perhaps, send a little treason or so at odd times through the post-office; and as to scand. magn., especially at those unhappy (luckily rare) periods when Whigs are in power, if all letters are like our own, the Attorney-General would find practice for a century in each separate day's correspondence. In all this there is no blame. Hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim. But publication is another thing. Rash insinuations, judgments of ultra violence, injurious anecdotes of loose or no authority, and paradoxes sportively maintained in the certainty of a benignant construction on the part of the individual correspondent all these, when printed, become armed, according to circumstances of time and person, with the power of extensive mischief. It is undeniable, that through Dr Parr's published let ters are scattered some scores of passages, which, had he been alive, or had they been brought forward in a direct andformal address to thepublic, would have called forth indignant replies of vehement expostulation or blank contradiction. And many even of his more general comments on political affairs, or on the events and characters of his times, would have been overlooked only upon the consideration that the place which he occupied, in life or in literature, was not such as to aid him in giving effect to his opinions.

In many of these cases, as we have said already, the writer had a title to allowance, which those who publish his letters have not. But there are other cases which call for as little indulgence to him as to them. In some of his political intemperances, he may be considered as under a twofold privilege: first, of place-since, as a private letter-writer, he must be held as within the protection and the license of his own fireside; secondly, of time since, on a general rule of construction, it may be assumed that such communications are not deliberate, but thrown off on the spur of the occasion; that they express, therefore, not a man's settled and abiding convictions, but thefirst momentaryimpulses of his passion or his humour. But in many of his malicious sarcasms, and disparaging judgments, upon contemporaries who might be regarded, in some measure, as competitors with himself,

either for the prizes of clerical life, or for public estimation, Dr Parr could take no benefit by this liberal construction. The sentiments he avowed in various cases of this description, were not in anyrespect hasty or unconsidered ebullitions of momentary feeling. They grew out of no sudden occasions; they were not the product of accident. This is evident; because uniformly, and as often almost as he either spoke or wrote upon the persons in question, he gave vent to the same bilious jealousy in sneers or libels of one uniform character; and, if he forebore to do this in his open and avowed publications, the fair inference is, that his fears or his interest restrained him; since it is notorious, from the general evidence of his letters and his conversation, that none of those whom he viewed with these jealous feelings could believe that they owed any thing to his courtesy or his moderation.

For example, and just to illustrate our meaning, in what terms did he speak and write of the very eminent Dean of Carlisle, and head of Queen's College, Cambridge-the late Dr Isaac Milner? How did he treat Bishop Herbert Marsh? How, again, the illustrious Bishop Horsley? All of them, we answer, with unprovoked and slanderous scurrility; not one had offered him any slight or offence,-all were persons of gentlemanly bearing, though the last (it is true) had shewn some rough play to one of Parr's pet heresiarchs,-all of them were entitled to his respect by attainments greatly superior to his own,-and all of them were more favourably known to the world than himself, by useful contributions to science, or theologic learning. Dean Milner had ruined his own activities by eating opium; and he is known, we believe, by little more than his continuation of the Ecclesiastical History, originally undertaken by his brother Joseph, and the papers which he contributed to the London Philosophical Transactions. But his researches and his accomplishments were of wonderful extent; and his conversation is still remembered by multitudes for its remarkable compass, and its almost Burkian* quality of elastic accommodation to the fluc

