From the number of these articles, it will be inferred that many of the notices are very brief, consisting of mere obituaries; and it may also be anticipated, that both the length and the interest of the memorial would be determined less by the eminence of the deceased, than by the extent of biographical materials. But the rule of proportion is not always observed. Thus, while the life of Mr. Cecil occupies 19 pages, that of Mr. Jackson 14, and that of Dr. Bogue no fewer than 29,only 5 pages are assigned to Henry Martyn, 10 to President Dwight, and 6 to the Rev. John Newton. With regard to the latter, indeed, (and the observation will apply to a few other names,) he cannot be considered as having belonged to the nineteenth century; and the reason assigned for the brevity of the memoir, would better have justified its omission. The chief fault we have to find with the volume is, that the articles are too many, and some of them unsatisfactorily short and scanty. The public, however, may be better pleased with the variety; and Mr. Bishop, we are aware, had some difficulties. to contend with. On the whole, the volume, we make no doubt, will be both popular and useful. Among the names that ought to have found a place, are those of the Rev. David Brown of Calcutta, and the philanthropic Granville Sharp. Our readers will expect a specimen of the style and general execution of the work. We take the following entire notice on account of its convenient brevity, in preference to an extract from a longer memoir.

'THE REV. JEHOIADA BREWER,

OF BIRMINGHAM.

Few men were more eminently endowed by nature and by grace, for a life of usefulness, than the late Jehoiada Brewer; and few ministers of the present generation, have been indulged with a larger share of success.

He was born at Newport, in Monmouthshire, about the year 1752. His family was highly respectable. Having obtained clear and scriptural views of the method of salvation, under the ministry of the Rev. Mr. Glascott, who was preaching at the chapel of the Countess of Huntingdon, in Bath; he first laboured in the villages around that city, and afterwards preached, with remarkable popularity, throughout Monmouthshire and the surrounding counties. His intention, at this time, was to enter the national church; and he studied under a clergyman to recover his classical knowledge acquired at school, and to prepare himself for taking orders; but was diverted from this plan by the positive refusal of ordination, and compelled, if he would preach the gospel, on which his heart was set, to exercise his ministry among Protestant Dissenters. The grounds on which the bishop refused, were, that his sentiments were: ›

Calvinistic, his spirit too methodistical, and his practice irregular, since he had already preached. It was the privilege of Rodborough, in Gloucestershire, to enjoy his ministrations for a few years. Here he was greatly beloved, and very useful. He afterwards raised a large and flourishing congregation, from a very small one, at Sheffield, where he spent thirteen years, and ultimately settled at Birmingham, where his ministry was numerously attended, and with increasing usefulness, even to its close. After a very gradual decline of health for two or three years, on the 24th of August, 1817, he gently died away, sleeping in Jesus.

He possessed a strong and vigorous understanding, and a large share of firmness and decision of character. His feelings were quick and susceptible: in his friendships he was ardent and sincere. He was a man of strict integrity, of great moral worth: he had a high sense of honour, in its best acceptation, and was the decided and mortal enemy of every thing like duplicity and meanness. He was,

he

-what his friends have often heard him admire and commend,-a truly honest man. This, too, was a leading feature of his ministry: he held forth the word of life in no equivocal or suspicious tones; gave the trumpet no uncertain sound. He spoke as he believed; he believed as he spoke; for he ever aimed, not to please the corrupt fancies and depraved tastes of men, but to reach their consciences, and save their souls. The most stupid and careless could scarcely hear him without feeling, without trembling. His words were as goads, they pierced like arrows, and rankled in the heart. It was not either the beauty of his imagery, or the richness of his taste or language, which attracted and secured the attention of his audience, though his illustrations were often peculiarly striking, and his language was generally correct, strong, and nervous. No; it was the vigour, the fervour, the directness of his address, the solemnity and earnestness of his manner, which arrested the heart and conscience, and interested the feelings of the hearer, and made him sensible that he was the person intended and addressed. A favourite sentiment of his, and often alluded to by him, was this: "When a man preaches as he ought, he goes direct to the conscience, instead of stooping to trifle with the imagination."

Perhaps much of the secret of that skill, that happy art, by which he produced such powerful effects on his congregation, lay here,he consulted his own heart in the preparation of his sermons, and therefore seldom failed to get at the hearts of his hearers in delivering them. On one of the blank leaves of his pulpit Bible, he had inscribed the following very significant and striking extracts, which he adopted as his mottos, and to which, under a Divine blessing, much of the impression often witnessed in his preaching, may warrantably be attributed: "Prius afficiamur ipsi, ut alios afficiamus !--Ardeat, qui vult incendere.-Si vis me flere, dolendum est."

pp. 209-12. In the following memoir, expressions are recorded as having been used in the immediate prospect of death, which, however

characteristic of the man, and, when interpreted by his character, significant of his faith and piety, should not have found a place in the present work: they border too closely on the ludicrous. We do not think that Mr. Benson's eloquence is very happily characterised at p. 257; nor will the remark convey any distinct idea to Mr. Bishop's readers, that he had little of Cicero and less of Isocrates in his composition.' A few blemishes of this kind, Mr. Bishop will, we hope, have an opportunity of removing in a future edition.

Art. X. My Thought Book. J. P. Thomas. 8vo. pp. 404. London. 1825.

