quence of the highest class,-effective and telling, without one grain of claptrap.

We should give an imperfect view of the characteristics of the Archbishop of Dublin, if we did not mention, as a marked one, his intense honesty of purpose; his evident desire to arrive at exact truth, and his carefulness to state opinions and arguments with perfect fairness. Nor should his fearless outspokenness be forgotten. He does not hesitate to call an opponent's argument nonsense when he has proved it to be so. 'Often very silly, and not seldom very mischievous,'* is his description of the speculations of writers of the Emerson school. Our readers are perhaps acquainted with the Archbishop's remarks. upon some of the German writers of the present day :

The attention their views have attracted, considering their extreme absurdity, is something quite wonderful. But there are many persons who are disposed to place confidence in anyone, in proportion, not to his sound judgment, but to his ingenuity and learning; qualifications which are sometimes found in men (such as those writers) who are utterly deficient in common sense and reasoning powers, and knowledge of human nature, and who consequently fall into such gross absurdities as would be, in any matter unconnected with religion, regarded as unworthy of serious attention.†

It is impossible to read the Annotations without feeling what an acute observer of men is Archbishop Whately. How carefully, in his passage through life, has his quick eye gathered up the characteristics of

* Preface, p. v.

† Lectures on the Characters of Our Lord's Apostles, p. 166.

those persons with whom he has been brought in contact, their pretensions, foibles, tricks, and errors: and how well he turns his recollections to account, when an example or illustration is needed! We likewise find many indications that he has been keenly alive, not more to the ways of men than to the little phenomena of nature. We refer our readers particularly to a passage on the degrees of cold which are experienced in the course of a single night, and we wonder how many persons, even of those who generally live in the country, are aware of the following fact:

Anyone who is accustomed to go out before daylight, will often, in the winter, find the roads full of liquid mud half-anhour before dawn, and by sunrise as haid as a rock. Then those who have been in bed will often observe that it was a hard frost last night,' when in truth there had been no frost at all till daybreak. (p. 305.)

And the final feature we remark in Archbishop Whately's character, is one which must afford the highest satisfaction to all who have, in their own experience, found earnest personal religion existing most markedly in conjunction with great weakness, ignorance, and prejudice; and to all who have ever mingled in the society of able and cultivated men, who thought that contemptuously to put religion aside was the indication. of mental vigour and enlightenment. It is most satisfactory to find the writings of one of the strongestminded men of his time, all pervaded and inspirited by a religious principle and feeling, earnest, unaffected,

really practical and influential,-as perfectly free from weakness as from self-assertion and self-conceit.

We believe that from this volume of Annotations we could construct a tolerably complete scheme of Archbishop Whately's views on politics, morals, social ethics, and the general conduct of life. We have some indication of his peculiar tastes and bent from observing which among Bacon's Essays he passes by without remark. He has little to say concerning Masques and Triumphs.' We should judge that his nature has little about it of that soft side' which leads to take delight in the recurrence of periodical festal occasions, with their kindly remembrances: we should judge that a solitary Christmas would be much less of a trial to him than it would be to us; although the instances of Dickens and Jerrold prove that the warmest feeling about such seasons and associations is quite consistent with even extreme opinions on the side of progress. Then the Archbishop passes the Essays on Building' and 'Gardens' without a word; although these subjects would have set many men off into a rhapsody of delighted details and fancies. We judge that Dr. Whately has not a very keen relish for external nature for its own sake his chief interest in it appears to be in the tracing of analogies between the material and moral worlds. The fact that Bacon's ideas both on Building and Gardening are now quite out of date would be only the stronger reason to many men for launching out upon the subject and how deeply could some sympathise with Bacon in his ideal picture of a princely palace,one of those delightful palaces in the air about whose

site there are permitted no drawbacks or shortcomings on the part of Nature,-round which ancestral woods grow at a moment's notice, and within whose view noble rivers, fed by no springs, can flow up-hill,-and in whose architecture expense and time need never be thought of. But not many men are likely ever to live in palaces: not many more, perhaps, would care to picture out such a life for themselves: and we prefer to Bacon's palace the delightful description in Mr. Loudon's Encyclopædia of Architecture of what he calls the Beau Ideal English Villa.

We have long regarded the Archbishop of Dublin as, in several respects, almost the foremost man of this day. It says little for the age's intelligence, that while religious works of inconceivable badness and impudence sell by scores of thousands of copies, Archbishop Whately commands an audience, fit indeed, but comparatively few for his writings possess a very high degree of that most indispensable, though not highest, of all qualities, interest. He is never heavy nor tiresome. Very dull people may understand, though they may not appreciate him. But we are persuaded that his archbishopric lessens the number of his readers. Readers for mere amusement are afraid to begin what has been written by so distinguished a man.

We need hardly say that it is wholly impossible within the limits of a short article to give any just idea, either of the variety of topics which the Archbishop has discussed, or of the manner in which he has discussed them. Bacon himself described his Essays as 'handling those things wherein both men's lives and persons are

most conversant:' and Archbishop Whately's Annotations, ranging over the same wide field, can be described, as to their scope, in no more definite terms. But the same necessary want of unity which makes the book so hard to speak of as a whole, renders it the easier to consider in its separate parts. It consists of precious detached pieces, each of which loses nothing by being individually regarded. But before glancing at some of the topics which the Archbishop has treated, we wish to give our readers a few specimens of those admirable illustrations of moral truths by physical analogies which form so striking a feature of his writings:

There are two kinds of orators, the distinction between whom might be thus illustrated. When the moon shines brightly we are apt to say,' How beautiful is this moonlight!' but in the daytime, 'How beautiful are the trees, the fields, the mountains! ' and, in short, all the objects that are illuminated; we never speak of the sun that makes them so. Just in the same way, the really greatest orator shines like the sun, making you think much of the things he is speaking of: the second-best shines like the moon, making you think much of him and his eloquence.-(p. 327, Annotation on Essay Of Discourse.')

In most subjects, the utmost knowledge that any man can attain to, is but 'a little learning' in comparison of what he remains ignorant of. The view resembles that of an American forest, in which the more trees a man cuts down, the greater is the expanse of wood he sees around him.-(p. 446, Annotation on Essay Of Studies.')

In an annotation on the Essay Of Negotiating,' Archbishop Whately mentions, as a caution to be observed, that in combating, whether as a speaker or a writer, deep-rooted prejudices, and maintaining unpopular truths, the point to be aimed at should be, to adduce