For this impunity, he was perhaps indebted to his seeming indiscretion, as he had made some gross allusions to the honour of a great lady, which might have rendered a trial in a court of justice both injudicious and indelicate; while it would have added not a little to the public odium against this personage, relative to whom, too many prejudices unhappily subsisted at that moment."

What can we think of the biographer and his hero when we read these passages? Mr. Horne, who had been introduced at Leicester House while a boy, and accustomed to play with his present Majesty once or twice a week, whose friend and relative Dr. De Maimbray was on the establishment, and favoured by the princess dowager, returns these favours by such rank abuse as would excite disgust even if recited in the course of a judicial proceeding. The same man, having been five years in priest's, and nearly nine in deacon's orders, apologizes, in the base and fallacious paragraph we have above cited, for the gross blasphemy and disgusting obscenity of the Essay on Woman, and the smaller poems published with it. Surely the piety he is said to have displayed, must have been mere hypocrisy, or the narrative of it is mere fiction.

In 1765, Mr. Horne again became "bear-leader" to a young gentleman named Taylor, and visited Italy. M. Stephens, considering it singularly unfortunate that Mr. Horne did not write some account of their journey, attempts to make the reader amends by suggesting the many excellent observations he might have made on Louis XV., who was "inattentive to the fate reserved for his unfortunate successor," on the Parliaments, on the future Revolution, which undoubtedly he would have foretold (and there is no way of foretelling but by writing a book, else perhaps his hero's prescience might have escaped in conversation); "he could easily have told us by what magic the external greatness of Lucca, of Pisa, and of Florence was produced," and he could have told many curious things about Genoa and Venice; but as he told none of them, Mr. Stephens, dispensing with prescience, tells us all, after it has been told in every newspaper and magazine for the last twenty years.

At Paris, travelling in a fashionable dress, and exhibiting no appearance of a clergyman, he threw himself at the feet of his idol, Mr. Wilkes, who is said to have solicited his friendship and correspondence, although he seems not to have cared for either. Perhaps as a man of taste and fashion, he was ashamed of him; for in some letters, which he afterward published, he insinuates pretty plainly, that the reverend divine, in his laced cloaths, looked very little like a gentleman; and to a letter which he received from Montpelier, he returned no answer.

This letter contains those ever-memorable sentences in which the supposed pious minister of New Brentford, in terms of the vilest ribaldry and blasphemy, describes the effect of ordination. That he felt himself to be the very thing he describes, no one can doubt; but that it is characteristic of any man in orders, except himself, there is no reason to believe. Having in this epistle paid his homage to Mr. Wilkes in terms of pretty gross flattery, he was not to be deterred by contemptuous neglect from seeking him out in Paris in the following spring, and it was then he left with him those laced cloaths, afterwards so famous in controversy.

He was now so far acquainted with Mr. Wilkes as to suspect his venality, to doubt his veracity, and to know his vices; but, says Mr. Stephens," he knew how to distinguish between him and his cause." The observation is most absurd. The only causes, which Mr. Wilkes then had to be known by, were the publication of the North Briton, No. 45, which no man of common sense or common honesty could feel a disposition to defend, and the Essay on Woman, with which no Christian could possibly contaminate himself. These had made Lord Temple ashamed of him, and induced Lord Chatham to inveigh against him as "the blasphemer of his God, and the libeller of his king." The question of General Warrants, had long been at rest, and the actions brought in consequence of the execution of them had only been suspended by Mr. Wilkes allowing himself to be outlawed. Rejected as member for London, Mr. Wilkes was brought forward as a candidate for Middlesex, and the minister of New Brentford not only supported his pretensions, although treated with something very like contempt by himself and his adherents, but pledged his credit for his expences; and in the hearing of his parishioners, declared, "that in a cause so just and so holy, he would dye his black coat red." For this savage expression, Mr. Stephens offers a weak and inefficient apology, saying it dropt hastily from his mouth, but never seriously entered his heart.

In the subsequent elections for Middlesex, which ensued on Mr. Wilkes's expulsion from the House of Commons, Mr. Horne was equally active. From these subjects the author suddenly turns to applaud the conduct of his hero, in supporting the widow. Bigby in an appeal of blood. Two brothers, named Kennedy, it appears, had murdered a watchman, and were capitally convicted, but afterward respited and pardoned. It is suggested that this lenity was procured through the interest of their sister, a well-known courtezan, with a nobleman high in office. If such was the fact, and it has often been asserted, and never sufficiently contradicted, the royal mercy could not have been worse directed, nor through a more disgraceful course. Still the revival

revival of an obsolete feudal proceeding, founded on the absurd notion, that a compensation for the wrong done to an individual is a more legitimate object of criminal justice than the public cause and the general preservation of the peace, had more in it of factious infatuation than sensible policy, or temperate love of justice. The event shewed the folly of the attempt. The woman received a compensation in money, and desisted from her sait. Mr. Horne, suspecting that Mr. Murphy had negociated the arrangement, hated him till the day of his death.

His activity was also shown in some affairs arising out of election slaughters, particularly in the instances of Allen, and Balfe, and Me Quirk he was chosen a freeman of Bedford, to vex and oppose the duke of Bedford; and he prompted, as it is said, the sheriffs in their proceedings respecting the execution of two men, named Doyle and Valline

Lest the reader should forget that the minister of New Brentford was a clergyman, Mr. Stephens next notices a sermon, which he found time to compose in the midst of election contests, bustle, and confusion; the only religious tract he ever printed; and les: the reader should imagine that the precepts of Christianity had any influence on the mind of this reverend pastor, we are next presented with the history of his contest with Mr. Onslow, in which, after stigmatizing that gentleman as a person incapable of keeping his word," he unadvisedly added, "that if Mr. Onslow would lay aside his privilege, he would lay aside his gown."

