John Hannah : a Clerical Study. By J. H. Overton.
(Rivingtons.) —Archdeacon Hannah was a man of great aptitude for various kinds of work, some of it work which one would hardly have thought him likely to undertake with success. His early training was not such as makes a man able to rule, for he was a somewhat solitary student. Yet this was exactly the ability that be conspicuously showed. After attaining great success as an Oxford tutor, he became Rector of a great school, the Edinburgh Academy ; from Edinburgh he went to Glenalmond, a school and theological college in one, and rescued it from imminent danger of failure by his successful management, especially by a financial ability which made Mr. Gladstone declare that he would have made an excellent Chancellor of the Exchequer. Finally, having had but a very brief and limited parochial experience (as curate of a small parish near Oxford), he was sent by the Bishop of Chichester to the vicarage of Brighton, a position which, for causes that it is not necessary here to explain, was one of singular difficulty. He addressed himself to this entirely unfamiliar work with a tact and a courage that are beyond all praise, and achieved an astonishing success. Canon Overton tells the story of Dr. Hannah's life in an admirable way. The biography is a volume of modest size, exactly the tribute which the memory of a man so useful in his generation seemed to call for. We must direct our readers' attention to some singularly pathetic verses, written by Dr. Hannah's daughter, in view of her approaching death (she died at twenty years of age).
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