Recollections of the frisk Church. By Richard Sinclair Brooke, D.D.
(Macmillan.)—It is rather hard to find a book of " recollections " of anything Irish with scarcely a good story in it. It is a more serious complaint against this volume that it does not give tho reader any real idea of the Irish Church. It will astonish him, indeed, by long lists of men distinguished for piety and eloquence, lists which all the ages of Christendom combined could scarcely match. Almost every clergyman mentioned, except an unlucky few tainted with Arminianism or Rationalism, receives the highest praise. We have never seen anything like it, except, it may be, a Seotehman's description of the Professors of his University, who are always, we are given to understand, miracles of erudition. Here and there wo get an unconscious hint from which something may be learnt, as, for instance, on page 56, where we are told, apparently as a thing somewhat out of the usual course, that the writer, being about to receive priest's orders, together with "his reverend confreres.," underwent a slight examination from the chaplain of the Bishop. Another indication of a way of thinking somewhat opposed to an English love of order is the genuine regret-with which tho writer regards the extinction, by the cold shade of authority, of a certain society which made it its business to send preachers into any parishes which it was pleased to select, without any permission granted by the incumbent. These Recollections are not without interest, but they certainly disappoint us. Why, by the -way, when the writer reproaches, with perfect justice, certain English clergy for buying their sermons, does he not also tell of the Irish prelate who bought an episcopal charge, and found out that he had been unwittingly the receiver of stolen goods ?
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