Taylor's writings been contemplated, than fell within the 'scope of his (Mr. Bonney's) plan.' Whatever might be the reason, we are glad of the result, since it has given us a biography of Taylor, at once worthy of its subject, and highly creditable to its Author, as a liberal-spirited and most accomplished man. Something is to be allowed to circumstances and associations; and if we cannot congratulate Mr. Heber on having wholly exempted himself from these, we are not to forget that our opposite and, as we believe, more correct notions on certain points, have made us more quick-sighted than he could possibly be.

We have, at different periods, called the attention of our readers to portions of the voluminous works which bear the impress of Jeremy Taylor's consummate genius and not less consummate learning; but we have not yet had the opportunity, which we gladly seize on the present occasion, of giving a general view and estimate of his writings; a task to which we shall now address ourselves with a feeling of regret, that we cannot pursue it at greater length and with more minuteness than we shall be able to afford. Of the events of his life, our notice will be only incidental, since we have already, in an article before alluded to, made them the subject of specific comment; and we must further refer our readers to our Number for February 1817, in which they will find a review of the "Contemplations on the State of Man," containing much that is applicable in the present instance, and that we shall therefore feel it unnecessary to repeat.

If, indeed, we deemed it expedient, or compatible with the limits of this article, to accompany Mr. Heber through the various and interesting matter of his spirited and well-written memoir, we should find frequent opportunity for praise, and sometimes occasion of difference. He is too well known to our readers as a writer, to render encomium necessary on this point, and the liberality of his sentiments is so thoroughly ascertained, as to take away the inclination we might otherwise feel, to use strong language in reply to certain observations of a sectarian character. An illustration or two shall be given of the interesting way in which he manages the accessories to his general subject. In his brief account of the genealogy of the Bishop, Mr. Heber had occasion to mention. the illustrious martyr, Dr. Rowland Taylor, as one of his immediate ancestors; and, after touching on the main circumstances of the persecution, he concludes the episode as follows:

There is nothing, indeed, more beautiful in the whole beautiful Book of Martyrs, than the account which Fox has given of Rowland

Taylor, whether in the discharge of his duty as a parish priest, or in the more arduous moments when he was called on to bear his cross in the cause of religion. His warmth of heart, his simplicity of manners, the total absence of the false stimulants of enthusiasm or pride, and the abundant overflow of better and holier feelings, are delineated, no less than his courage in death, and the buoyant cheerfulness with which he encountered it, with a spirit only inferior to the eloquence and dignity of the Phædon. Something, indeed, must be allowed for the manners of the age, before we can be reconciled to the coarse vigour of his pleasantry, his jocose menace to Bonner, and his jests with the sheriff on his own stature and corpulency. But nothing can be more delightfully told, than his refusal to fly from the lord chancellor's officers; his dignified, yet modest determination to await death in the discharge of his duty and his affectionate and courageous parting with his wife and children. His recollection, when led to the stake, of the blind man and woman,' his pensioners, is of the same delightful character; nor has Plato any thing more touching, than the lamentation of his parishioners over his dishonoured head and long white beard, and his own meek rebuke to the wretch who drew blood from that venerable countenance. Let not my readers blame me for this digression. They will have cause to thank me, if it induces them to refer to a history, which few men have ever read without its making them sadder and better.''

The following extract, though conveying useful information in a very agreeable way, strikes us as being not quite in character with the general subject. We may be somewhat fastidious on these points; but it does appear to us a little out of keeping, for the Rev. Reginald Heber, in the life of Bishop Taylor, to bring in the merry-making personages of Massinger's play, and the flippant lacqueys of the French comedy, for the purpose of illustrating the situation of a college sizar. It looks too much like an anxiety to exhibit extent and variety of reading, and reminds us of a much more direct and unquestionable violation of good taste which we once heard from Mr. H. when occupying the pulpit of Lincoln's Inn Chapel. We allude to his marked and specific introduction of the Alcestis, in connexion with an investigation of a most important Christian doctrine. We have no Gothic antipathy to the belles lettres, and we can relish the exquisite drama of Athens as keenly as Mr. Heber, though perhaps less conversant with its peculiarities; but we really cannot distinguish the à-propos of bringing into contact, the theatre and the Gospel, Euripides and St. Paul. In the present instance, however, it is not to be forgotten, that, in one point of view, excursions of this kind are permissible in application to Jeremy Taylor, whose reading was of the most extensive and multifarious kind; he was perfectly omnivorous, and as little

troubled with discretion in the communication of his knowledge, as with scruples about kind or quantity in its acquisition.

When thirteen years old, on the 18th of August, 1626, he was entered at Caius College as a sizar, or poor scholar; an order of students who then were what the servitors' still continue to be in some colleges in Oxford, and what the lay brethren' are in the convents of the Romish church. This was an institution which, however it may be now at variance with the feelings and manners of the world, was, in its original, very far from deserving the reprobation which has been sometimes cast on it, and owed, indeed, its beginning to a zeal for the education of the poor, as well directed as it was humane and Christian. In the time of our ancestors, the interval between the domestics and the other members of a family was by no means so great, nor fenced with so harsh and impenetrable a barrier, as in the present days of luxury and excessive refinement. As the highest rank of subjects was elevated then at a greater height than they now are above the most considerable private gentry, so the latter constituted a far more efficient link in the great chain of society, and a far easier gradation existed between the nobles and that class of men from whom their own domestics were taken. There was, in those days, no supposed humiliation in offices which are now accounted menial, but which the peer then received as a matter of course from the gentlemen of his household;' and which were paid to the knight or gentleman by domestics chosen in the families of his own most respectable tenants; while, in the humbler ranks of middle life, it was the uniform and recognized duty of the wife to wait on her husband, the child on his parents, the youngest of the family on his elder brothers or sisters. But while the subordination of service was thus perfect and universal, this very universality softened its rigours. The well-born and well-educated retainers of a noble family were admitted by its head to that confidence and familiarity which their rank and attainments justified. The servants of the manor-house were usually the humbler friends of the master and mistress, whose playmates they had been during childhood, and under whose protection they hoped to grow old. We have been, most of us, impressed with the tone of equality assumed by the valets of the old French comedy; and the jovial familiarity of Furnace, Amble, and Order, in Massinger's New Way to pay Old Debts,' is a well known and, probably, an accurate portrait, of that species of graduated intercourse which once connected the aristocracy, and the throne itself, with the humblest orders of society, and in the abolition of which it may be reasonably doubted whether all parties are not rather losers than gainers.'