tuating accidents of the occasion. The Dean was not much in the world's eye at intervals he was to be found at the tables of the great; more often he sought his ease and consolations in his honourable academic retreat. There he was the object of dislike to a particular intriguing clique that had the ear of Dr Parr. He was also obnoxious to the great majority of mere worldlings, as one of those zealous Christians who are usually denominated evangelical, and by scoffers are called the saints; that is to say, in common with the Wilberforces, Thorntons, Hoares, Elliots, Babingtons, Gisbornes, &c., and many thousands of less distinguished persons, in and out of Parliament,-Dean Milner assigned a peculiar emphasis, and a more significant interpretation, to those doctrines of original sin, the terms upon which redemption is offered-regeneration, sanctification, &c., which have the appearance of being the characteristic and peculiar parts in the Christian economy. Whether otherwise wrong or right in these views, it strikes us poor lay critics (who pretend to no authoritative knowledge on these great mysteries), that those who adopt them, have, at all events, a prima facie title to be considered less worldly, and more spiritual-minded, than the mass of mankind and such a frame of mind is at least an argument of fitness for religious contemplations, in so far as temper is concerned, be the doctrinal (or merely intellectual) errors what they may. Consequently, for our own parts, humbly sensible as we are of our deficiencies in this great science of Christian philosophy, we could never at any time join in the unthinking ridicule which is scattered by the brilliant and the dull upon these peculiarities. Wheresoever, and whensoever, we must freely avow, that evidences of real non-conformity to the spirit of this impure earth of

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ours, command our unfeigned respect. But that was a thing which the worthy Dr Parr could not abide. He loved no high or aerial standards in morals or in religion. Visionaries, who encouraged such notions, he viewed (to express it by a learned word) as doßaturas, and as fit subjects for the chastisement of the secular arm. In fact, he would have persecuted a little upon such aprovocation. On Mr Pitt and the rest who joined in suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, Dr Parr was wont to ejaculate his pastoral benediction in the following after-dinner toast-“ Qui suspenderunt, suspendantur !" And afterwards, upon occasion of the six bills provoked by the tumults at Manchester, Glasgow, &c., his fatherly blessing was daily uttered in this little fondling sentiment,-" Bills for the throats of those who framed the bills!" On the same principle, he would have prayed ferventlyhad any Isaac Milner infested his parish-"Let those, who would exalt our ideals of Christianity, be speedily themselves exalted!" And, therefore, if any man enquires upon what grounds it was that Dr Parr hated with an intolerant hatred-scorned

and sharpened his gift of sneer upon-the late Dean of Carlislewe have here told him "the reason why;" and reason enough, we think, in all conscience. For be it known, that, over and above other weighty and obvious arguments for such views, Dr Parr had a standing personal irritation connected with this subject-a continual" thorn in the flesh"-in the relations subsisting between him and his principal, the incumbent of his own favourite and adopted parish. As the position of the parties was amusing to those who were in possession of the key to the right understanding of it, viz. a knowledge of their several views and opinions, we shall pause a mo

ment to describe the circumstances of the case.

Dr Parr, it is well known, spent a long period of his latter life at Hatton, a village in Warwickshire. The living of Hatton belonged to Dr Bridges, who, many a long year ago, was well known in Oxford as one of the fellows in the magnificentlyendowed college of Magdalen; that is to say, Dr Bridges was the incumbent at the time when some accident of church preferment brought Dr Parr into that neighbourhood. By an arrangement which we do not exactly understand, the two doctors, for their mutual convenience, exchanged parishes. We find it asserted by Dr Johnstone, that on Dr Parr's side the exchange originated in a spirit of obliging accommodation. It may be so. However, one pointed reservation was made by Dr Bridges [whether in obedience to church discipline or to his private scruples of conscience-we cannot say] viz.-that, once in every year, (according to our remembrance, for a series of six consecutive Sundays,) he should undertake the pulpit duties of the church. On this scheme the two learned clerks built their alterni fœdera regni; and, like two buckets, the Drs Bridges and Parr went up and down reciprocally for a long succession of years. The waters, however, which they brought up to the lips of their parishioners, were drawn from two different wells; for Dr Bridges shared in the heresy of the Dean of Carlisle. Hence a system of energetic (on Dr Parr's side, we may say-of fierce) mutual counteraction. Each, during his own reign, laboured to efface all impressions of his rival. On Dr Bridges's part, this was probably, in some measure, a necessity of conscience; for he looked upon his flock as ruined in spiritual health by the neglect and ignorance of their pastor. On Dr Parr's, it was the mere bigotry of hatred, such as all schemes of teaching are fitted to provoke which appeal to a standard of ultra perfection, or exact any peculiar sanctity of life. Were Bridges right, in that case, it was clear that Parr was wrong by miserable defect. But, on the other hand, were Parr right, then Bridges was wrong only by superfluity and redundance. Such

