Beyond the Church. 3 vols. (Hurst and Blackett.)—This is an
ambitious attempt, we should think, by a young hand. We have sketches of parsons of every division in the Church, drawn with some humour, but blotchily coloured, and the satire poured upon their de- voted heads is of the roughest, and some of it rather stale. The hero declines at the last moment to take Orders and a family living on account of some mysterious doubts, and takes refuge as a lay visitor with a college friend, also of mysterious views, who is doing a great work in a horrible manufacturing town. Here he comes to grief, we will not say how, as the story is worth reading, and his friend dismisses him to his rest with the following mysterious prayer :—" 0 Orient ! Bright- ness.of the Eternal Light and Sun of Righteousness, come and lighten them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death!" Some amuse- ment is to be got out of the minor personages of the novel, particu- larly out of the relations between a Puseyite Don and a weak under- graduate friend, whose thoughts are perpetually straying from the counsels of perfection in the direction of flirtation. We do not know why our author, who is for setting everybody to rights, does not take more care to be correct himself, even in the small matter of his Greek and Latin. He writes Autoehthenes thus, makes Creatorum the accu- sative ease of Creator, and gives the well known quotation from Virgil in the following horrible shape: — "Deus aliquis hoc nobis otia fecit." Moreover, he irritates us by spelling " clique " with an addi- tional c.
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