scepticism. He pursues the freethinker through the various characters of atheist, libertine, enthusiast, scorner, critic, metaphysician fatalist, and sceptic, and shews ia a most agreeable and convincing manner the folly of his principles, and the injury they do to himself and society Of the company which at this time engaged in the philosophical conversations which were carried on in presence of