faith come unto Him, who alone is able to give rest unto our souls, we shall be secured from that despondency of heart, and that foreboding apprehension of future misery, which every son of Adam must feel, when he looks within himself alone and leans on the broken reed of his own very imperfect works. He, in that infinite love which he has manifested to us in our redemption through his blood, will receive us into his vineyard, though at the twelfth hour of the day, if we are really desirous to enter in, and to do his work; He will not exclude us from his fold, though we have long been his lost sheep, if we only hasten to retrace our wanderings and return to the true Shepherd of our souls. As the great Captain of our salvation, he will not expel us from the noble army of his redeemed, though we have fled from his standard and deserted our post, if we will only surrender ourselves immediately to Him, and henceforth fight manfully the good fight of faith.

H.

REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

A Sermon preached in the Church of Hatton, near Warwick, at the Funeral of the Rev. Samuel Parr, LL.D. in obedience to his own Request, March 14th, 1825, and published at the Desire of the Executors and Friends assembled on the Occasion. By the Rev. S. BUTLER, D.D. F.R.S. &c. Archdeacon of Derby, and Head Master of Shrewsbury School. Longman. 1825.

A FUNERAL Sermon, like the funeral orations of ancient Greece, has to encounter the opposite prejudices of two classes of hearers-those who are fondly familiar with the virtues of the deceased, and those to whom his character is altogether unknown. One class think that nothing can be said sufficiently in praise of the object of their admiration-the other class in their surprize at the display of excellence which is suddenly brought before them, are disposed to disbelieve that part of the description which surpasses the ordinary standard of merit. The office, therefore, of the Preacher is a very arduous one. He presents himself as a moderator between these conflicting judges, and attempts to gain the good-will of both, that he may direct both to a wise improvement of themselves, from the portrait of virtue which he holds up to their admiration.

The task, in every case so difficult, appears to have been rendered still more difficult in regard to the lamented subject of the funeral sermon now before us. The Preacher informs us that he had been particularly deputed to discharge the solemn duty by him whose character is the theme of his discourse. He accordingly came before his audience with a sacred bequest

of admonition from his deceased friend. It was incumbent on him, in fulfilling his engagement, to discharge his office with a strict impartiality, as he could not for a moment conceive that he would have been expressly charged with such a request, unless he had been regarded as one who would not shrink from executing it faithfully. He had therefore to reduce his feelings into subserviency to the lessons of moral instruction, and from his very affection for the deceased, to merge the sense of private regard in the obligation of a public duty.

To do justice, indeed, to the merits of a distinguished literary character, apart from all other considerations, is no ordinary undertaking. The hand which essays to twine the ivywreath for the brows of the learned, must itself be not unpractised in the pursuits of literature, nor such as genius would disdain to own as its minister. For the object in giving a sketch of an intellectual character, is not merely to enumerate the peculiar qualities by which it was distinguished, but to place those qualities in a just and striking point of view, so as to give them an expression of individuality. It is the production of this effect which marks the workmanship of the true portrait-painter compared with that of the vulgar artist. The exertion required to produce this effect can hardly be estimated too highly, where the person whose mental endowments it is sought to pourtray, is one whose title to the pre-eminency of learning has not been consecrated by time, but as yet is only vaguely and indefinitely established by the living suffrages of his contemporaries. We have all been so long accustomed to hear of Dr. Parr, as a first-rate scholar and man of genius, that we expect

The following notice of Dr. Parr appeared in the public prints at the time of his decease. We should be obliged if any correspondent could favour us with a more extended, as well as more authentic, detail of the events of his life.

