We are rejoiced to find that Bishop Alexander, the Bishop
of Derry and Raphoe, is to be raised to the primacy of the Church of Ireland. It is said that the laity of the Irish Church body, taken alone, would scarcely have put him forward since the laity are very much more Evangelical in bias than Bishop Alexander. If so, for once we prefer the clerical judgment to that of the laity. Dr. Alexander is not only a man of deep piety and earnest faith, but he is also a man of genius; and we take pride in thinking that some of his minor poems, especially those on the death of Lord John Beresford, and Archbishop Whately, appeared first in these columns. His poem on "St. Augustine's Holiday" is a work of true genius, and we have often wished that he had had the leisure and opportunity to add to it a worthy conclusion. There was a time when we had hoped that the English Church might have borrowed Dr. Alexander as she borrowed Archbishop Magee, for he would, like his great countryman, and in some respects even more than his great countryman, have proved an ornament of our perhaps too sober and self-restrained Communion. Though Ireland is seldom willing to borrow English ability, England owes a large debt to the eloquence, wit, and manifold genius of Ireland.
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