imperfection? Moral beauty, goodness, rises up before him in his conscience, in a form and height which has no embodiment in fact; he sees there a whole, while all experience only shows what is fragmentary" (pp. 47, 48).

Taking for granted the falsehood of the utilitarian theory of conscience, it appears to us that this line of argument, which is one naturally suggested by the facts, satisfactorily explains the tendency in human nature to form and follow an ideal. It will be interesting to our readers to compare with the quotation given above the following observations (true and solid as far as they go) by Dr. Thomas Brown, on the virtue of humility:

"Pride. . . . is not the prevailing cast of mind of those who are formed for genuine excellence. He who is formed for genuine excellence has before him an ideal perfection-that semper melius aliquid-which makes excellence itself, however admirable to those who measure it only with their weaker powers, seem to his own mind, as compared with what he has ever in his own mental vision, a sort of failure. He thinks less of what he has done than of what it seems possible to do; and he is not so much proud of merit attained, as desirous of merit that has not yet been attained by him.

It is in this way, that the very religion which ennobles man, leads him not to pride, but to humility. It elevates him above the smoke and dust of earth, but it elevates him above the darkness, that he may see better the great heights that are above him. It shows him not the mere excellence of a few frail creatures, as fallible as himself, but excellence, the very conception of which is the highest effort that can be made by man; exhibiting thus constantly what it will be the only honour worthy of his nature to imitate, however faintly, and checking his momentary pride, at every step of his glorious progress, by the brightness and the vastness of what is still before him.

"May I not add to these remarks, that it is in this way we are to account for that humility which is so peculiarly a part of the Christian character, as contrasted with the general pride which other systems either recommend or allow? The Christian religion is, indeed, as has been often sarcastically said by those who revile it, the religion of the humble in heart; but it is the religion of the humble, only because it presents to our contemplation a higher excellence than was ever before exhibited to man. The proud look down upon the earth, and see nothing that creeps upon its surface more noble than themselves. The humble look upward to their God."— (Lect. LXII.)

It is impossible for us to criticise the subject matter of these lectures one by one, diverse as they are in topics and manner of treatment. As might be anticipated, they are of very different degrees of excellence, and we scarcely think it was worth while to republish the whole of them in a collected form. It would have been a pity, however, to have lost the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth and Canon Birks' lecture on Human Responsibility, though not well built up, contains some striking and almost eloquent passages. We see with pleasure that a fair proportion of Birks' laymen have made their appearance on the platform of the Christian Evidence Society; and it is with still greater pleasure that we see the name of Sir Bartle Frere among their number.

The Church and the Empires: Historical Periods. By HENRY WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. Preceded by a Memoir of the Author, by J. H. Newman, D.D., of the Oratory. London: Henry King & Co. 1874.

THE

HE name of Wilberforce has ever possessed such power to stir up the enthusiasm of all who would stand by the wronged and oppressed, that the career of his sons seemed from the first to be marked out and watched with no ordinary interest. Of those among them who had the happiness of being reconciled to the Church, Henry Wilberforce was the best known and most widely loved from his consistent life of cheerful selfsacrifice after that momentous change, which among all classes of converts to the faith, the most deeply affects such as had once taken Anglican orders. His contributions also to the DUBLIN REVIEW, again, specially endeared him to all connected with it, and it is with feelings of peculiar, though mournful pleasure, that we notice the volume before us, and F. Newman's exquisite little Memoir prefixed to the essays it contains. Perhaps even the pregnant and luminous sentences of this great writer have never been made to comprehend so much in a few words as in the too brief pages of this Memoir.

"Henry William Wilberforce, the subject of this Memoir, was the youngest son of William Wilberforce, well known as the friend of Pitt, and member of Parliament for Yorkshire, and still more distinguished for his persevering and successful resistance in Parliament to the slave trade and slavery, and for his high Christian character in a time of general religious declension." (P. 1.)

Born in 1807, Mr. Wilberforce was sent to a private tutor's at nine years old, the Reverend John Sargent, rector of Graff ham, in Sussex, whose daughter he afterwards married. At fifteen he was sent to the Reverend Mr. Spragge, at Tunbridge Wells, and was thence entered at Oriel College, Oxford, where he went to reside in 1826.

