cence of the whole are nothing to this keen tribe, while they are fixing their microscopic vision on some hair's-breadth crevice, or struggling over some monstrous projection the hundredth part of an inch high. Our true surprize is, that Dr. Hobart did not contrive to find ten times the abuses. With all his borrowing from report, his assortment is still meagre, and we can well understand the compatriot disappointment, that when he had risked so much to carry out his cargo, he had not made it better worth the voyage!

We confidently hope that this gentleman will feel the suitableness of henceforth abjuring politics, and be content with the popularity for which he has paid so hard a price. We shall probably hear no more of him than we have heard of his associate Theologians. His faculties may be well occupied in America; for, after all, it is from Episcopacy that we must expect whatever of religious decorum and sound doctrine is to be the portion of the Western world. All things there are too much tossed about in the yeasty ocean of Republicanism. The religious chart of America is still the melancholy counterpart of its physical one; here and there little traces of life among endless sweeps of sectarian barbarism; the land overspread with Dunkers and Thumpers, and Memnonists and Jumpers, enthusiasts gay and gloomy, beyond all counting; the slaves of strange and unscriptural folly, or giddy and presumptuous ignorance, or reckless and revolting passions; a vast hilarious and holy rabble, drugged by the cup of Fanaticism. Among those orgies Episcopacy sits, like the virgin of the poet, pure yet bound, still repelling the evil enchanter, and, we should trust, long disdaining his draught of licentiousness. To uphold this little Church in the midst of licensed extravagance, is among the most honourable of all duties; and we must hope, that its pastors will long be found worthy to transmit to posterity the faith of their righteous fathers and our own.

A Sermon preached at Lambeth, May 21, 1826, at the Consecration of the Right Reverend Charles Richard Sumner, Lord Bishop of Llandaff. By the Rev. J. B. SUMNER, M.A. Prebendary of Durham, &c. 8vo. Pp. 22. London. Hatchard.

THIS sermon, which was published by command of the Archbishop of Canterbury, is a manly and intelligent exposition of the text.

"Take heed unto thyself and unto thy doctrine, continue in them for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee." 1 Tim. iv. 16.

The occasion was unusual, for the preacher was the brother of the Right Reverend prelate, and personal feelings might be presumed to have given an additional interest to the exhortations of the accomplished divine.

The choice of a Bishop is among the most important events of the Church, and is, perhaps, not inferior to any of the duties of the crown. Upon the vigour, learning, and purity of one man, the most extensive results have depended; and we have not to look back far into English history to know that to a Bishop may be due the fall or the safety of a Constitution. The late reign made it one of its proudest boasts that the Episcopal Bench was the object of its pious care; and the present Monarch has signalised his reign by equal and patriotic diligence in the selection of the most distinguished for literature and virtue among the clergy. The peculiar situa tion of the present Bishop of Llandaff gave his Royal Master opportunities of close investigation; no man in the realm is perhaps better able to judge of the qualities for high office, whether in Church or State; and we believe that, whether on the ground of learning and ability, of amiable manners and temper, or of Christian piety and knowledge, it would be diffi cult to point out a more popular promotion than that of the late Librarian to his Majesty.

An English prelate has before him a career that might stimulate the noblest and holiest ambition. A member of the great council of the nation, and a peer of England, he has the most conspicuous field that the world ever offered, thrown open to his public talents, and constitutional knowledge;-a Bishop, he stands in the highest rank of the most illustrious and purest Church of Christianity; the guardian of its interests, the assertor of its doctrines, the director, guide, and governor of its clergy. As a member of general society, he has all the influence attached to rank and revenue, with a degree of respect

and consideration seldom granted to the highest of both in other hands. He has, in fact, a vast mass of capable and honourable efficiency deposited with him, for its employment in the cause of private and public religion and virtue.

But his responsibility is heavy. Abstaining from all individual allusion, and certainly having no idea of offering any advice of ours to a prelate who has, doubtless, duly pondered all his duties, we repeat, that to a conscience alive to the responsibility of the mitre, we can conceive no trust that might demand more anxious and solemn deliberation. According to the general way of estimating those matters, there might be but few men who would hesitate a moment on the subject; nor should we praise a timorous and nervous hesitation. But perhaps of all the forms in which duty has ever been laid, or can be laid, on the human heart, the conscientious obligation of Prelacy is the most various, stern, and formidable. The thirst of wealth, the thirst of power, partiality and favoritism, personal indulgence, and the whole tribe of purposes and passions which pass so venially in the estimate of men of other classes, become in him offences of the deepest dye. But his positive duties are still more trying;-Energy, holy zeal, profound professional acquirement; an utter devotedness of his means, his mind, and himself, to the cause of God; a total abjuration of all the little, creeping motives of the world; a perpetual sense of living and acting in the presence of the supreme Judge; an unsleeping struggle against his human infirmity, a burning and angelic zeal of holiness, and a spirit like a flame of fire on the altar of the Lord. Those must be his personal virtues, the springs and impulses of his conduct in his high station. What that conduct should be, we shall not attempt to define; the dignified kindness, the decent hospitality, the generous and graceful intercourse, have too many exemplifications on the English Bench for us to dwell on them here.