"Dr. Samuel Parr was born at Harrow; his father was a surgeon in that place, and his paternal grand-father was Rector of Hinckley, in Leicestershire. He was at the head of Harrow school in his fourteenth year, and on the death of the Rev. Dr. Sumner, who strongly recommended him as his successor, he was not appointed to the head mastership on account of his youthful age. At Harrow was founded his friendship with the celebrated Sir William Jones, and the Right Rev. Dr. Bennet, late Bishop of Cloyne; and almost all the boys in the upper part of the school accompanied him, when he removed to establish himself as a teacher at Stanmore, in Middlesex. He was successively master of the grammar schools of Colchester and Norwich; and in 1780 received his first ecclesiastical preferment, the rectory of Asterby, in the diocese of Lincoln. In the year 1785, the exchange of Asterby for the perpetual curacy of Hatton, brought him into Warwickshire, where he continued to reside till the day of his death. He was twice married-first to Jane, of the ancient house of Mauleverer, in Yorkshire, and afterwards to Miss Mary Eyre, of the city of Coventry. By his first wife he had several children, all of whom died in their infancy, except Sarah and Catherine, both of whom he also survived. In addition to his benefice of Hatton, he held the living of Graffand, in Huntingdonshire, to which he was presented by Sir F.

a great deal from the person who shall first endeavour to give us an actual sketch of his intellectual features. We have no standing authority to guide our judgment, as in the case of one whose fame has obtained a traditional sanction from the pens of successive writers; and we form our criterion of the fidelity of representation, from the fluctuating outline of character, which each of us, in the absence of more authoritative information, has drawn for himself.

We shall proceed to lay before our readers some extracts from the sermon of Dr. Butler, and it must remain then for each to judge for himself how far the description given answers to his own idea of the subject.

The text, we should premise, is from Micah vi. 8: "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."-A passage of Scripture which, we are told at the close of the Sermon, Dr. Parr has desired to be inscribed on his monument.

Dr. Butler, having related the reason why he in particular addressed the congregation on that melancholy occasion, and adverted to the consolations which the event itself brought with it, like a skilful orator, obtains the confidence of his hearers for the more encomiastic, and consequently less credible, parts of his discourse, by commencing with a proof of his impartialityplacing in the foreground some of his darker touches.

"I am not about to consider him as a faultless character: were I to do so, I should betray the trust he has reposed in me, in a manner that would, I am sure, be as offensive to the feelings of those who hear me, as to my own. He had not only his share of the faults and failings which are inseparable from our nature, but he had some that were almost peculiarly his own. But then they were such as were nobly compensated by his great and rare excellencies. Such as arose from his grand and towering genius, from his ardent and expansive mind, from his fearless and unconquerable spirit, from his love of truth and liberty, from his detestation of falsehood and oppression; and not unfrequently also, for we may scorn to conceal it, from the knowledge of his own strength, from the consciousness of transcendant talents, of learning commensurate to those talents, and of eloquence proportionate to that learning. This led him to be impatient in argument, sometimes with a dull and unoffending, often with a legitimate, and always with an arrogant or assuming adversary. From the impetuous ardour of his feelings, and the sincerity of his soul, he was apt to judge of others from himself, and this counteracted his natural sagacity, and exposed him too easily to the artifices of pretenders and impostors. Of his intellectual powers it was impossible that he should not be conscious, and this made him too open to the

Burdett, through the interest of the present Earl of Dartmouth's grand-father. Bishop Lowth also gave him a prebend in St. Paul's Cathedral. He died on Saurday, March 5th 1825, in the 79th year of his age.

praise of those who could not truly appreciate them, and who bestowed their hollow compliments with insincerity of heart. Endowed with an ardour of feeling, and quickness of perception, proportionate to his stupendous abilities, and forming, in fact, an inherent and essential part of their constitution, it was impossible that his likings and aversions should not be proportionably strong, and more plainly expressed that those of other men, and his habits in this and many other respects, were what the great founder of the Peripatetic school ascribes to the character of the magnanimous, and such indeed he was." P. 5.

