WOODWARD'S ESSAYS, REFLECTIONS, AND LETTERS. Essays, Thoughts and Reflections, and Letters. By the Rev. Henry Woodward. With a Memoir by his Son, Thomas Woodward, A.M., Dean of Down. Macmillan and Co. 1864. For many years the readers of the Christian Observer were áccustomed month by month to look for certain short essays, written in a style rather graceful than forcible, in which good and happy thoughts, not often very profound, but always fresh and interesting, were set before them. There was a peculiar charm in those essays, which perhaps may be best characterised as the charm of felt goodness. The writer might not (to adopt words of George Herbert) always be witty, he might not be eloquent, he might not be learned, but he was evidently and patently a holy man.

Those of the Christian Observer readers who had some acquaintance with the sister church on the other side St. George's Channel, were at no loss to interpret the initials, by which each essay was subscribed, as standing for the honoured name of Henry Woodward. Such readers will specially value the volume into which the Dean of Down has collected some of his father's essays, with a short memoir of their author prefixed. The volume has been published at the sole cost of Mr. Hiffernan, Rector of Newport, Tipperary, a clergyman for many years past well known to readers of the Christian Observer. Independently of the actual and absolute intrinsic merit of the Essays, they are worthy of attention as in many ways illustrating that which is so little understood in England, the conditions, relations, and habits of the better class of the Irish clergy.

It is strange how little, as a rule, the English clergy know of the ordinary parochial clerical life of Ireland. Notwithstanding the constant influx of Trinity College Dublin men into our dioceses, especially into those of north-western England, and the organised expeditions of English clergymen to attend the April meetings in the Rotunda, or follow out some course of Irish Church missions, the normal Irish parochial clergyman, his duties, his mode of life, his habits of thought, all are very little understood in England.

In one respect, Mr. Woodward had unusual qualities for forming a right estimate of the peculiarities of his own branch of the Church. Thanks to his Oxford education and English connections, he to some extent enjoyed the stranger's advantage of looking at the institutions of the Irish Church from without; whilst he did not labour under the stranger's disadvantage, of imperfect acquaintance with the systems criticised. Indeed, few men could have better opportunities of knowing intimately the state and circumstances of the Church in which he ministered, than the accidents of birth and fortune had afforded to Mr. Woodward.

The volume before us consists of a Memoir of the writer, forty Essays, and twenty one chapters of Thoughts and Reflections.

The Memoir depicts one who dwelt among his own people. Son to an Irish bishop, brother-in-law to an Irish archbishop, and connected not remotely with many men of great influence in the Irish Church, Henry Woodward might easily have commanded far better preferment than he found in the rectory of Fethard. But he was not one whom the riches and honour of this world could lead away from the quiet duties which, as it seemed to him, the great Head of the Church had been pleased specially to assign as his lot.

Born at that most critical period of the last century, when old opinions, forms, and constitutions were fast breaking up, and men scarcely durst hope that out of the apparent wreck of the past a better future might yet perhaps be formed;-Adam Smith and Dean Tucker propounding strange doctrines touching the laws of human society;-Lavalette and his fellows bringing home from across the Atlantic the popular principles before which the ancient monarchy of France was destined to fall ;doubt and unbelief throwing off the complacent and quietly contemptuous mien with which for ages past they had looked upon Christianity, and rushing to its encounter with the fierce hostility which would spare no pains to crush it out of the world; the Established Church beginning to awake out of its long slumber, and to recognise the high mission which had been entrusted to it by its Lord;-convulsions in the worlds religious,

political, social, all made that early part of the reign of George III. the beginning of a very critical time in the history of Europe. Born at that momentous period, living through the strange succession of events which distinguished the first thirty years of the present century, and for nearly a quarter of a century longer watching the development of the new order of things, the anticipation of the "war of opinions" predicted by the great master of the statesman whose loss we are now mourning, a man endowed with the faculties of Henry Woodward could hardly fail of gathering such lessons of ripe wisdom as an experience, so much fuller than that which falls to the common run of men, could not but suggest. And that wisdom of experience was throughout improved and confirmed by the wisdom which is from above. Throughout this volume, in every discussion, every opinion, every judgment, there is the unmistakeable evidence of the spiritual mind. Another peculiarity in the history of Mr. Woodward gives an additional importance to his opinions and judgment. His opinions were not assumed as held because they might happen more or less to fall in with those of a certain party to which he had allied himself; they were his own, he had made them for himself; and alliance with a certain party was their consequence, not their occasion.

Whilst, therefore, in considering the opinions, habits of thought, and modes of action of the party with which he was ranked, Mr. Woodward was almost as free from bias as if he were an unconcerned, uninterested, and dispassionate bystander; he could yet give it that sympathy, without which he would not have rightly understood its principles and workings. No man ever truly understands and enters into the real nature, character, bearings, and purposes of any great movement, political, social, intellectual, or religious, with which he is wholly unable to sympathize. Mr. Woodward was thus enabled to steer clear between that false eclecticism, which is the surest evidence of the utter want of all real principle, and the narrow spirit of the mere partisan, who takes the means for the end, confounds cause with effect, and rather sees in opinions the signs of party, than in party the result of opinions.

Perhaps the early life of Mr. Woodward, as it tended to unfit him for the life practical, was much adapted to bring out his capabilities for the discharge of the higher duties of the life theoretical. Of very sensitive temperament, susceptible to a painful degree of every-day impressions, if he were to hold his own with his fellows in the busy work of the world and the Church; if, as the Christian advocate, he were to plead in the forensic assembly, rather than be sought in the counsel of the chamber; if, as the physician of sick souls, he were to practise