Mr. Call’s youthful scepticism,—a spell wrought by Byron and Shelley,—being chiefly the expression of others’ experiences, and with but little root in his own, carried him no further than the study of philosophy and theology. It was not deep enough to prevent his entering on residence in the University of Cambridge with a view of becoming a clergyman. The struggle being not yet in the arena of his own life and heart, but a combat for his soul between the Humes and the Jeremy Taylors, poetic sentiment easily carried the day. His nature clamored for a realised ideal, and the Church captivated him. “The church, as the embodiment of celestial truth, as the aggregate of noble and beautiful spirits, dead or living, appeared a sublime conception.” When a youth falls in love does he consider whether his beautiful lady’s bloom may not be hectic, or hereditary cancer be hovering near the fair breast? Our young scholar weds our Lady of the Litany amid the light of stained windows, and the white-robed choristers. He presently finds that the lovely creature insists on his preaching the doctrine that all who do not yield to her charms are to be burnt at the stake eternally. “Human philosophy had failed to explain to me the mystery of existence; Christian philosophy explained it to be the perpetuation of sin and misery, intensified by omnipotent intervention.” Recoiling from this the young clergyman went through years of critical investigation; he mastered the exegesis of the Germans and the French; and at length found himself a simple believer in the religion of Humanity. He, a clergyman of the Church of England! In the fifty preliminary pages of this posthumous book, comprising “A Chapter from my Autobiography,” we have a succinct and useful summary of the crucial criticisms under which biblical authority and supernaturalism have been relegated to professional casuistry. This we will not study here—profoundly interesting as it is—but dwell for a little on the situation in which the scholar found himself.