tions of the various styles of English Church architecture; for he has adopted neither an intelligible nomenclature, nor any accurate assignment of dates. People ought not to write about what they know nothing of. For one example: our unfortunate author stumbles (p. 217) on some account, very far from a lucid one, of long and short work, as a mark of the Anglo-Saxon style. This he forthwith confuses with the pilaster strip-work of the same style, and quotes Bloxam's description of the latter as if it meant the former. We pass over many pages of trash. There are many very early specimens of the Palm Cross'he means the churchyard cross-in Cornwall,' (p. 223); for which statement the authority is given in the note as Lysons' 'Magna Britannia, passim.' The Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1747, is quoted for the fact that our ancestors used to hang 'garlands over the graves of their deceased relations.' (p. 225). Why, flowers are still planted or placed on graves in more than half the church-yards of England.

Inaccuracies of all sorts abound. So unsafe an authority as Fosbrooke is cited (p. 228,) for an erroneous account of what was required for the consecration of an altar. If Mr. Hart had consulted his some sixty pages in duodecimo,' he might have seen the rubrics on this subject. The Tabernacle (called by modern writers the Ciborium)' p. 230. What modern writer, except perhaps some former Mr. Hart, ever called a Tabernacle a Ciborium? In the draft of a primitive church given by Beveridge, and also by Wheatley, there are two circular ' vestries on the sides of the apse with a credence-table in each.' What a description of a smaller apse is the phrase 'a circular vestry' and the north one only was appropriated to the Prothesis, the other being the Diaconicum, as every one knows who is at all conversant with the Greek Liturgy. The following fact is amusingly absurd. 'Lockers are sometimes arched ' recesses, but most commonly square (?)' (sic.) Of course such a statement must be backed by some great name. So we have a reference to Fosbrooke I. 96. After these proofs of Mr. Hart's accuracy and depth of ecclesiological learning we shall appreciate the modest remark, (p. 243,) My catalogue of Saints' Emblems, 'published in the first number of the Archæological Journal, will materially assist the reader in the interpretation of ancient art." At any rate this is more than the three plates which illustrate this volume will do. We never saw anything worse, more absolutely ridiculous, than these pictures. Perspective, proportion, and keeping, as well as accuracy, are equally neglected. We read Gothic tracery: window tracery is the simplest criterion of style, and I have turned the back ground of this plate to some account by exhibiting the general features of English

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'Church Architecture in illustration of p. 218, &c. of my work.' And actually windows of the four styles are represented in the back ground of the room in which his ecclesiastics are grouped; all as badly drawn as possible, and full of mistakes. The vestments are unworthy of notice: but one figure, looking like a lady in Parisian morning costume, seems rather out of place, till you find it is meant for 10. A Canon regular, who is also chaplain, or cambuccarius to a Bishop. This figure is introduced 'to show the manner of girding the albe, &c. Unfortunately the albe is represented as a sort of dark riding-habit. But we could forgive the badness of even the other plates-a set of miscellaneous buildings, and an altar shown with all kinds of vessels and utensils of Mr. Hart's own design-were it not for the insufferable conceit of the descriptions attached to them. A Chapelle Ardente, which is unworthy of a Methodist religious posting-sheet from Seven Dials, is described as 'compiled from the "Vetusta Monumenta," Browne's "Repertorium," and Picart.' And so a disgraceful print of a rood-loft is thus explained, The general character of the loft is taken from that of Totness 'Church, Devon. The Images are supplied from foreign examples, and I have endeavoured in the lower part to represent the 'general character of our Norfolk painted Rood-Screens.' One more specimen of Mr. Hart's wonderful acuteness and knowledge. He gives a view in his third plate of a PERTICA, or some unknown instrument, from which reliques or medals might be suspended.' Mr. Hart is clearly not scholar enough to know what pertica means, though a dictionary might perhaps have helped him, or he might even have seen many a pertica in shopwindows with things suspended from it: but though, from want of Latin or want of eyes, the pertica is still to him an unknown instrument,' yet his fingers can draw what his mind cannot conceive, nor pen describe; and on plate 3, appears-oculis subjecta -a PERTICA itself: something resembling a strong crossbow with a shield on the middle.

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We leave this book with the conviction that its author is a charlatan.

