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riches, that may have lived chiefly, or, at least, comparatively, in retirement, that has never been heard in any kind of debating assemblies, that has received only the common attentions due to a gentleman and scholar, with a certain moderate addition on his attaining, perhaps, one of the subordinate dignities of the church, may be suddenly introduced into the house of lords, shall take there what will be generally felt a higher rank than many of its occupants, and may demand the attention of the collective nobility of the country to what he thinks and wishes on any subject that comes before them; while in the view of his friends, his former ecclesiastical, and, perhaps, desponding equals, and the portion of the community suddenly placed under his spiritual jurisdiction, he takes the bench or ascends the throne as a personage widely and inexplicably different from the man that was a few years since a plain vicar or rector.

It should seem that many prelates have themselves felt such amazement at this metamorphosis, that they have never acquired self-possession enough to take the full advantages of it. Whether they have been absorbed in the endeavour to comprehend the mystery of the circumstance, or could not positively verify the reality of the new mode of being, or could not bring their strength or resolution up to the requisite pitch for assuming and asserting its functions and rights, or whatever else has been the cause, the fact is, that few of the order have, in later times, assumed to act a distinguished part in the elevated assembly to which they belong: so few, indeed, that a natural philosopher who puts a value on all agents as the possessors of some kind of faculty and power, by exercising which he expects them to maintain their places in the great economy, might look at the class in question, with the suspicion of its having been assigned to an inappropriate situation; or, at least, with a degree of regret, that it should not manifest the properties agreeing to that situation..

Such an observer will therefore feel a very lively gratification in seeing one of the class prove that it has great aristocratic and legislative capabilities, however latent, by coming so boldly and effectively into action, as did Bishop Horsley. He, at any rate, showed no signs of marvelling at his new situation, or of being afraid of it. He sought no refuge from its overpowering impressions in the solemn quietude of a reverend formality. His faculties suffered no repression or paralysis in his looking round on the majesty of the assembly; a view which was not taken by a succession of cautious and partial glances, ventured at intervals; but by an open, confident look of examination and challenge. He presently took his share in debate on any subject on which he had formed an opinion, and within this compass almost every subject was included. Though peculiarly vigilant and peremp

tory on all occasions involving ecclesiastical questions, he scorned any notion of an obligation to confine himself to what might be called professional matters; and it must have been a very daring opponent that would have ventured to hint to him the propriety of any such limitation. He soon committed himself to all the dangers of positive battle, and had a peculiar and provoking intrepidity in challenging the enemy to do his worst. It is true, indeed, and almost too obvious to need noticing, that the valour which fights generally in the ranks of the ascendant party, is not subjected to the hardest test, and can never attain a character of romantic heroism. Nevertheless, our right reverend combatant had in his manner something so peculiarly and emphatically assailant, such an air of direct defiance, such a confidence to commit himself totally, without reserve, or provided means of retreat, such a promptitude to expose himself singly in advance before his allies, such a perfect, unhesitating explicitness in telling his opponents to their beards, that he would give them "to the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field," such an embodying in his own person of the stress of the war, such an apparent carelesness, how much of the opposite and vindictive force he might draw on himself individually, fearless of taking the champion's proportion of the hazard, and such a confident occupation of whatever position would present him most prominently to their weapons, that we are compelled to acknowledge him to have been possessed of a bravery competent to dare any conflict without previously counting the fellow-fighters.

One of the strongest indications how much he was at his ease in assuming the full exercise of the functions of his new situation, appears in that facility of irony and sarcasm which marks the first speech here reported to us, which was made very soon after his attainment of the bench. Almost all the subsequent speeches have here and there some touches of this sort of gayety. It comes without the smallest affectation or effort. It is quite genuine, and often sudden. It is sometimes transient, and sometimes a little prolonged, just as it may happen. It is almost always powerfully caustic. In some instances, where its application was signally just, as for example, when it fell on the defenders of slavery and the slave trade, the reader is extremely gratified in imagining the mortification it must have inflicted.

Clear statement, however, acute discrimination, and vigorous argument, form the leading intellectual distinction of these speeches; and it is needless to say that these are supported by so wide and accurate a knowledge of facts, that whether the reasoning has been deliberately prepared beforehand, or is called forth by some view of the subject presented at the time, makes no difference as to the sufficiency of the orator's resources. Even the critical and biblical learning of our prelate is brought,

with striking advantage to the subject, and triumphant effect in debate, to bear on the question of West-India slavery.

Every one, who is at all acquainted with the character and style of Warburton, will be very often reminded of him in listening to Horsley. He will have, in broad display before him, many of the same moral and intellectual characteristics; the intrepidity, the self-confidence, the arrogance, the driving urgency, if we may so express it, and the habitually aggressive temper and attitude; -the acuteness, in a measure the rapidity of thought, the facility of turning to use any part of the most ample resources, the delight to beat the adversary with an apparent paradox, the readiness to adopt a cause or argument under its greatest hazards, and maintain it at its weakest point, as a gratuitous display of courage and skill, previously to taking the strongest ground, and best weapons. In point of diction, there is often the same mixture of the scholastic, and the familiar, and colloquial; the same disdain to be confined to the niceties of a trim elegance. Horsley is, however, immensely surpassed by that powerful wildness of freedom which distinguishes Warburton's manner, the expression of that unlimited and indefatigable versatility which assumed the whole creation as the field of its mingled sport and action. Warburton has the advantage of being vastly more eloquent, in that sense of the word in which it imports something bordering on poetry. He abounds in happy allusions, and is often surrounded by some sudden splendour of a creative fancy.