The few passages in which Mr. Heber has felt it necessary-wo do not mean to insinuate that he has in the least gone out of his way for that purpose-to express opinions, and bring forward circumstances, favourable to the hierarchy of England,

and, in a greater or less degree, injurious to its opponents, might perhaps be passed over altogether without any disadvantage to either cause. We must, however, be permitted to make a few casual remarks as opportunities present themselves. One of the earliest, and, assuredly, one of the weakest of these, occurs in reference to the parliamentary deprivation of Taylor when rector of Uppingham. There is not,' remarks Mr. Heber, the smallest appearance, during the following years of Taylor's life, that he received any part of that pittance which the clergy presented to livings by the parliamentary ⚫ commissioners, were enjoined to pay to their expelled prede'cessors.' Is there any evidence to the contrary? Neither Mr. Heber nor Mr. Bonney has been able to obtain any information whatever concerning this event in the life of Taylor. The very date of the sequestration is unknown, and the name of his successor is uncertain. His subsequent poverty' proves nothing, inasmuch as it was not likely to be efficiently relieved by a pittance' We should be inclined rather to infer the payment of the stipulated portion, from the entire absence of complaint and remonstrance in all existing documents. The length of the following observations has occasioned us some hesitation as to the expediency of citation; but, as they express the sentiments of an able and high-minded clergyman, on questions of much importance in the Dissenting controversy, we shall give them entire, and subjoin a brief corrective of the objectionable points.

It has happened almost uniformly, in cases of religious difference, that those schisms have been most bitter, if not most lasting, which have arisen on topics of dispute comparatively unimportant, and where the contending parties had, apparently, least to concede, and least to tolerate. Nor are there many instances on record, which more fully and more unfortunately exemplify this general observation, than that of the quarrel and final secession of the Puritan clergy from the Church, in the year 1662. Both parties, in that case, were agreed on the essentials of Christianity. Both professed themselves not unwilling to keep out of sight, and mutually endure, the few doctrinal points on which a difference existed between them. The leading Puritans were even disposed to submit to that episcopal government, their opposition to which, during former reigns, had created so much disturbance, and had led, by degrees, to such abundant bloodshed and anarchy. And it is no less true than strange, that this great quarrel, which divided so many holy and learned preachers of the common faith, was occasioned and perpetuated by men, who, chiefly resting their objections on the form and colour of an ecclesiastical garment, the wording of a prayer, or the injunction of kneeling at the Eucharist, were willing, for questions like these, to disturb the peace of the religious world, and subject themselves to the same

severities which they had previously inflicted on the episcopal clergy.

With these men, whether in England or Ireland, there were apparently only three lines of conduct for the ruling powers to follow. The first was, the adoption of such a liturgy and form of church government as would, at once, satisfy the advocates of episcopacy and presbytery. This was attempted in vain; and was, indeed, a measure, the failure of which, a very slight attention to the prejudices and animosity of both parties would have enabled a bystander to anticipate. The second was that which was, at least virtually, promised by the King in the Declaration of Breda; namely, that uniformity of discipline and worship should, for the present, not be insisted on; that the Presbyterian and Independent preachers should, during their lives, be continued in the churches where they were settled; ejecting only those who had been forcibly intruded, to the prejudice of persons yet alive, and who might legally claim re-instatement; and filling up the vacancies of such as died, with ministers episcopally ordained and canonically obedient. In this case, it is possible that, as the stream of preferment and patronage would have been confined to those who conformed, as the great body of the nation were strongly attached to the Liturgy, and gave a manifest preference to those churches where it was used; and as the covenanting clergy would have no longer been under the influence of that point of honour, which, when its observance was compulsory, induced them to hold out against it, the more moderate, even of the existing generation, would have by degrees complied with their own interests and the inclination of their flocks; while the course of nature, and the increasing infirmities of age, must, in a few years, have materially diminished the numbers and influence of the more pertinacious. We have found, in fact, by experience, that the Liturgy has, through its intrinsic merits, obtained, by degrees, no small degree of reverence even among those who, on other grounds, or on no grounds at all, dissent from the church of England as at present constituted. And it is possible that, by thus forbearing to press its observance on those whose minds were so ill prepared to receive it, a generation would soon have arisen, to whom their objections would have appeared in their natural weakness, and the greatest and least rational of those schisms have been prevented, which have destroyed the peace and endangered the existence of the British churches.

But, while we, at the present day, are amusing ourselves with schemes of what we should have done had we lived in the time of our fathers, it may be well, for the justification of these last, to consider how little the principles of toleration were then understood by either party; how deeply and how recently the episcopal elergy, and even the laity of the same persuasion, had suffered from the very persons who now called on them for forbearance; how ill the few measures which were really proposed, of a conciliatory nature, were met by the disingenuousness of some of the presbyterian leaders, and the absurd bigotry of others; and the reasonable suspicion which was thus excited, that nothing would content them but the entire prescrip