suffering, and a mind unspent by incessant labours. In a letter written in June of the following year, to Mr. Knox, (Bishop Jebb's correspondent,) after mentioning the domestic affliction she had been called to endure, from the continued illness of her beloved sisters, Martha and Sarah, and her own ill state of health, she thus expresses the spirit of calm resignation by which she was sustained in cheerfulness.

I am so far your disciple, that is so much of an optimist, as to see a graciously providential hand in all these dealings. I feel, even at my age, that I stand in need of reiterated correction. My temper is naturally gay. This gayety, even time and sickness have not much impaired. I have carried too much sail. My life, upon the whole, must be reckoned an uncommonly prosperous and happy one. I have been blessed with more friends of a superior cast, than have often fallen to the lot of so humble an individual. Nothing but the grace of God, and frequent attacks, through life, of very severe sickness, could have kept me in tolerable order. If I am no better, with all these visitations, what should I have been without them? No, my dear Sir, I have never yet felt a blow, of which I did not perceive the indispensable necessity; in which, on reflection, 1 did not see and feel the compassionate hand of Divine mercy,-the chastisement of a tender Father!"

In September 1819, Mrs. More was bereaved of her beloved and devoted sister Martha, in the 67th year of her age,-the last that remained of the four; a loss irreparable, but sustained with Christian fortitude. She had just completed for the press, her last literary performance, which she published shortly afterwards, under the title of " Modern Sketches." An impression of 1500 was speedily consumed, and a second edition was soon called for. As the lively and perspicuous product of her intellect, at the age of seventy-five, it is not the least remarkable of her works. The spring and summer of 1820 were, to Mrs. More, a season of severe and continued illness, which confined her to her chamber. In October 1821, she received the report of the death of her ancient and valuable friend,' Mrs. Garrick, then in her hundredth year! Her own life hung in suspense, during great part of the following year; and for six months, she was confined to her bed by continued fever. But again she rallied. She says, in a letter to her old friend, Sir W. Pepys, in June 1825, I lately reckoned up thirty physicians who had attended 'me in numberless successive illnesses-all taken!-I left.' For more than twenty years before her death, she had been deprived of both smell and taste; a privation which, with happy alchemy, she converts into an occasion of gratitude; terming it, in another letter, a mercy, as all Divine appointments are."

6

For, having been compelled to live on medicine for many years, rather than food, what disgusts have I been spared. Then how richly

VOL. XII. N.S.

3 I

has it been made up, in the more valuable, I may say intellectual senses, for my sight and hearing are perfect. We shall always find mercy behind a cloud, if we look for it; and the doctrine of compensa

tion is a favourite theme with me.'

6

In 1828, Mrs. More was led by the discovery of the ingratitude and villany of her confidential servants, to quit for ever her beloved retreat at Barley Wood, and to remove to Clifton, near Bristol. She had then reached the age of eighty-three, and she survived five years and a half longer. Towards the end of 1832, the decay in both her mental and bodily powers, which had been slowly going on, became more observable. On the 7th of September 1833, after having for some weeks lain in a state bordering on unconsciousness, without any pain or convulsive effort, she placidly breathed her last. We shall not add a word of our own, but transcribe the remark of the literary friend to whom we have alluded, on closing this most interesting and instructive biography. Hannah More, in these volumes, has passed through 6 the severest ordeal to which talents and virtue can be sub'mitted; and it is only justice to say, that her character, progressively purified, has come out of the flames lighted up by the sparks of her own kindling," as nearly perfect as man can ' have evidence to prove. This is the sincere testimony of one who was (from too little acquaintance with her works) a preju'diced person, rather than a partial reader at the beginning, but has been so far improved by the perusal of these Memoirs as 'to confess his fault at the end, and abjure it.' Many readers will, we believe, sympathize in this sentiment. Of Hannah More we might almost venture to say, in the words of Sacred Writ, "Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all."

6.66

Art. II. An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. By Thomas Hartwell Horne, B.D. of St. John's College, Cambridge, Rector of the united parishes of St. Edmund the King and St. Nicholas Acons, Lombard Street. Prebendary of St. Paul's. Seventh Edition, corrected and enlarged. Illustrated with numerous Maps and Facsimiles of Biblical MSS. 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1834.

THIS

HIS highly meritorious and valuable compilation must be ranked among the services which have been rendered to the church by lay theologians. At the time that we had the satisfaction of first recommending it to the attention of our readers, Thomas Hartwell Horne was known only as the pains-taking, indefatigable bibliographer, filling the office of librarian to the Surrey Institution. The work is therefore substantially the pro

duction of a layman; and it served as the passport of the Author to Episcopal ordination, although he did not graduate at Cambridge till ten years after he was admitted to orders. In the dedication of this edition to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Mr. Horne says:

. While you, my Lord, presided over the Diocese of London, when I was unknown except by the publication of the first edition, you were pleased to consider the production of a layman, who, by the death of his parents, had been deprived of the opportunity of prosecuting his studies at one of the Universities, sufficient to authorize your Grace to admit me to Holy Orders; and I was thus enabled to realize the long cherished wish of devoting myself to the service of our Reformed Church, in attachment to whose principles I had been educated at the Royal and Ancient Foundation of Christ's Hospital. Your Grace has since honoured my various publications with your approbation; and in presenting me to the benefice which I now hold, your Grace has enhanced the value of the favour conferred by the manner in which it was be stowed; kindly and promptly, without expectation, without solici

tation.'