There is considerable delicacy it will be observed, here, in bringing before the view the weaker parts of Dr. Parr's character, and, consistently with the occasion on which the words were uttered, perhaps too much delicacy could not have been used. It is plain at the same time that the preacher notwithstanding the subdued and graceful tone of his censure condemns the faults which he notices, and so far therefore has satisfied the purposes of moral instruction. Dr. B. then proceeds to that part of his duty which is evidently more after his heart—the description of the excellencies of his friend's character. But even in dilating on these, he does not suffer himself to indulge in unrestrained panegyric, but interposes checks and drawbacks in the midst of his praises. It appears indeed to be his object throughout to avoid the imputation of having drawn the character of his friend, such as it ought to have been, rather than such as it really was.

"I am here," he says, "in obedience to his command, and so far, I trust, in his own free and manly spirit, as to scorn offering to his memory, what I should despise to receive as a tribute to my own. I must ever speak of him with the warmth of affectionate friendship, with love for his virtues, with admiration for his learning, and with gratitude for his regard; but I will say of him only that which I believe and know, and will never introduce the language of insincerity in a place, and on an occasion, which, of all others, should admit only the voice of truth." P. 7.

Agreeably to this determination, after describing the great strength and copiousness of Dr. Parr's memory-the variety of his knowledge-his acuteness in metaphysical inquiries-he points out the imperfections by which his philosophical discernment was practically obscured.

"Yet this knowledge was but human. It had that mixture of infirmity which allays all our brightest acquirements, and thus teaches us the vanity of all earthly attainments. He whose keen and rapid glance could thus develope the motions of the human heart, and scrutinize those causes of our actions and feelings which are not often unknown to ourselves, was continually liable to misapprehension and error in his intercourse with mankind. He judged of the hearts of other men

a great deal from the person who shall first endeavour to give us an actual sketch of his intellectual features. We have no standing authority to guide our judgment, as in the case of one whose fame has obtained a traditional sanction from the pens of successive writers; and we form our criterion of the fidelity of representation, from the fluctuating outline of character, which each of us, in the absence of more authoritative information, has drawn for himself.

We shall proceed to lay before our readers some extracts from the sermon of Dr. Butler, and it must remain then for each to judge for himself how far the description given answers to his own idea of the subject.

The text, we should premise, is from Micah vi. 8: "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."-A passage of Scripture which, we are told at the close of the Sermon, Dr. Parr has desired to be inscribed on his monument.

Dr. Butler, having related the reason why he in particular addressed the congregation on that melancholy occasion, and adverted to the consolations which the event itself brought with it, like a skilful orator, obtains the confidence of his hearers for the more encomiastic, and consequently less credible, parts of his discourse, by commencing with a proof of his impartialityplacing in the foreground some of his darker touches.

"I am not about to consider him as a faultless character: were I to do so, I should betray the trust he has reposed in me, in a manner that would, I am sure, be as offensive to the feelings of those who hear me, as to my own. He had not only his share of the faults and failings which are inseparable from our nature, but he had some that were almost peculiarly his own. But then they were such as were nobly compensated by his great and rare excellencies. Such as arose from his grand and towering genius, from his ardent and expansive mind, from his fearless and unconquerable spirit, from his love of truth and liberty, from his detestation of falsehood and oppression; and not unfrequently also, for we may scorn to conceal it, from the knowledge of his own strength, from the consciousness of transcendant talents, of learning commensurate to those talents, and of eloquence proportionate to that learning. This led him to be impatient in argument, sometimes with a dull and unoffending, often with a legitimate, and always with an arrogant or assuming adversary. From the impetuous ardour of his feelings, and the sincerity of his soul, he was apt to judge of others from himself, and this counteracted his natural sagacity, and exposed him too easily to the artifices of pretenders and impostors. Of his intellectual powers it was impossible that he should not be conscious, and this made him too open to the

Burdett, through the interest of the present Earl of Dartmouth's grand-father. Bishop Lowth also gave him a prebend in St. Paul's Cathedral. He died on Saurday, March 5th 1825, in the 79th year of his age.