We have been the more particular in our notice of this book, because, in some portions of it, the Christian Remembrancer' is quoted two or three times in every page. It seems that Mr. Hart contributed some of these lucubrations to this journal, in 1839. We desire to divest ourselves of all responsibility attached to those papers. Critical infallibility is inseparable, of course, from all periodical literature by the nature of the case: our predecessors, doubtless, claim the same infallibility as ourselves. But when the two separate claims happen to clash, will our readers give us the charitable benefit of the doubt? It must

be borne in mind that ours is the New Series.' We have long desired to say this, since, occasionally, we see ourselves quoted in advertisements as approving of works which we should be loth to be thought even to have read. Not seldom we are cited as recommending a tract to be distributed by handsful.' We beg to assure its author that he is one of the very last writers whose productions we should like to see distributed. And we are not so enamoured of Tracts, in general, that we are ready to suggest this broad-cast manipulation. Let purchasers look to the dates of the recommendations which are fathered upon us.

467

ART. VIII.—Entire Absolution of the Penitent: A Sermon, mostly preached before the University, in the Cathedral Church of Christ, in Oxford, on the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany. By the Rev. E. B. PUSEY, D.D. Regius Professor of Hebrew, Canon of Christ Church, and late Fellow of Oriel College. Oxford: John Henry Parker. London: F. and J. Rivington. 1846.

To any one who was within the walls of the Cathedral at Oxford when this sermon was delivered, the scene must have been an arresting one. When a voice speaks for the first time after a long silence, there is an interest added simply by that fact. Any long interval naturally throws the mind into a meditative state, and gives, of itself, an importance and a character to what it gradually brings upon us. A long interval at Oxford has, moreover, a serious effect in another way. There the generations of men come and go very quick; the academical body is not a stationary but a moving one; and three years are an undergraduate's life. The majority of those who heard Dr. Pusey on the first of February, must have heard him for the first time. They had heard of him; had seen his name in newspapers; had heard his theology talked of in this or that spirit; had had him presented to their mind in one or other colour; but they had never actually had him before them, or come into contact with him. They now saw him; and there is something in the mere circumstance of seeing and hearing for ourselves, that often relieves apprehension, and puts us into a new relation toward the person in our minds. The omne ignotum is not seldom a great part of that atmosphere of unfavourable prepossession and colouring in which our minds are, with respect to persons of whom we have only heard by report. We do not say that a university audience would come, as a whole, with such prepossessions to hear Dr. Pusey: as a whole, it would not: but probably some would. There was, of course, on such an occasion, a number of minor circumstances which served to stamp an image on the minds of those present. There was a crowded church; nave, aisles, and transepts full; there was a procession unable to perform its march, and doctors unable to get their robes. And, from the small quantity of seats which the place supplied, the scene exhibited the, to English eyes, rather unusual exhibition of a crowded church standing to be taught.

But the circumstance distinguishing this particular sermon was,

of course, the fact that it was preached after a suspension. It was the end of a kind of imprisonment. Dr. Pusey had been under a ban; and he was now so no longer: he was in his proper place again: he was teaching again in person, and not by pen only. And this was felt the more from the fact that the memory of the suspension was not allowed gradually to die away, but received a sudden revival only a week or two previously. It was doubted, as the time when Dr. Pusey would have to preach approached, whether some impediment would not be raised; and university statutes were talked of, which seemed, on a primâ fucie reading, to arm the Vice Chancellor with irresponsible control over the university pulpit. But a letter from that functionary, which appeared in the public papers, put an end to these doubts; Dr. Pusey was allowed to enter the university pulpit unopposed; but with the accompanying hint that, if any objectionable matter appeared in his sermon, the delator's charge would meet with neither an uncandid nor a reluctant reception in the university council.

There is something in Dr. Pusey's tone and manner of preaching especially calculated to meet such an occasion as this. It may be asked how a preacher, who has none of what we may call the arts and accomplishments of preaching, who has not pliability of voice, or command over accent, time, or tone; who does not change from fast to slow, or pause, or look off from his pages; who, instead of facing an audience, in the way in which extempore preachers can do throughout a sermon, and which most preachers try to do more or less, keeps his eyes fixed down, and sustains an unvarying note throughout a long period of delivery; can impress, or raise feeling, or keep up attention? But the question would not show much depth of insight into the real avenues to people's minds, and the real causes which operate in moving feeling, and deepening attention. What keeps a congregation fixed and absorbed, is a preacher's feeling what he says, and being himself, as it were, in the words which come from him. Reality is the powerful and moving element on such occasions. Reality is of itself always striking, always effective. There is a sympathetic impulse always felt, as soon as ever the mind recognises the fact, that the person speaking is in earnest; he is immediately the centre of all minds around him, when this is seen there is life and intentness in the whole scene of thought, just as when a wire vibrates, or a spring leaps and fastens the stray material that comes near it. The wandering, scattered, restless images of human fancy are stayed; the thoughts that go in and come out, and come near and are lost again; the flitting shadows of ideas, the imperfect, half-formed, and ever changing scenery, which goes on within every crdinary