grotesque and distorted form, and some never seen at all. Hence the descriptions of expositors of the things in the book are often so incongruous, contradictory, that those who have consulted many of them are likely to lose interest in any new comers. We have glanced through this volume and our impression is that it contains much that is true and useful, with some things that are somewhat absurd.

THE LIFE'S WORK IN IRELAND OF A LANDLORD WHO TRIED TO DO HIS DUTY. By W. BENCE JONES. London: Macmillan & Co. The author in the preface says, "In order to form a sound judgment concerning the condition of the people in Ireland, there are several matters which must be borne clearly in mind. Fiction (1) That all Ireland is alike and in the same hopeless and distressful state. Fiction (2) That no landlord has done anything to improve the land, or the people of Ireland, or spend any money for that end. Fiction (3) That evictions are cruel, and equivalent to signing the death warrants of tenants, who have no choice but the workhouse, there to remain until they die. Fiction (4) That tenants in Ireland are too poor to contract freely." Although the author, as an Irish landlord, writes strongly in the interest of his class, it is manifest from his own statements that the Irish land-laws require a radical reformation.

EXPOSITION OF GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. By R. GOVETT. VOL. I. London Bemrose & Son, Old Bailey.

During the last few years several expositions of this Gospel have appeared, varying not a little, not only in style and degrees of scholarship, but in doctrine and purpose as well. For our own part we consider that a practical treatment based on a correct interpretation of the text, is the most needed and valuable. Such is the volume before us. It has no philological investigations and mere verbal criticisms, and displays of that kind of scholarship, but abounds with practical truths, which seem to come out of the passages examined. The work has no quotations from other productions, and seems to be made up entirely of the author's own independent reflections. All we can do here is just to call attention to this, the first volume, hoping soon to receive the second, and be able to pronounce a maturer judgment.

Leading Homily.

IN MEMORIAM.-THE DEAN OF

WESTMINSTER.

"THEY SERVE HIM DAY AND NIGHT IN HIS TEMPLE.' Rev. vii. 15.

HE heavenly life described in the words of our text, and in the surrounding verses, is but a

nobler counterpart to some lives lived upon earth. Is it not such a counterpart to the earthly life of the Dean of Westminster, whose death is mourned to-day, not only by thousands of English Churchmen, but by multitudes throughout Christendom? Was not his life in a considerable degree, what that of "the spirits of just men made perfect" is completely, a life of safety, of honour, and of ceaseless service—yes, and of ceaseless service in the Temple of God? For somehow all that he was, and said, and did, seems to be wonderfully associated with thoughts of that great Abbey, whose shadow to-day falls on his unburied coffin, and under whose majestic arches his body will sleep the long sleep of death. I know the sanctuaries

VOL. XLIX.

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of earth at their very noblest and best are but poor hints of the Temple above, but they are hints. And if there is any chief sanctuary in England, I suppose we shall all agree it is the Abbey of Westminster. How Dean Stanley loved that Abbey ! How he gloried in it! How he served his generation and his God in connection with it, everybody who knows anything about him, knows. It is not surprising that from his very death-bed, among the last articulate sentences he uttered to the Archbishop of Canterbury, there should have been this: "I have laboured amid many frailties and much weakness to make this institution more and more the great centre of religion and national life, in a truly liberal spirit." Remembering those last words about the Abbey, and recalling, as some can, from his books, some from his services there, and all can from what has been so notable about him, his devotion to it, our lines of thought to-night may naturally take some such direction as this :-The connection in idea between the Dean and the Abbey as illustrating his strong and almost passionate historic sympathies; his generous and enthusiastic catholicity; his diligent and untiring activity, and his loving and devout piety.

I. The connection in our thoughts between the Dean and the Abbey illustrates his strong and almost passionate sympathy with the historic. No one can think of Westminster Abbey, much less enter the venerable pile, without feeling that he is in the very presence of the muse of History. The recollections of the coronations that it has witnessed, from that of William the Conqueror, in broken, but wonderful succession, down to that of our Queen; the recollections of the burials

of kings and queens, of abbots and deans, and men of varied fame; the recollections of the religious conferences and convocations; the memories of such sermons as those of Owen and Baxter that seem to linger around its great arches, all make us feel that the Abbey is a monument not only of the history of the English Church, but also of the English nation. And the Dean was like the Abbey. It is proverbially true of him that he laid hold of Truth from its historic side. I don't mean, of course, merely from that side; for it has been well said of him that we shall scarcely find again "one in whom there was such a perfect combination of historic feeling for the past, and delicate insight into the present." But, as his books indicate, and his very passion for the Abbey illustrates, it was on the historical side of Truths, of Men, and of Institutions, that he loved to gaze, and to speak. In his immortal biography of Thomas Arnold, which is perhaps his most famous book, he lays hold, not of his views, but of his life, not so much of what Arnold said, as of what he And when he comes to a more sacred task stillthat of illustrating the Scriptures in his great works of the "Jewish Church," and " Sinai and Palestine," he succeeds in making picturesque and vivid the life of the elect nation, perhaps as none had done before. And his well-known "Memorials of Canterbury," and "History of Westminster Abbey," still show this deep sympathy with the historic, the actual. In all his recitals and interpretations of History we find that this was his great and noble theme-"That all God's dispensations to man, and all human nature and history are one; and that the harmony between the natural and spiritual

was.

is the key to all right understanding of both," and he rejoices to unfold in history, "enough to enable us to discern amid the shadows of the remote past, and athwart the misunderstandings of later times, the sayings and doings of Him, who is still for all mankind the Way, the Truth, and the Life."

II. The connection in our thoughts between the Dean and the Abbey illustrates his generous and enthusiastic catholicity. Westminster Abbey is the very type of catholicity. It is so as to its structure. There is no building which combines so many of the chief glories of medieval and more modern architecture. And as to its monumental memories, one comes at every step into contact not only with the shades of those who have been royal, but of the warrior, statesman, actor, novelist, musician, hymn-writer, painter, poet, and traveller. There is no structure in the world, I suppose, where one can meet with the memorials of so many different classes and centuries. In that it illustrates the great comprehensiveness in the spirit of Dean Stanley, which sprang largely from his intelligent sympathy with human struggles and difficulties. (1) This catholicity is very remarkable in reference to classes. The man who had a place, and a distinguished place, too, in what is commonly called Society; the man to whom the Queen referred as her "trusted friend," was also the man who, Saturday by Saturday, delighted to gather together groups of artisans, to be their guide over the Abbey, and patiently explain everything to them. And hence, among the utterances of the first few days after his death, there is not only what the Queen has to say about him, but also what the Working Men's Union has to say about "the noble