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THE promotion of Dr Hook from a laborious town parish. to the comparative leisure of a deanery will not have been without its public fruits, if it does nothing more than furnish us with a good readable History of the English Church. It was much wanted; for drier food than was usually presented to the reader under that title can hardly be imagined. Much painstaking. research, a very conscientious ancing of authorities, and a large amount of out-of-the-way learning, has been employed upon several of our modern Church Histories. But, however these may meet the wants of the student, they are for the most part sadly unattractive to the general reader. The old monkish writers, with all their marvellous stories unpruned, were much more entertaining; for when the super natural items, which are the anecdotes of medieval history, come to be explained away, the residuum may be very innocent and unobjectionable, but it is often terribly insipid.

this department of history, so far as extensive learning or research is concerned; probably he would himself be the last to claim any such superiority: the praise which he deserves and it is really praise

is that of being eminently readable. If the student will not have learned much which could not have been gained elsewhere, he will find the facts put together in a clear and bal-pleasant narrative. With the miraculous element, that sore stumblingblock to all who have to deal with the old ecclesiastical authorities, Dr Hook deals manfully and summarily; he rejects it altogether. "It is inconsistent," he says, "with the principles of our holy religion to expect the performance of miracles under the Christian dispensation." (We presume that we are meant to understand, since the days of the Apostles). "Such miracles would not have been permitted to take place if not absolutely necessary, and miracles cannot be necessary in a church which professes a completed Bible." Such a canon is at least a very simple one, and facilitates the study of early ecclesias

The Dean of Chichester is not to be placed above his predecessors in

By W. F. Hook, D.D., Dean of Chiches

Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury. ter. Vol. i.-Anglo-Saxon Period. London: Bentley, 1860. VOL. XC.-NO DXLIX.

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