The vigilant and just distribution of preferment is among the very highest public duties of the prelate. Upon it, if we are not deeply deceived, may turn the whole question of the advance or the decline of the true faith in England. The Establishment has already bitter enemies; they are adding strength to strength: they must be resisted; but by no other weapons than those of the understanding. Those enemies have the activity that so habitually belongs to the evil cause: they have learning and acuteness; a vast portion of the common literary accesses to the public is in their hands: they have what is still more formidable, a great ally in the prejudice, angry ignorance, and political inflammation of the populace. Against all those

the Establishment must make her stand boldly and triumphantly, or perish pitiably, and without the hope of restoration. There will be no alternative of lingering and lazy neutrality no easy truce of indolence on the one side, and harmless contempt on the other. The preparations for the assault are gathering before our eye; and no long period may elapse before we shall find its whole completed strength bursting upon us without restraint or relaxation. It would be madness to attempt to compromise with this desperate and implacable hostility; but it would be folly and crime not to prepare; and the true preparation is to be found in the talents of the Clergy.

Mr. Sumner's sermon gives an eloquent general view of the impressions of the pastor, the necessity" of taking heed unto "of himself," and the double and cheering result, the "saving himself and those that hear him." We have, unfortunately, room but for one passage as a specimen of his graceful style. He thus speaks of the pastoral appointment:

"Indeed it is not the least among the many blessings conferred upon the world by Christianity, that it provides for a succession of men set apart from others by character as well as station, and furnishing to all a perpetual admonition, that there is a world to live for beyond the present. Fleeing from those vain pursuits and superfluous cares which encumber and perplex the multitude, they live as men of God, thoroughly unto every good word and work: and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. They are the light of the world: men see their good works, their uncorruptness, their gravity, their disinterested benevolence, and are thus led to glorify their Father which is in heaven. They are the salt of the earth, to save it from corruption. Their influence is like the influence of the Sabbath, which preserves a spirit of seriousness and piety among the individuals and the nations that keep it holy. Take away the Sabbath from the year, and all would become, as those became who in times not long past, tried the perilous experiment, covetous, proud, boasters, blasphemers, unthankful, unholy. And so if there were no examples of piety and self-denial, of men who living in the world are not of the world, the manifold engagements and conflicting interests of the present life would conceal eternity from view the lust of the flesh would betray, and the lust of the eyes would deceive, and the pride of life would allure, and none would be reminded that the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: and he alone that doeth the will of God, abideth for ever."

A Letter to Charles Butler, Esq. on his Notice of the Practical and Internal Evidence against Catholicism. By the Rev. J. BLANCO WHITE, M.A. of the University of Oxford. 8vo. pp. 136.

Murray. Price 6s. 1825.

London

The Papal Supremacy, with Remarks on the Bill for restoring the In tercourse between the See of Rome and the United Kingdom, passed by the Commons and rejected by the Lords, in the Year 1825. By JOHN CROSS, Serjeant at Law. 8vo. pp. 112. London, Murray. 1826. 12 A Defence of his Royal Highness the Duke of York, and of the Sentiments delivered by him in the House of Lords on the Question of the Catholic Claims, May 25, 1825. With Strictures on the Conduct of the Body calling themselves the Catholic Association, and of the Popish Clergy of Ireland. By an IRISHMAN, a Student at the Bar of England. 8vo. pp. 96. London, Rivington.

LET us suppose a traveller suddenly dropped into the centre of Spain. He sees a noble country, full of the bounties of nature, a luxurious climate, a landscape covered with spontaneous fertility; and of this he sees three-fourths a solitude, or traversed but by beggars and banditti, and, of the remainder, the people broken and powerless; or distracted with civil discord, alternately flying from vengeance and seeking it in the blood of their fellow subjects; a throne without security, a population idle, ignorant and insubordinate, and a priesthood lazy and corrupting, or busied in active partizanship, and paralyzing at once the influence of the government, and the improvement of the nation.

What would be the feeling of that traveller suddenly conveyed into England, and left to draw his conclusions. Populousness, industry, intelligence, an unexampled freedom of thought and action, general comfort, a solid government, an unobtrusive and unostentatious priesthood, an opulent and instructed nobility, and a total absence of all those impediments that time or tyranny lay on the progress of a nation to knowledge, purity, and power, would make up the natural impressions of the stranger. How this mighty difference came to exist, how the whole munificence of nature seemed unable to give in the one country, what was wrested from its reluctant hand in our narrow spot of humid skies and tardy fertility, is a question that the Spaniard and the Englishman might answer in the same words. The distinction is not be to sought in climate, for there the Spaniard has the obvious superiority, nor in early freedom, for