The next event commemorated is the reply of Alderman Beckford to the King, which, according to Mr. Stephens, proceeded from the suggestion of his hero, and for this he vouches the hero himself, who said that he composed the reply which procured Mr. Bockford the honour of a statue in Guildhall. For him too is claimed the merit of having founded the "Society for supporting the Bill of Rights;" but, alas! the death of Beckford terminated the apparent union of the City patriots; they wrangled, they libelled, they abused each other with no less heat and virulence, than they had shown toward the Government. The dispute about Bingley and his interrogatories, instead of tuiting, proved the means of dissolving this new club. This lamentable event, however, was immediately followed by the institution of the "Constitutional Society," consisting chiefly of the most respectable of the old members, with an exclusion, however, of the Wilkites; and doubtless gave birth to the Whig Club," the "Friends of the People," and the "London Corresponding Society," in after-times.

"

One of the eircumstances attending this disunion of the City ty, was a public, and apparently irreconcileable quarrel, be

tween

tween Mr. Wilkes, and his devoted adherent, Mr. Horne. Who of the two was in the right, it would be difficult to determine; for much of the contest turned on propriety of conduct, veracity, disinterestedness, and sincerity; qualities which each claimed to himself, and denied to the other. Each seems to have made out a very lame case for himself, and a very good one against his antagonist. Mr. Wilkes had one conspicuous advantage; he knew himself; he was used to declare, in his merry moments, that he was not fool nor knave enough to be a Wilkite. Mr. Horne had been a most decided one, and yet he pretended to have known long before the year 1768, when he wanted to dye his black coat red, that the object of his adoration was then devoid of every virtue, an abandoned profligate, a spendthrift, and a swindler. The correspondence at length occupies only one hundred and thirty-eight pages in Mr. Stephens's first volume; and if the reader is desirous of becoming a proficient in the art of throwing mere filth, we refer him to it.

The fury of Mr. Horne's attack drew on him the animadversions of Junius, who did not fail to notice the inconsistency of his present charges with his former support; but Junius having nade some boastful pretensions respecting himself, and assailed Mr. Horne with that insolence, which had hitherto been so successful against men who had feelings and characters, was answered and attacked in his turn in a manner which allowed him no reason to boast of the result of the conflict.

(To be continued.)

BRITISH CATALOGUE.

DIVINITY.

ART. 7. A Sermon, preached in Lambeth Chapel, on Sunday, the 12th of December, 1813, at the Consecration of the Right Reverend John Parsons, D.D. Lord Bishop of Peterborough. By William Tournay, D.D. Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, Rector of St. James's in Dover, and Vicar of Hougham in Kent., Published by Command of His Grace the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. 4to. pp 20. Oxford printed; Rivingtons and Hatchard, London. 1813.

Occasions like that, on which this Sermon was delivered, are adapted perhaps beyond all others to exercise the knowledge and the zeal of the preacher. They afford him an opportunity of insisting upon the doctrines, of asserting the discipline, and of maintaining the authority of the Christian Church; they lead him to examine

the

the nature and the extent of the duties belonging to the highest Order of the Priesthood, and of the difficulties, which obstruct their execution; and they invite him to an inquiry into the signs of the times, and into the means, which under the blessing of God may avert the dangers, which threaten the Establishment: a lively sense of the sanctity of the charge committed to the Rulers of the house, hold of God, a depth of sacred erudition, an intimate acquaintance with Ecclesiastical History, and an insight into the probable operation of the passions, the prejudices and the wiles of those, who are the advocates of Confusion rather than of Peace, are the sources, from some or all of which the Preacher may be expected to derive the topics applicable to such a solemnity.

Dr. Tournay has very suitably chosen for his text the declaration of St. Paul, 2 Cor. iv. 1. "Seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not:" and the points, on which he is led to insist, are strictly such, as the text will suggest to a comprehensive and reflecting mind at the present day.

The distraction introduced into the Church of Corinth by the intrusion of a false teacher, his endeavours to derogate from the authority of the Apostle, by calling in question his knowledge, his eloquence, and his other qualifications, and the Christian firmness, with which these attacks were endured or resisted, are considered in the opening of the Discourse. But the same ministry, in which the Apostles thus humbly gloried, is intrusted to the Clergy of our own Church under circumstances in some respects similar, and in others widely different."

The difficulties, with which the Apostles had to contend, are shewn to consist in their not being authorized by any moral or intellectual qualifications to hope for extraordinary success: yet were they called upon to preach a new Religion, which, while it was to overthrow opinions interwoven with civil policy, and consecrated by their antiquity, offered only the humiliating doctrines of a despised and crucified Galilean. Our own difficulties, it is observed, in many particulars, resemble those of the Apostles: the Clergy have to deplore their weakness, both intellectual and moral: the faith, which they are to preach, is at war with the corruptions of the heart: infidelity and heresy are reviving antiquated objections, clothed in the garb of novelty; the successful pursuit of abstract science leads men to undervalue the moral evidence, on which alone Christianity now rests; and "while the heinous crime of Schism is not palliated merely, but even shamelessly justified, the Clergy must maintain with moderation but with firmness, the just authority of the Christian Church."

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The Preacher then proceeds to compare the present means of surmounting these difficulties, with those, which were enjoyed by the Apostles and afterwards he remarks of the Christian Minister, "To miraculous powers indeed, and perceptible impulses of the Spirit, he makes no pretensions; but he devoutly relies on that sanctifying and invigorating grace, which is promised to all,

whe