doctrine appear to have been successful in opening the eyes of the public to its pernicious tendencies; and that it has lost the position which it had for a time gained under the influence of certain persons, who have since forsaken the communion of the Church of England. We next find our author engaged in the office of ministering to the necessities of his parishioners during 1847, the first year of famine in Ireland; subsequently engaged during that and the following year in preparing a work on Faith, which he did not live to complete or even to arrange in any way. He died in July, 1848, of fever, caught from overheating himself in returning home after preaching an ordination sermon.

The volume before us contains one specimen of his Lectures on Moral Philosophy, which makes us regret the absence of the remainder. It comprises a masterly and beautiful exposition of the Platonic doctrine of ideas, and generally of the Platonic philosophy; and if it afford a fair example of the professor's general mode of teaching, we can scarcely concur in the observation, that there was any redundance of language or of imagery. It appears to us particularly sober and simple in its general tone and composition.

We now proceed to the Sermons, which occupy the greater part of the volume. All that we have read of these compositions impresses us with a sense of their singular depth and power. We feel, in perusing them, that we are in contact with a mind of superior range, which can embrace in its comprehensive view the most extended relations of the subjects on which it touches; and which possesses the power of eliciting from the most complicated questions, the general laws or principles which enable us to solve the various difficulties presented to us. His fund of scriptural allusion and of varied illustration is most ample; his language is ornate, and almost labouring beneath its own pomp and stateliness; but throughout, it is the Christian orator who addresses us—not the essayist or the ingenious reasoner, or the thoughtful and learned divine merely-but the Preacher. We have rarely met sermons which bear so distinctly this character upon them, and which, accordingly, are more out of the common run of essays on texts which pass for sermons. Butler understood the office and the manner of a preacher; and judging from the discourses before us, and from the account of his delivery given by his biographer, we should think that he could have been equalled by very few men of his time. The Sermons in this volume are chiefly addressed to thoughtful and educated congregations, having been, indeed, for the most part, preached before the University of Dublin, or on public occasions. We shall conclude by offering an extract from one of his discourses in illustration of his style of pulpit

eloquence. In a sermon on "Self-Delusion as to our state before God," he touches successively on the various sources of the lamentable ignorance in which we too frequently live, in regard to our personal state with God; resolving them primarily into the permitted agency of the Enemy of our souls, and then proceeding to show the effects of the corruption of our nature, the practice of habitual sin, the frame and condition of the world around us, the influence of fashion and rank, and thus sums up his argument :

"But to example and authority, thus enlisted in the ranks of evil, and thus fortifying the false security of our imaginary innocence, must be added such considerations as the tendency of pleasure itself, or of indolence, to prolong this deception, and our natural impatience of the pain of self-disapproval. That which is pleasing to soul or sense detaches from all but itself; it fixes and fascinates, and enfeebles as it fascinates. Still more effective is the other influence. Our Creator has given us the pain of self-condemnation to counterbalance the temptation to evil. A man will love the sin, yet shudder at the remorse that follows it. But there are no provisions in our nature which may not be wilfully impaired; and it would even seem that they are delicate in proportion to their excellence. The structure of the moral feelings is as tender as the structure of an eye or ear, and both are in a great measure put into our own keeping. Now you know there are two ways of easing an aching joint,-by healing its disease or by paralysing the limb. And there are two ways of escaping an angry conscience,-by ceasing from the evil that provokes, or by resolutely refusing to hear its voice, which soon amounts to silencing it for ever. I am not to tell you which is the usual resource of guilty and neglectful hearts; I need not insist how powerful a persuasive to the belief that' we have no sin' must be this perpetual impulse to avoid the pain of thinking that we have; how natural the tendency is to turn away our weak and trembling eyes from that, which we secretly feel we cannot steadily contemplate without sorrow, and perplexity, and dismay. Let this go on for a while, and gradually, but surely, the gloomy work is done; the troublesome censurer is mute: the light is put out, and the Evil One finds his proper home in the darkness!

"And all this proceeds in mysterious silence! There are no immediate visible attestations of God's displeasure to startle or affright. Among His judgments, as among His mercies, men are to walk, for the most part, by faith, and not by sight;' we must believe, not see our doom. And thus we wrest His very patience into a motive for contemning His majesty; 'for my name's sake will I defer mine anger, and for my praise will I refrain' (Isa. xlviii. 8); but we cannot understand a glory thus founded in compassionate endurance. 'Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.'-Eccles. viii. 11. All our customary conceptions of the justice of heaven are taken from the tribunals of earth, and on earth punishment ordinarily dogs the