"I well recollect my first sight of him, on his presenting himself before the tutors of his college, when the lectures had to be arranged for the term, and his place in them, as a freshman, determined. He was small and timid, shrinking from notice, with a bright face and intelligent eyes. Partly from his name, partly from his appearance, I was at once drawn towards him; and, as he subsequently told me, he felt a corresponding desire to know me; and, in a little time, though I was not formally his college tutor, and only had relations with him as with other undergraduates in my lecture-room, we became very intimate. He read with me, as his private tutor, during a portion of four long vacations,-- at Hampstead in 1827, at Nuneham in 1828, at Horsepath in 1829, and in Oriel in 1830. . . . In 1830 he went up for his B.A. examination, and was placed by the examiners in the first class in classics, and in the second in mathematics." (P. 2.)

His chief associates at Oriel were men of like pursuits with himself, and in general whose names have become known to the world. His own brother Robert; Mr. Frederic Rogers, now Lord Blachford; Hurrell and

William Froude; Mr. Wood, brother to Lord Halifax; Mr. George Ryder; and Mr. Thomas Mozley. Archbishop Manning and Sir Thomas Acland neither of them Oriel men-were also among his Oxford friends, and his society was cultivated by a large circle of acquaintance.

"His talents were of a character to insure distinction, whether in a university or in a public career. He had a singularly clear apprehension, a clear head, a largeness and sobriety of mind, a readiness in speech, and that sense of humour and power of repartee which makes a man brilliant in conversation and formidable to opponents. But he chose for himself another course. His tastes and habits, his affectionateness, his tenderness of conscience, his love of quiet and the country, his dislike of pomp and display, of routine toil, and of tyrannous obligations, turned him towards a domestic life and the pastoral charge. He liked to be master of his own time and movements; and though never idle, whether in mind or body, he had no wish to work under the lash. He used to tell me that it was my doing that he took orders instead of following the law. Perhaps it was; we are blind to the future, and are forced to decide, whether for ourselves or for others, according to what seems best for the time being. ... It may reasonably be doubted whether, humanly speaking he would ever have been a Catholic but for his clerical profession, which, in the studies and inquiries to which it introduced him, served to place his mind and affections in the direction of the Catholic Church. And, anyhow, he made an excellent parish minister, with a heart devoted to his Divine Master and to the cure of souls; and his love for his work was ennobled by the prompt obedience with which he gave it up when his Master called upon him for that great sacrifice." (Pp. 3-5.)

After filling two perpetual cures, Mr. Wilberforce was preferred, in 1843, to the excellent living-heretofore held by his brother Robert-of East Farleigh, in Kent.

"His parsonage in its domestic order, its frugality, its bountiful alms, and its atmosphere of religious reverence and peace, was. as it ought to be, the mainspring and centre of that influence which he exercised upon the people committed to him. To them and to their needs, temporal and spiritual, he gave himself wholly. He had an almost overpowering sense of the responsibilities which lay upon him as the pastor of a parish; and and his general self-neglect, all in one way or other spoke of that simhis habits and ways, his words and deeds, his demeanour, his dress, plicity of mind and humility which I recognized in him when he was a youth at Oxford." (Pp. 5, 6.)

During all the years of his Anglican ministry, Mr. Wilberforce achieved much improvement in his various cures beyond that of souls. He ascertained the lost glebe at Walmer, and recovered both it and the house built upon it as a parsonage. He began the church at Lower Walmer, gave two hundred guineas to that at Burley, near his first curacy of Bransgore, and built a good school-house at Farleigh. In all these good works, when he was unreasonably opposed, he sustained his unassuming meekness with plain, outspoken words and thorough determination.

"It was his confidence in his own ecclesiastical position and claims which alone supported him on such occasions, and the time came when that confidence was shaken." Mr. Wilberforce began to have misgivings as to the Divine authority and mission of the Anglican Church, and

in 1849 these misgivings ripened into convictions. It so happened that cholera broke out that year among the hop-pickers in his parish, and as the priest from Tunbridge Wells was not able to attend to the multitude of cases, several Fathers of the London Oratory and two Good Shepherd nuns from Hammersmith went down to Farleigh. Mr. Wilberforce, without hesitation, took them into the parsonage, and supplied their patients with everything they required; and the reward of his heroic and fearless charity was that "on the day year on which he had received Our Lord's servants into his house, he and his, through Our Lord's mercy, were received into the everlasting home of the Catholic Church." This was in 1850.