was the position, such the mutual aspects, of the two doctors. Parr's wrath waxed hotter and hotter. Had Dr Bridges happened to be a vulgar sectarian, of narrow education, of low breeding, and without distinguished connexions,-those etesian gales or annual monsoons, which brought in his periodical scourge, would have been hailed by Parr as the harbingers of a triumph in reversion. Yielding the pulpit to his rival for a few Sundays, he would have relied upon the taste of his parishioners for making the proper distinctions. He would have said,"You have all eyes and ears-you all know that fellow; you all know me: I need say no more. Pray, don't kick him when he comes again." But this sort of contempt was out of the question; and that kindled his rage the more. Dr Bridges was a man of fortune; travelled and accomplished; familiar with courts and the manners of courts. Even that intercourse with people of rank and fashion, which Parr so much cultivated in his latter years, and which, to his own conceit, placed him so much in advance of his own order, gave him no advantage over Dr Bridges. True, the worthy fanatic (as some people called him) had planted himself in a house at Clifton, near Bristol, and spent all his days in running up and down the lanes and alleys of that great city, carrying Christian instruction to the dens of squalid poverty, and raising the torch of spiritual light upon the lairs of dissolute wretchedness. But, in other respects, he was a man comme il faut. However his mornings might be spent, his soirées were elegant; and it was not a very unusual event to meet a prince or an ambassador at his parties. Hence, it became impossible to treat him as altogether abject, and a person of no social consideration. In that view, he was the better man of the two. And Parr's revenge, year after year, was baulked of its food. In this dilemma of impotent rage, what he could-he did!-And the scene was truly whimsical. Regularly as Dr Bridges approached, Dr Parr fled the country. As the wheels of Dr Bridges were heard muttering in advance, Dr Parr's wheels were heard groaning in retreat.

And

when the season of this annual affliction drew to a close, when the wrath of Providence was spent, and the church of Hatton passed from under the shadows of eclipse into renovated light, then did Dr Parr cautiously putting out his feelers to make sure that the enemy was gone -resume the spiritual sceptre. He congratulated his parish of Hatton that their trials were over; he performed classical lustrations, and Pagan rites of expiation; he circled the churchyard nine times withershins (or inverting the course of the sun;) he fumigated the whole precincts of Hatton church with shag tobacco; and left no stone unturned to cleanse his little Warwickshire fold from its piacular pollution.

This anecdote illustrates Dr Parr's temper. Mark, reader, his self-contradiction. He hated what he often called "rampant orthodoxy," and was never weary of running down those churchmen who thought it their duty to strengthen the gates of the English church against Popish superstitions and Popish corruptions on the one hand, or Socinianism on the other. Yet, let any thing start up in the shape of zealous and fervid devotion-right or wrong-and let it threaten to displace his own lifeless scheme of ethics, or to give a shock of galvanism to his weekly paralytic exhortations "not upon any account or consideration whatsoever to act improperly or in opposition to the dictates of reason, decorum, and prudence;" let but a scintillation appear of opposition in that shape, and who so ready to persecute as Dr Parr? Fanaticism, he would tell us, was what he could not bear; fanaticism must be put down: the rights of the church must be supported with rigour; if needful,even with severity. He was also a great patron of the church as against laymen; of the parson as against the churchwarden; of the rector's right to graze his horse

upon the graves; of the awful obligation upon his conscience to allow of no disrespectable, darned, or illwashed surplice; of the solemn responsibility which he had undertaken in the face of his country to suffer no bell-ringing except in canonical hours; to enforce the decalogue, and also the rubric; to obey his ecclesiastical superiors within the hours of divine service; and finally, to read all proclamations or other state documents sent to him by authority, with the most dutiful submission, simply reserving to himself the right of making them as ridiculous as possible by his emphasis and cadence.* In this fashion Dr Parr manifested his reverence for the church establishment and for these great objects it seemed to him lawful to persecute. But as to purity of doctrine, zeal, primitive devotion, the ancient faith as we received it from our fathers, or any service pretending to be more than lip service, for all such questionable matters it was incumbent upon us to shew the utmost liberality of indifference on the most modern and showy pattern, and, except for popery, to rely upon Bishop Hoadly. This explanation was necessary to make the anecdote of Dr Bridges fully intelligible; and that anecdote was necessary to explain the many scornful allusions to that reverend gentleman, which the reader will find in Dr Johnstone's collection of letters; but above all, it was necessary for the purpose of putting him in possession of Dr Parr's character and position as a member of the Church of England.