A book of this kind might be made very interesting, but it would require a rare combination of effective talents of very different kinds. A mind exercised at once in deep thinking and imaginative excursion, possessed of ample materials in the way of general knowledge, and habituated to express its 'thickcoming fancies,' or its severe ratiocinations, in various and appropriate language, might undertake such a task with fair hopes of success. To touch lightly and with spirit all sorts of subjects; to exhibit, with a few expressive touches, a vivid portraiture of truth or grace; to bring out the strong features of life and motion by a rapid yet skilful disposition of light and shadow; to give to the results of long and laborious study the appearance of bright and momentary suggestion;-all these demand, in their realization, not only great richness and elasticity of mind, but a power and tact of execution, as uncommon as they are delightful in their occurrence. With respect to the volume before us, we are sorry to say that we have been able to discover but few of those qualities which would be necessary to make a work of the kind either useful or attractive. It is neither particularly well-written, nor profoundly meditated. The Author mistakes flippancy for graceful vivacity, dogmatism for authority, and sententiousness for power. Let our readers ponder the following splendid aphorisms, and be grateful for so much wisdom and originality, clothed in so dignified a garb.

A STRAW turns a scale."

ADULATION makes man vain.’

A GNAT can bite a hero.'

• A MOUNTAIN is composed of grains of earth.'

DEEP research and acute penetration are splendid proofs of intellectual vigour.'

• DEFENCE against unjust attacks is warranted by the laws of nature.'

THERE is an utterly indefinable and infinite void between possi bility and impossibility! To attempt therefore to approximate that which is extremely improbable to that which is actually impossible, is a solecism, and an absurd expression of imagery, devoid of reason and opposed to truth.'

We have ventured to put the more emphatic parts of this fine passage in Italics. Nothing can excel the magnificent truism of the first sentence, excepting the admirable specimen of the non sequitur conspicuous in the second. Again:

• Truth is like matter. She cannot be in two places at the same time. What is contrary to truth cannot be truth! Where Truth is, Error can not be.'

Enough, however, of this delectable florilegium; but, lest Mr. Thomas should accuse us of partiality in selection, we shall cite a passage which we are sure he thinks remarkably beautiful, and which is, we admit, uncommonly fine.

Who can enter our metropolitan cathedral, without being fired with sentiments of honourable ambition? Who has so cold and insipid an eye, as to regard without emotion, the national memorials there erected to the memory of deceased heroes? Who can regard the chiselled monuments there deposited, decorated with the impres sive beauties of art, in honour of virtuous glory, unswayed with the aspiring desires of emulative elevation? Who can observe the imposing sculptured representations of heroes falling in the battle of their country's cause, without experiencing the generous workings of tender sympathy, and exalted admiration? Who can, unmoved, pass by the marble image of the honest patriot, whose undaunted mind and whose impressive eloquence were devoted to the prosperity of his native country?-a patriot the general friend of human kind? Where is the fireless, where is the apathetic, where is the imbruted eye, which acquires not fresh lustre in contemplating the ornamental sarcophagi of the illustrious dead, illumined by the powerful, yet partial gleams of piercing light, which break through the solemn stillness of the interesting scene of soul-subduing grandeur? Such a man must be debased indeed--such a man must be destitute of all that is noble in human nature-such a being must be devoid of the grandeur of human intellect-such an eye may be fixed in human effigy, but it is unblessed with the brilliancy of humen greatness.' pp. 249, 50.

Mr. Thomas aims at all sorts of game; how far he may be successful in his battue, is a different affair. Law, metaphysics, logic, theology, politics, morals, the arts, with a mob of minor varieties, employ his ready pen, but by no means with equal success. Some of his legal hints are valuable, and if he had confined himself to a small volume of adversaria on these matters, he would have stood a better chance for popularity and usefulness. On the Arts, he writes with much intrepidity, and VOL. XXVI. N.S.

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with a very knowing air; but his criticism is miserably vague, and has all those symptoms of the about it and about it,' that are so inexpressibly annoying on subjects which require unusual precision. What do we learn by being pompously told of Lionardi da Vinci, that he

exhibited in his paintings, the most lively touches of fire and vivacity. Awfully bold, yet critically correct, sublimely grand, yet purely natural, he added the acute penetration of the philosopher to the experienced skill of the artist.'

Sometimes our Author assumes an intense air of resolute originality, and avows, with praise-worthy intrepidity, opinions to which we should find some difficulty in finding opponents.

I am not amongst those who rank his works as merely distinguished for their finely humourous caricatura; nay, I am so bold as to suggest that Hogarth was in his general works very seldom, if ever, a caricaturist.'

He

This is a cheap sort of boldness, inasmuch as it would be at the peril of any one's reputation as a man of taste and discrimination, to assert that Hogarth was a mere caricaturist. was a satirist of the first order, and the distinction between satire and caricature is too obvious to need definition here. He introduced just so much of exaggeration, in other words of caricature, as was necessary to give full effect to his main design; but it was always employed upon his accessories, and the moral dignity of his satire was never, that we recollect, sacrificed to an inferior object. Compare the works of Hogarth with those of Gilray, and the difference will be obvious to the least practised eye. With all his undeniable talent, the latter sinks into a being of a distinct and inferior order. Even when Hogarth ventured on the lower office of the caricaturist, he appeared the humorous satirist, rather than the vulgar partizan. The Gobbi of Callot, and the whimsicalities of the Cavaliere Ghezzi, different as they are in design and execution, are alike caricatures; and a single glance at these will shew in an instant, the mighty interval between these humorous caprices, and the highly intellectual productions of our unrivalled. countryman. But it is not our intention to prove what has never been reasonably questioned; and we let these observations stand, not as a technical argument, but simply as an illustration of opinion.

'Dr. Paley himself was bishop of one of the smallest sees in England.'

Paley a bishop!-of what diocese?