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heels of crime. Hence, where the punishment is not direct, we forget that the guilt can have existed. 'These things hast thou done, and I kept silence;' and that silence is the ground of the corrupt and insulting inference that forms the sinner's security: thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself.’—Ps. 1. 21. 'Have I not held my peace even of old, and thou fearest me not?' (Isa. lvii. 11;) the merciful reluctance of our God to avenge, becoming itself the perpetual encouragement to despise or to forget the vengeance He delays. Let favour,' cries the Prophet, be shown to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness;' the 'favour' being itself too certainly the reason, or the confirmation, of his thankless obstinacy!-Isa. xxvi. 10. very immutability of the laws of visible nature, the ceaseless recurrence of those vast revolutions that make the annals of the physical universe, and the confidence that we instinctively entertain of the stability of the whole material system around us, while they are the ground of all our earthly blessings, and while they are, to the reason, a strong proof of divine superintendence, are as certainly, to the imagination, a constant means of deadening our impressions of the possibility or probability of divine interposition. Stricken, and, it may be, perplexed or abashed for a moment, by the threats or the heart-searchings of the pulpit, men go forth beneath the open canopy of heaven, but all is peaceful there! They breathe freely! The nightmare of religious terror releases them. Oh! no, it cannot be that these hideous imaginings are real, while every object looks tranquillity, and every countenance is smiling. There is no hand-writing upon the wall' of Nature's Temple to countersign this tale of terrors. No voice from heaven authenticates the preacher's message; no consuming fire descends upon the guilty head; the voluptuary, the idolater of gain, the prosperous God-despiser is not stricken in our streets; and the scoffing sceptic cries, of Jehovah (as the Prophet, of the idol god), 'He is talking, or He is pursuing, or He is on a journey, or peradventure He sleepeth and must be awaked.'-1 Kings xix. 27. Awaked! He will awake! Surely the God will break forth at length from His hidden sanctuary, and break forth, as of old upon the Mount, 'in fire and the smoke of a furnace.'-Exod. xix. 18. The invisible shall once more be the visible, nor shall Moses alone have seen the Lord face to face;' the words and sentences of the immortal Book shall no longer be the breath of a man's voice, to which men listen from decency and drop to slumber as they listen, but, themselves, shall breathe and live, realized in a divine world with a divine economy: The Lord hath prepared His throne for judgment, and He shall judge the world in righteousness.'-Ps. ix. 7, 8. And when that cycle that ends in judgment-long, it may be, for the first act of an eternity may well be no dream of the morning-shall have indeed come round, what, amid all the terrors of the day of wrath, shall move a deeper awe than that fatal frailty of our nature to which your thoughts have been this day directed? What more appalling to conceive than that unravelling of the subtlest intricacies of the heart's inward hypocrisy, man's shame uncovered to himself, his imaginary innocence exposed to the scoff of

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the tempter that suggested it, his darling deceits dragged forth and disgraced before his eyes? A search close, and deep, and penetrating as this, is the perpetual intimation of Scripture. God shall judge the secrets of men.'-Rom. ii. 'Every man's work shall be made manifest' (1 Cor. iii. 13), tried by fire.' God will bring to light the hidden things of darkness.'-1 Cor. iv. 5. The dead are judged out of those things which are written in the books, according to their works.'-Rev. xx. 21. Does not this speak of inquiry too keen to be baffled, too authentic to be deceived, too minute to be evaded? All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes, but God weigheth the spirits.'-Prov. xvi. 2. The wretch who was cast into outer darkness, for lack of the wedding-garment, evidently came in not dreaming of rejection. Again and again our Lord represents this perpetuation of self-ignorance to the very period of judgment, as one of the most terrible characteristics of that hour of terrors. Brethren! if I have this day, under God's blessing, prompted one of you to suspect the wiles of his own guilty nature,-if I have to any purpose impressed on you the certainty that ' if you say,' or imagine, you have no sin, you deceive yourselves,' will you not, when you leave this house of prayer, leave it only to pray yet more earnestly in private to that God who can see what you cannot see, and urge the humble avowal and petition of the Psalmist: Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults! for thou hast set our iniquities before thee; our secret sins in the light of thy countenance?'-Ps. xix. 12; xc. 8.

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There is a very interesting and important sermon entitled "Church Principles not inconsistent with Christian Sympathy," which merits an attentive perusal. Its object is to show that it is possible to maintain the Divine institution and perpetual obligation of the apostolical framework of the Church, without pronouncing any hard judgment on those who have been led by circumstances to adopt a different system. While we may not feel enabled to concur wholly with every position advanced in this most able discourse, and may be even of opinion that the charity of the writer has sometimes led him on somewhat questionable ground, we must offer our tribute of respect to the high philosophy, the expansive charity, and the able theological reasoning which characterize throughout this remarkable production. We trust that the publication of the work before us will not only exercise a wholesome influence on the youth of Ireland, but that such of our English readers as may peruse it, will feel increased respect for a system, which could produce such fruits as those which are presented to us in the Sermons of ARCHer Butler.

ART. II.-The Works of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, illustrated chiefly from the Remains of Ancient Art. With a Life. By the Rev. HENRY HART MILMAN. London: Murray. 1849.

MANY causes combine to invest the volume before us with great and peculiar interest. Few uninspired writers have obtained so wide a circulation, or exercised so great an influence over the conduct as well as the taste of mankind, as Horace. Even in this age of universal illustration, no author appears more admirably suited to display the skill of the artist, and the taste of the publisher, than the poetic delineator of the days of Augustus. And were we at liberty to pick and choose from the writers of the present time, or perhaps of any other, we should certainly have selected Mr. Milman as his biographer. Not only does he possess extensive learning, and an intimate acquaintance with Roman Life, as well as Latin literature, but his grace and taste point him out as especially fitted to be the commentator of the Matine Bee.

The circulation and influence of the works of Horace must be ascribed to the co-operation of many causes, none of them sufficient in itself to produce so striking a result. The character and position of the age in which he wrote, as well as the course of subsequent events, have probably given every advantage to those high merits which he intrinsically possesses; nor can it well be doubted that many of his most serious faults have assisted the growth, the spread, and the permanence of his popularity. Had he possessed Ovid's warmth of heart, or Lucretius's depth of thought, or Virgil's purity of mind, or Juvenal's indignant hatred of vice, his excellences, great as they are, would never have raised him to the rank which he now occupies. We shall, however, have occasion to treat of his character, literary and personal, hereafter.

We really think, that we never met with a volume so beautifully got up as that now before us; it does the highest credit to all those in any way concerned with its decorations. In themselves they are worthy of the greatest praise, and they are all of them precisely adapted to their subject.

The Work consists of two parts: the Prolegomena in English, comprehending, Life of Horace, by Milman; Fasti Horatiani; a Letter from G. W. Dennis, "De Villa Horatii ;" and