The modest preferment which Mr. Horne has at length obtained, has been well bestowed and gratefully received; and the Archbishop has done himself honour by the spontaneous act of justice to a literary workman, by whose useful labours the clergy

have been benefited. Well would it have been for the Establishment, had similar considerations more frequently regulated the disposal of its gifts and honours. Deeply persuaded as we are, that Christianity stands in no need of a dowry from the State, and that an efficient ministry can be secured only by the voluntary system, that when State protection runs into patronage, it inevitably first enslaves, and then corrupts the Church, we cannot, nevertheless, escape from the conviction, that learning can be perpetuated and maintained only by means of endowments and generous rewards. Nor do we wish to deny that the ecclesiastical establishment of this country has, incidentally, and to a certain extent, contributed to the encouragement of learning. Notwithstanding the gross abuses which have crept into both the collegiate and the parochial branches of the Establishment, in consequence of its abject bondage to aristocratical ascendancy, the halls and stalls of the Church have, like the cells and cloisters of the monastic orders of other days, answered the purpose of harbouring learning, better than that of promoting the purity and extension of the faith. Before, however, we can admit this consideration to have much force as an argument in favour of the ecclesiastical polity which blends the Church and State, we require to be persuaded that the most appropriate reward of literary industry, in any branch, is the charge of the souls of men, and

that the fair rewards of learning ought to be confined to those who have no scruples at accepting them burdened with such conditions.

In the present instance, Mr. Horne became a clergyman through choice, and the honours of the Church have slowly followed upon the substantial fruits of his industry reaped from the public. To his case of singular good fortune, therefore, our remarks will not apply. But we cannot help regarding it as an unhappy circumstance, that, in this country, the 'Church alone holds out to literary men any prize to stimulate their exertions, any permanent provision as the reward of useful and self-denying labours. The consequence of this is, on the one hand, that secular and irreligious men are tempted to become candidates for ecclesiastical offices and dignities; and, on the other, that the pastorship of the flock of Christ is consigned, with all its awful responsibilities, to editors of Greek tragedies, or writers of English plays, to learned scholars, such as Parr, and Porson, and Maltby, who, in assuming the sacred office, are most deplorably out of their element. The only way in which a secular patron can provide for a man of real genius or learning is, by presenting him to a living! Whatever be his habits or character, he must take orders to obtain anything. This is a system which works ill both for learning and for religion. The duties which are annexed to the benefice, are of a nature for which mere learning but ill qualifies; and if adequately discharged, they would leave little leisure for the prosecution of laborious studies. Sinecures are blots upon the Church; but the rewards of learning ought to be sinecures. No responsible office, we admit, ought to be of this description. Offices involving professional duty and responsibility are not, however, the appropriate reward of those who have consecrated themselves to such pursuits as, of all, are the most inadequately remunerated, because the public cannot appreciate them. Political and religious sinecures work mischief both to Church and State, by harbouring corruption and formalism; but literary sinecures, judiciously and fairly awarded, are open to no such ground of objection; and the niggard spirit of democracy which would grudge to literature the snug endowment or scanty pension, miscalculates the interests of the State, and proves itself a bad economist.

While, then, we wish to see literary honours and rewards separated from religious duties and religious concerns,-deeming it not less absurd to make a mere Greek scholar a bishop, or a man of letters a sinecure rector, than to confer degrees in divinity upon generals and diplomatists,—we must contend, that collegiate endowments and State patronage are both useful and requisite for the encouragement of letters and learned men; and that sound policy will make just this one exception in favour of learning, while maintaining, as a general rule, the superior efficiency of the

voluntary principle. And the reason of this exception is obvious. The public is the fairest paymaster of its own servants, the best supplier of its own wants, so far as it can be made sensible of those wants. But learning and learned men are not wanted for any specific purpose which the public can take into its calculation. Education is perceived to be a want; religious instruction and consolation are felt by all men to be a moral want, or rather to meet a universal want; the public, therefore, may be safely trusted to support and reward its schoolmasters and religious teachers who immediately purvey to its intellectual and moral necessities. But the scholar does not come in contact with the minds and tastes of the many. His labours bear only remotely upon the interests of society. He cannot calculate upon either the justice or the gratitude of the public, because he cannot make them appreciate the value of his apparently trivial studies or superfluous labours. For this reason, either he must stoop to ignoble means of propitiating public favour, and must become a mere tradesman or a mere artist, or he must obtain the rewards of a liberal patronage from the few who are able to appreciate his merits; - or, as the only alternative, he must struggle with penury, and perhaps sink as the victim of fatal mental endowments.

We have been led into this train of remark by the rare instance of judicious and disinterested kindness on the part of the Lord Primate, which has installed the worthy Compiler of these volumes in the rectory-house of St. Nicholas Acons, with the additional honour (though, we believe, a barren one) of a prebend of the metropolitan cathedral. Far from grudging him these ecclesiastical favours, we only regret that the useless and pernicious wealth of the Establishment is not more available for the benefit of poor scholars, whether brought up at Christ's Hospital or in other foundations, as well as for the encouragement and reward of labori ous authors or men of science. We sincerely wish Mr. Prebendary Horne a long enjoyment of his preferment, and the pleasure of editing many future impressions of this "Introduction". We shall now address ourselves to our proper business, by briefly stating the amendments and additions introduced into the present impression.

The first volume, comprising a Critical Inquiry into the Genuineness, Authenticity, and Inspiration of the Scriptures, remains much the same as in several previous editions, with the exception of some immaterial corrections. The least satisfactory portion of the volume is that which treats of the nature and extent of Inspiration at p. 202, and in No. II. of the Appendix. Mr. Horne would have gained some valuable hints from Professor Woods's Lectures on the Inspiration of the Scriptures*; and we should

* See Eclec t. Rev. 3d Series, vol. viii. p. 156.