It is amusing how regularly we find it occurring in the prefaces to his works, that one reason for the publication of each is his belief that erroneous views are commonly entertained as to the subject of it. And when we consider how most men receive their opinions upon all subjects ready-made, we cannot appreciate too highly one who, in the emphatic sense of the phrase, thinks for himself. It is right to add that there is hardly an instance in which so much originality of thought can be found in conjunction with so much justice and sobriety of thought. In Archbishop Whately's writings we have independence without the least trace of wrongheadedness. His views, especially in his Lectures on a Future State, on Good and Evil Angels, and on the Characters of the Apostles, are often startling at the first glance, because very different from those to which we have grown accustomed: but he generally succeeds in convincing us that his opinion is the sound and natural one; and where he fails to carry our conviction along with him, he leaves us persuaded of his good faith, and sensible that much may be said on his part.

Another striking characteristic of Archbishop Whately is, his extraordinary power of illustrating moral truths and principles by analogies to external nature. Not even Abraham Tucker possessed this power in so eminent a degree: and the Archbishop's illustrations are always free from that grossness

and vulgarity which often deform those of Tucker, who (as he himself tells us) did not scruple to take a figure from the kitchen or the stable if it could make his meaning plainer. We cannot call to mind any English author who employs imagery in such a profuse degree; yet without the faintest suspicion of that nerveless and aimless accumulation of figures and comparisons which constitutes what is vulgarly termed floweriness of style. We have no fine things put in for mere fine-writing's sake. Dr. Whately's illustrations are not only invariably apt and striking they really illustrate his point,-they throw light upon it, and make it plainer than it was before. They are hardly ever long drawn out; consisting very frequently in a happy analogy suggested in one clause of a sentence, the writer being anxious to make that step in his reasoning clear, yet too much bent upon the ultimate conclusion he is aiming at to linger upon that step longer than is necessary to make it so.

To these literary qualifications we add, that Archbishop Whately's information, though evidently reaching over a vast field, is yet minutely accurate in the smallest details; and without the least tinge of pedantry, the fine scholarship of the writer often shines through his work. It is almost superfluous to allude to the invariable clearness, point, and felicity of the Archbishop's English style, which often warms into eloquence 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 any one, 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 * Preface, p. v.

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

through life, has his quick eye gathered up the characteristics of 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 hard 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 strongest-minded 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