us.

With them all our joys are doubled, and in their affection and assiduity we find consolation under all the troubles and disquietudes of life. For the enjoyments which result from this most delightful intercourse, all mankind, in all ages, have been ready to sacrifice everything; and for the interruption of this intercourse no compensation whatever can be made by man. What then can be more justly alarming to a man who has a true taste for happiness, than either that the choice of his wife, or the education of his children should be under the directions of persons who have no particular knowledge of him, or particular affection for him, and whose views and maxims he might utterly dislike? What prospect of happiness could a man have with such a wife, or such children?

(From Civil Liberty.)

SAMUEL HORSLEY

[Samuel Horsley, 1733-1806, bishop successively of St. David's, Rochester, and St. Asaph, was born in the parish of St. Martin's in the Fields, London, where his father was lecturer. He appears to have received a home education until his admission at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 1751. When he received Holy Orders he became his father's curate at Newington, and succeeded to the living on his father's resignation in 1759. In 1767 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1768 he accompanied Heneage Finch, Lord Guernsey, to Christ Church, Oxford, as private tutor. In 1774 he was presented by his pupil's father to the rectory of Albury, in Surrey, and in 1777 he became domestic chaplain to the Bishop of London, Dr. Lowth, and Prebendary of St. Paul's. In 1781 he was appointed Archdeacon of St. Albans and in 1777 he received through Lord Chancellor Thurlow a prebend at Gloucester. In 1788 he was raised to the Bench as Bishop of St. David's, and in 1793 he was translated to Rochester, holding with that see, as several others had done, the Deanery of Westminster. In 1802 he returned to Wales as Bishop of St. Asaph. He was an energetic and useful prelate in both his Welsh dioceses, as well as in his English one. He was twice married, and left one son by his first wife, who became an eminent clergyman in the Episcopal Church of Scotland, in the measures for the relief of which Bishop Horsley took a leading part in the House of Lords. He died at Brighton, 4th October 1806.]

As a master of English prose Samuel Horsley had few equals in his own day. The reputation he gained among his contemporaries and their immediate successors was quite out of proportion to the bulk of his writings, but not at all out of proportion to their merits. He was in fact regarded in the early part of the nineteenth century as, in point of abilities and attainments, far above all other writers and speakers on the side of the Church. Men of the most widely differing sentiments agree in this. Thus Bishop Jebb, the high churchman, calls him "our ablest modern prelate ;" Dean Isaac Milner, the low churchman, "the first Episcopal authority (if learning, wisdom, and knowledge of the Scriptures be any foundation for authority)"; Bishop John Milner, the

Roman Catholic, "the light and glory of the Established Church”; and Samuel Taylor Coleridge "the one red leaf, the last of its clan, with relation to the learned teachers of our Church.” A perusal of Bishop Horsley's writings will quite bear out this testimony from different quarters. He writes in a remarkably pure, luminous, and dignified style; his matter is weighty, his argumentative power convincing, his learning profound, and his satire, though always kept within the bounds of decency and courtesy, most cutting. There is a robustness and manliness about his tone of mind which is reflected in his style; he takes a lofty line, which some might think supercilious, but it is certainly justified by his merits; it is that of a judge summing up, not that of an advocate pleading his cause. His sentiments are always those of the marked high churchman, and in many points he anticipates the men of the Oxford movement. His sermons are the finest specimens of pulpit eloquence which the age produced, and they are still unrivalled in their way. He was a most formidable antagonist in controversy, and completely demolished Dr. Priestley, though the latter was a very able man.-Horsley's "Charges," "Remarks," and "Letters," on the subject of Unitarianism, besides being a powerful defence of orthodoxy, are also fine specimens of English literature. To judge from the speeches which are found in the pages of Hansard, Bishop Horsley must have been even more effective as an orator than as a writer. His range of knowledge was by no means confined to theology; but his scientific and philosophical writings scarcely afford scope for the exhibition of his powers as a writer of English prose; and therefore the specimens here given are all drawn from his theological works.

J. H. OVERTON.

THE PLATONIC AND CHRISTIAN TRINITY

THE inquiry becomes more important, when it is discovered that these notions were by no means peculiar to the Platonic school; that the Platonists pretended to be no more than the expositors of a more ancient doctrine, which is traced from Plato to Parmenides, from Parmenides to his masters of the Pythagorean sect, from the Pythagoreans to Orpheus the earliest of the Grecian mystagogues, from Orpheus to the secret lore of the Egyptian priests, in which the foundations of the Orphic Theology were laid. Similar notions of a triple principle prevailed in the Persian and Chaldean theology; and vestiges even of the worship of a Trinity were discernible in the Roman superstition in a very late age. This worship the Romans had received from their Trojan ancestors. For the Trojans brought it with them into Italy from Phrygia. In Phrygia it was introduced by Dardanus so early as the ninth century after Noah's flood. Dardanus carried it with him from Samothrace; where the personages, that were the objects of it, were worshipped under the Hebrew name of the Cabirim. Who these Cabirim might be has been the matter of unsuccessful inquiry to many learned men. The utmost that is known with certainty is, that they were originally Three, and were called by way of eminence, the Great or Mighty ones for that is the import of the Hebrew name. And of the like import is their Latin appellation, Penates. Dii per quos penitus spiramus, per quos habemus corpus, per quos rationem animi possidemus. Dii qui sunt intrinsecus atque in intimis penetralibus cœli. Thus the joint worship of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, the Triad of the Roman Capitol, is traced to that of the THREE MIGHTY ONES in Samothrace; which was established in that island, at what precise time it is impossible to determine, but earlier, if Eusebius may be credited, than the days of Abraham.

VOL. IV

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