It is indeed true, as F. Newman says, that "time brought no relief" tɔ the life-long burthen of this great sacrifice, cheerfully made for Christ's sake. The law of England refused to look upon him as a layman, while of course he was, as he had all along been, a layman in the eyes of the Church. The occupations of laymen were therefore denied him in the full vigour of his life and talents, even had they been to his taste, while his family ties excluded him from the priesthood. No words can express what it is to one whose whole service has hitherto been in God's ministry to give up that, while substituting nothing of the same kind in its place; and probably those who are born Catholics can never appreciate the fulness of the sacrifice or the depth of the loss. But though deprived of his work, his home, and the countless interests, with the happiness he found in them, at one blow, Mr. Wilberforce never for one instant looked back with regret, or gave himself up to the forlorn emptiness of an objectless life. Whatever there was still to do, he did it with his might. After a time of necessary quiet and of the life of a disciple, he accepted the secretaryship of the Catholic Defence Association, and remained in Ireland for two or three years. From 1854 to 1863 he edited the Catholic Standard (Weekly Register), and persistently toiled through many obstacles for the advancement of religion. In 1869 Mr. Wilberforce took his family to Rome, and on his being attacked with Roman fever, the Pope gave him a special blessing for his recovery. He always attributed his recovery to the apostolic blessing. Mr. Wilberforce went again to Rome in 1862, and afterwards freed himself from any obligatory occupation. He then contributed the seven essays, forming the present volume, to the DUBLIN REVIEW; but these represent a very small portion of what he wrote in our pages. In 1871 he was advised to make a voyage to Jamaica for his health, and on leaving his wife, "who for so long a spell of years had made him so bright a home, he wrote to her from Malvern these beautiful words, May God keep His arm over you for good, and unite us hereafter in his kingdom! Coming here, and feeling how much older I am, makes me feel the time is short.' The generations of men are like the leaves,' as the Greek poet says; but our Lord Jesus is the resurrection and the life."

Accompanied by his youngest daughter, Mr. Wilberforce was received "like a brother" by the hospitable Chief Justice, Sir John Lucie Smith, and for a winter among the hills by Judge Ker. It had always been one

William Froude; Mr. Wood, brother to Lord Halifax; Mr. George Ryder; and Mr. Thomas Mozley. Archbishop Manning and Sir Thomas Acland-neither of them Oriel men were also among his Oxford friends, and his society was cultivated by a large circle of acquaintance.

"His talents were of a character to insure distinction, whether in a university or in a public career. He had a singularly clear apprehension, a clear head, a largeness and sobriety of mind, a readiness in speech, and that sense of humour and power of repartee which makes a man brilliant in conversation and formidable to opponents. But he chose for himself another course. His tastes and habits, his affectionateness, his tenderness of conscience, his love of quiet and the country, his dislike of pomp and display, of routine toil, and of tyrannous obligations, turned him towards a domestic life and the pastoral charge. He liked to be master of his own time and movements; and though never idle, whether in mind or body, he had no wish to work under the lash. He used to tell me that it was my doing that he took orders instead of following the law. Perhaps it was; we are blind to the future, and are forced to decide, whether for ourselves or for others, according to what seems best for the time being, ... It may reasonably be doubted whether, humanly speaking he would ever have been a Catholic but for his clerical profession, which, in the studies and inquiries to which it introduced him, served to place his mind and affections in the direction of the Catholic Church. And, anyhow, he made an excellent parish minister, with a heart devoted to his Divine Master and to the cure of souls; and his love for his work was ennobled by the prompt obedience with which he gave it up when his Master called upon him for that great sacrifice." (Pp. 3-5.)

After filling two perpetual cures, Mr. Wilberforce was preferred, in 1843, to the excellent living-heretofore held by his brother Robert-of East Farleigh, in Kent.

"His parsonage in its domestic order, its frugality, its bountiful alms, and its atmosphere of religious reverence and peace, was. as it ought to be, the mainspring and centre of that influence which he exercised upon the people committed to him. To them and to their needs, temporal and spiritual, he gave himself wholly. He had an almost overpowering sense of the responsibilities which lay upon him as the pastor of a parish; and and his general self-neglect, all in one way or other spoke of that simhis habits and ways, his words and deeds, his demeanour, his dress, plicity of mind and humility which I recognized in him when he was a youth at Oxford." (Pp. 5, 6.)

During all the years of his Anglican ministry, Mr. Wilberforce achieved much improvement in his various cures beyond that of souls. He ascertained the lost glebe at Walmer, and recovered both it and the house built upon it as a parsonage. He began the church at Lower Walmer, gave two hundred guineas to that at Burley, near his first curacy of Bransgore, and built a good school-house at Farleigh. In all these good works, when he was unreasonably opposed, he sustained his unassuming meekness with plain, outspoken words and thorough determination.

"It was his confidence in his own ecclesiastical position and claims which alone supported him on such occasions, and the time came when that confidence was shaken." Mr. Wilberforce began to have misgivings as to the Divine authority and mission of the Anglican Church, and