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THE

CHRISTIAN REFORMER;

OR,

UNITARIAN

MAGAZINE AND REVIEW.

NEW SERIES, VOL. XIII

FROM JANUARY TO DECEMBER, 1857.

GODLE

LONDON:

EDWARD T. WHITFIELD,,178, STRAND.

1857.

THE

CHRISTIAN REFORMER.

No. CXLV.]

JANUARY, 1857.

[VOL. XIII.

MERIVALE'S HISTORY OF THE ROMANS.*

THE name of the author of this work will be read with interest by those who are acquainted with the history of Protestant Dissent. It was borne in the latter half of the eighteenth century by a man eminent for knowledge and liberality of opinion, the Rev. Samuel Merivale, of Exeter, Theological Tutor in the first academical institution in that city. His grandson, the late John Herrman Merivale, was an elegant scholar and poet; and the author of the work before us is one of a numerous family of great-grandchildren, who by various talent have made the name familiar to the world. The feeling of mortification which we experience when we reckon up the secessions from Presbyterian Dissent to the Established Church, is considerably tempered by the reflection that those who leave us usually carry with them some beneficial influences from their education and connections. Occasionally a deserter, of no esteem among us, betrays the natural feeling of a renegade, by virulence against his former associates and an exaggeration of bigotry; but more commonly the conforming Dissenter will be found in the ranks. of moderate and liberal Churchmen. The endless varieties of Dissent forbid the expectation that any one form of it should ever take the place of the Established Church, but its influence on that Church is in many ways beneficial, and not least in leavening it from time to time with men trained to liberality and comprehension of thought, and thereby fitted to correct the narrow tendencies of a ruling sect.

Mr. Merivale's labours on the imperial history of Rome began

History of the Romans under the Empire. By Charles Merivale, B.D., late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. Vols. I. and II., 1850; III., 1851; IV. and V., 1856.

† Dr. Kippis, in the Preface to his edition of Doddridge's Lectures, acknowledges his obligations to Mr. Merivale for additional references to that work. We have understood that the late Mr. J. H. Merivale had prepared a Life of his grandfather, illustrated by his correspondence, and exhibiting a very interesting picture of the state of Presbyterian Dissent at the period at which he lived. Mr. Merivale, we perceive by an approving reference to a notice of Zumpt's Dissertation (C. R. XI. 623), is an occasional reader of the Christian Reformer. Should this paper meet his eye, would he allow us to suggest to him that, if the MS. be still in existence, he would do justice to the memory of his ancestor, and render a service to history, by placing it in such a repository as Dr. Williams's Library in Red-cross Street.

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