THE CHURCH-NOTICES OF PASSING EVENTS.

The dioceses of Bangor, and St. Asaph, which have long had merely nominal Archdeaconries, united with the Bishopric, are now to have effective ones, viz. for Anglesea, Bangor, and St. Asaph. This is well; and it will be still better, if all uncertainty be this Session removed as to the projected union of the Sees. We are glad to see petitions forwarded against the mischievous union, and for the speedy, establishment of the See of Manchester.

We are glad to see that the Ecclesiastical Courts' Bill now before the House of Lords, while it abolishes all inconvenient peculiar jurisdictions, preserves and regulates the diocesan courts. The Church Disciplire Bill, which has proved inapplicable to one notorious case of clerical delinquency, has been acted upon in two others; in one of which the prefatory Commission decided that there was not a prima facie case for further proceedings, and in the other that there is, and the clergyman in the latter case has been inhibited from clerical duty. ·

The massacre of the poor Chaldean Christians, as appears from a letter of Dr. Grant, their first visitant, and all other sources of information, resulted wholly from the intolerance of their Mahometan neighbours, who are now said to be threatening a similar persecution of the Jacobite Christians near Mardin. The English and French Embassies at Constantinople are said to be strenuously requiring from the Porte the exemption of the Christians in the Turkish empire from persecution:

The absorbing subject of the day, is the question of ten or twelve hours daily labour in Factories. Lord Ashley carried ten hours against the Government proposal of twelve, and since, both propositions have been negatived! A new Bill will be brought in by the Government, and neither they, nor Lord Ashley, are likely to yield their position. The objection urged against the shorter time is, the probable reduction of wages; the short-time advocates contending that better, and perhaps more, work would be executed in ten hours, not to mention all the considerations of health, and moral and domestic improvement, which are the main recommendations of the proposed limitation. We wish well to Lord Ashley's cause. At any rate we should like to see it tried; because whatever can obviate the evils of a system, which appears to be irrecoverably established, would be worth the trial. Public opinion seems more and more favourable to the limitation of every department of labour, and we trust that public opinion and local appeals will remedy the evil in those trades and employments with which legal enactments may be unable to interfere.

The letters of "C. H. D,” “ S. E.,” “S. F.” as to Walker, “G. B.”“ J. D.” “ E. M.” "J. M." are thankfully acknowledged. Portions of Ecclesiastical Architecture, No. 3, is unavoidably postponed.

THE RIGHT REV. THOMAS BURGESS, D.D., F.R.S, F.A.S., &c., SUCCESSIVELY BISHOP OF ST. DAVID'S, AND OF SALISBURY.

FEW Prelates have left a name more deservedly held in honour, than Bishop Burgess. His successor, Dr. Denison, the present Bishop of Salisbury, justly bore witness, at the first meeting of the Salisbury Church Union Society he attended, to the deceased Prelate's "deep erudition, and extensive and exact studies in both sacred and profane learning, the gentle and unobtrusive virtues of his private life; how with meekness, humility, and Christian charity, he lived in good repute with all men, and adorned the doctrine of God his Saviour in all things.",

A full and authentic Biography of the Bishop has recently been published (Longman and Co, 1840,) by John S. Harford, Esq., his intimate friend, and the donor, with his brothers, of the site for Llampeter College. The editor of the "New Biographical Dictionary" has abridged Mr. Harford's account in the nineteenth Part, recently published; of whose labours we avail ourselves in the following notice :

"Dr. Thomas Burgess was born at Odiham, in Hampshire, Nov. 18, 1756, where his father was a respectable grocer. At the age of seven, he was sent to the grammar school of his native town, and from thence to Winchester, where he remained from 1768 to 1775, under Dr. Jos. Warton, who was better fitted to make an elegant scholar than a deep one. In 1775 he stood for and obtained a scholarship at Corpus Christi college, Oxford, where he applied himself to the study of Greek poetry, and metaphysics; and relieving the intervals of more serious occupation, by cultivating English poetry, printed in 1777, his poem on Bagley Wood, of which, however, he seems subsequently to have thought so lightly, that not a single copy of it was found in his library after his death. In 1778 he made his début as a scholar, by his reprint of Burton's Pentalogia, to which he subjoined an appendix, containing a few but sensible notes, chiefly explanatory, from his own pen,

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and some conjectures, communicated by an anonymous critic, who was probably Thomas Tyrwhitt, who subsequently proved himself a steadfast friend. Although the work is now seldom looked into, yet it deserves a passing remark, as being the production of an undergraduate, who took upon himself the office of editor, after a graduate, to whom it was entrusted, grew tired of a task to which he no doubt felt himself unequal. In 1779 he was a competitor for the chancellor's prize, On the Affinity between Poetry and Painting, but was excelled by Mr. H. Addington, subsequently the speaker of the House of Commons, by whom his unsuccessful rival was made bishop of St. David's, when he succeeded Mr. Pitt as premier. To compensate, however, for his failure in one year, he met with merited success in the following, when his prize essay, On the Study of Antiquities, went through a second and improved edition. His next publication was the reprint of Dawes' Miscellanea Critica, in 1781, to which he added an appendix, in which he confirmed some of the critical canons of Dawes, and contested others; and such was its favourable reception on the continent, that it was reprinted verbatim at Leipsic, in 1800. It was during the period of its passing through the press that he became acquainted with Thomas Tyrwhitt, one of the best scholars of his day, who felt such an interest in the welfare and pursuits of his young friend, that when the latter, finding his fortune too small for a college life, had resolved to take orders, and to retire upon a curacy. Tyrwhitt urged him not to quit Oxford, but to consider himself his curate; and by way of showing what kind of books a Greek scholar ought to be familiar with, sent him copies of Hesychius, Suidas, the Etymologicon Magnum, Eustathius, Photius' Bibliotheca, and Athenæus, and would have added Stobæus, had he been able to meet with a copy of Gesner's edition. In 1783 he became a fellow of his college, and was an unsuccessful candidate for the Greek professorship. In 1784 he was ordained, on the same day, both deacon and priest, and shortly afterwards began the study of Hebrew, to which in after life he added Arabic; but being not as yet entirely weaned from profane literature, he visited Holland in 1785, principally for objects of classical research, and on his return was appointed, it would seem through the recommendation of his friend Tyrwhitt, chaplain to Dr. Shute Barrington, then bishop of Salisbury; when he became a zealous coadjutor of the prelate in establishing Sunday-schools, for which he wrote not a few elementary works. In 1787, he paid a second visit to the continent, where he became acquainted with Wyttenbach, whose edition of Plutarch he was the means of getting printed at the expense of the university, at the Clarendon press. About this time he was offered a prebendal stall, of some value, in Salisbury cathedral; but he refused it, because it would compel him to sit in a too conspicuous place; and he therefore preferred one of less value, but which would not put his bashfulness to an equally painful test. In 1789, he joined in a cause which it required some nerve to embrace, where the clace of success was small, and published Considerations on the Abolition of Slavery; in which he recommended the plan subsequently adopted, that emancipation should be gradual. His first published sermon appeared in 1790; and in proving the divinity of Christ from our Lord's own declarations, attested and interpreted by then living witnesses, he anticipated, in part, the arguments of the Rev. W. Wilson, in his Illustration of the Method of explaining the New Testament by the early Opinions of the Jews and Christians concerning Christ. On the translation of bishop