This volume comprises fifteen speeches, which purport to be given at length, in the precise words in which they were delivered. Most of the subjects are important; the abolition of the slave trade; the claims of the Irish catholics; the bill for preventing the marriage of persons divorced for adultery; the treason bill of November, 1795; the preliminaries of the peace of Amiens. Several are on ecclesiastical matters. One of them, of enormous length, (80 pages,) is, we think, very injudiciously inserted. It was a laborious and extremely able exertion, in vindication of the claims of a particular clergyman, whose interests were implicated in a particular enclosure bill, and proves that the bishop, had he fallen into another profession, would have made a consummate barrister; but the subject cannot be of the smallest general interest, and its filling so large a space will only make the purchasers of the volume the more sensible of its exorbitant price.

No one will feel it worth while to quarrel with these speeches for declaring, without ceremony, the bishop's well-known high church notions, coupled with his firm faith in the horrible wickedness of lifting a finger against the "powers that be," whoever they may be, and however flagitious their couduct. It is amusing to think what a dreadful explosion there would have been, had

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the bishop lived to see these times, against the French people for their unfaithfulness, their rebellion, as he must have denominated it, against their late emperor; for to this length his doctrine, as avowed in one passage in this volume, would fairly go. little or how much reason soever it may be thought there is for giving the prelate credit for genuine zeal in behalf of religion, we have been several times, in passing through this volume, gratified at the sight of the courageous austerity with which he was sure and prompt to take vindictive notice of any sign of irreligious levity in the noble assembly. He maintained a peculiar and intimidating boldness, with the utmost possible explicitness, and, as it were, breadth of expression, when he made any reference to christianity or the bible. The bible was to be referred to in the debate on the slave trade; and, it seems, some noble lord was pleased to laugh when the bishop began to quote one of St. Paul's epistles to Timothy. There have been many ecclesiastics who would have let this pass; but not so Bishop Horsley.

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"I affirm that the New Testament contains an express reprobation in terms, an express prohibition of the slave-trade by name, as sinful in a very high degree. The apostle St. Paul, my lords, in the first of his epistle to St. Timothy-My lords, the Bible is to be treated in this house with reverence If I find occasion, in argument, upon a subject like the present, to quote particular texts, any noble lord who may think proper to receive such quotations with a laugh, must expect that I call him to order. I was saying, my lords, that St. Paul, in the first of his epistles to St. Timothy, having spoken of persons that were lawless and disobedient," &c.

We were equally gratified by the magisterial and contemptuous tone in which he reprimanded another laugh emitted by some noble lords, while he was quoting from Mr. Park's travels a description, a perfectly simple and serious one, of the kind and sympathetic manners of the women in one part of Africa, as expe rienced by him when in great disfress.

We are extremely gratified, too, by the noble arrogance, if we may so call it, with which he fights and spurns the advocates of the slave trade; and nothing can be more amusing than the sarcastic compliments, and mock-respectful references, to a noble earl who had quoted the bible in defence of perpetual slavery. In this instance the galling humour is considerably prolonged, and returns with a lucky bite when the earl must have thought it was fairly past. The speech ends with a most solemn and com manding admonition of the Day of Judgment.

These speeches are preceded by a dedication, signed by the bishop's son, who appears to take the full responsibility of editor.

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The Works of Damiano, Ruy-Lopez, and Salvio, on the Game of Chess; translated and arranged: with Remarks, Obser vations, and copious Notes on the Games. Containing, also, several original Games and Situations, by the Editor. To which are added, the Elements of the Art of Playing without seeing the Board. By J. H. Sarratt, author of a Treatise on Chess, &c. and Professor of the Game.

[From the Monthly Review.

OUGHT solemnity or gayety in literature to predominate? Is it better to be grave about games, or gamesome about the grave? One privilege of age is to prefer the former and easier alternative; and so we shall begin a serious, formal, academic dissertation. Aware that we have been preceded in this career by various continental authors-that in Spain, Ruy-Lopez de Segura -in Italy, Domenico Tarsia-in France, Sarrasin-and in Germany, Wieland--have written on the Origin of Chess-we still think that some notices have been neglected, and that some doubts remain which may be solved.

The earliest European writer who mentions chess is the celebrated Greek princess, Anna Comnena, of Constantinople. She oalls the game Zatrikion, and says that the Greeks derived it from the Babylonians; and that her father, Alexius, who was fond of playing, owed the detection of a conspiracy against him to the friend with whom, late at night, he sat at chess.

It has been surmised by some, that chess travelled into western Europe from Constantinople; and that it was carried by commercial men to Barcelona, to Venice, and to various seaports which traded with the Greek metropolis. By others it has been sup posed that the Moors of Spain took thither this oriental game, and that France and Italy learnt it from the Spaniards. It has been said by a third set of antiquaries, that the crusaders acquired this game in the East, and brought it with them from the Holy Land. In the first case, the technical terms would have a Greek, and in the second case a Spanish complexion, or derivation: but the words checkmate, rook, &c. are Persian, so that they seem, in fact, to have been directly imported from the East. Hyde, in his dissertation De Ludis Orientalium, states that the Persians do not claim to be the inventors of chess, but admit that they received it from Hindostan, in the reign of Chosroes Nushirvan, that is, about the middle of the sixth century. This idea Sale confirms in the preface to his translation of the Koran, which work contains the earliest known allusion to the game of VOL. IV. New Series.

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