To return from this digression into the track of our speculations, Dean Milner and Dr Bridges stood upon the same ground in Dr Parr's displeasure. Their offence was the same: their criminality perhaps equal and it was obviously of a kind that, for example's sake, ought not to be overlooked. But Herbert

Marsh was not implicated in their atrocities. No charge of that nature was ever preferred against him. His merits were of a different order; and, confining our remarks to his original merit, and that which perhaps exclusively drew upon him the notice of Mr Pitt's government, not so strictly clerical. His earliest public service was, his elaborate statement of the regal conferences at Pilnitz, and his consequent justification of this country in the eyes of Europe, on the question then pending between her and the French Republic, with which party lay the onus of first virtual aggression, and with which therefore by implication, the awful responsibility, for that deluge of blood and carnage which followed. This service

Herbert Marsh performed in a manner to efface the remembrance of all former attempts. His next service was more in the character of his profession-he introduced his country to the very original labours in Theology of the learned Michaelis, and he expanded the compass and value of these labours by his own exertions. Patriots, men even with the feeblest sense of patriotism, have felt grateful to Dr Marsh for having exonerated England from the infinite guilt of creating a state of war lightly -upon a weak motive-upon an unconsidered motive-or indeed upon any motive or reason whatsoever; for a reason supposes choice and election of the judgment, and choice there can be none without an acknowledged alternative. Now it was the triumphant result of Dr Marsh's labours, that alternative there was practically none, under the actual circumstances, for Great Britain; and that war was the mere injunction of a flagrant necessity, coupling the insults and the menaces of France with what are now known to have been the designs, and indeed the momentary interests, of the predominant factions at that epoch. Herbert Marsh has satisfied every body almost but the bigots, (if any now survive,) of Jacobinism, as it raged in 1792 and 1793, when it held its horrid Sabbaths over the altar and the throne,

and deluged the scaffolds with innocent blood. All but those he has satisfied. Has he satisfied Dr Parr ? No.

Yet the Doctor was in an absolute frenzy of horror, grief, and indignation, when Louis XVI. was murdered. And, therefore, if the shedding of what he allowed to be most innocent blood could justify a war, and the refusal of all intercourse but the intercourse of vengeance with those who, at that period, ruled the scaffold, then in that one act (had there even been wanting that world of weightier and prospective matter, which did in fact impel the belligerents) Dr Parr ought in reason to have found a sufficient justification of war. And so perhaps he would. But Dis aliter visum est; and his Di and Di majorum gentium-paramount to reason, conscience, or even to discretion, unless such as was merely selfish, were the Parliamentary leaders from whom he expected a bishopric (and would very possibly have got it had some of them lived a little longer in the first decade of this century, or he himself lived to the end of this present decade.*) Hence it does not much surprise us, that, in spite of his natural and creditable horror, on hearing of the fate of the French king, he relapsed into Jacobinism so fierce, that two years after a friend, by way of agreeable flattery, compliments him as being only "half a sansculotte;" a compliment, however, which he doubtless founded more upon his confidence in Dr Parr's original goodness of heart, and the almost inevitable contagion of English society, than on any warrant which the Doctor had yet given him by words or by acts, or any presumption even which he was able to specify, for so advantageous an opinion. Well, therefore, might Herbert Marsh displease Dr Parr. He was a Tory, and the open antagonist of those by whom only the fortunes of sansculottes, thoroughbred or half-bred, had any chance of thriving; and he had exposed the hollowness of that cause to which the Doctor was in a measure sold.

As to Horsley, his whole life, as a man of letters and a politician, must