BISHOP ERNEST WILBERFORCE.t Or the forty-two years of Ernest Wilberforce's
ministerial life considerably more than half was spent in episcopal work. Ho was but forty-two when he was nominated to the See of Newcastle, and when he died, still three years short of three score and ten, be was, with the one exception of Archbishop blaelagan, the senior occupant of the Bishop's Bench. It is in accord with this fact that of the story which Mr. Atlay has to tell the most interesting part is that which is occupied with the thirteen laborious years of the Newcastle episcopate. His first charge was anything but laborious—as pleasant, indeed, as could be imagined. He was curate of Cuddesdon, not a Lard duty, as there were but some three hundred inhabitants, and domestic chaplain to his father the Bishop, living, of course, in the Palace. He had married before ordination, con- forming in this respect to the invariable practice of the Early
• Educational Needlecraft. By Margaret Swanson and Ann Macbeth. London: Longmans and Co. [4e. ed.1 t The Life of the Right Reverend Brrest Wilberforce, Bird Bishop of New- castle-on-Tyne and afterwards Bishop of Chichester. By J. B. Atlay, London : Smith, Elder and Co, [10e. ed. :iota
Church, but not wholly, we may imagine, from respect to precedent. After a year or so thus spent he went as curate to the parish where his wife's family lived, and Caine back after a few months to Oxfordshire as Vicar of Middleton-Stoney, a small rural parish. In 1873 he migrated to Seaforth, near Liverpool, where be found himself in the difficult position of a new incumbent who belongs to a different school from that which he finds in possession. Ernest Wilberforce was a High Churchman, and Seaforth was strongly Evangelical. Still, his five years there were a distinct success. His people, whether they accepted his Churchmansbip or no, saw that he was in earnest, and though not, as was his father, an orator, lie bad, in no small measure, the gift of persuasive speech. In 1882 came the call to the newly constituted diocese of Newcastle. It was not an altogether pleasant position. The Churchmen in the diocese bore as small a proportion to the population as was to be found anywhere in England, and even among Churchmen there was no unanimity of feeling as to the expediency of the change. But be soon became an influence. One visible sign was his extraordinary activity. Ho walked faster than other men; his pace, says Dr. Hodgkin, was "the iiespair of most other pedestrians "; "strength, both physical and moral," says the same observer, "was the chief impres- sion left by his personality." His clergy were sometimes a little alarmed by his energy. Ho exercised the oversight which is the inherent function of his office with more direct- ness than they had imagined possible. In fact the record of his work gives us some idea of what could be done if we had an adequate number of manageable dioceses.
Much of the biography, written, we may say, with taste and judgment, we must leave untouched. We are not altogether sorry that it must be so ; that we can pass by, for instance, the painful story of the Bishop's dealings in his southern diocese with insubordinate clergy. But we can recommend the book for perusal. It gives us a well-drawn picture of a man who was emphatically a working bishop.
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