WHITE, Rev. JOSEPH BLANCO, was b. at Seville, in Spain, on July 11, 1775. His father was a merchant there of Irish parentage, who bad married a Spanish lady of old Andalusian family; Finding his father's counting-house on trial not at all to his mind, he quitted it to prepare himself for holy orders, and in 1799 he was ordained a priest. But, born with a mind curiously restless and inquisitive, he ceased in no long time es And himself at home iu the Romish communion; and in 1810 he came to England, which be never afterward quitted. Joining himself to the English church, he seems to have meditated becoming one of its clergymen; an intention which it was quite as well he did not carry out, inasmuch as his speculations rapidly led hint to results not recognized by English orthodoxy. On coining to England he settled himself in London, where for sonic years he conducted a monthly Spanish paper called El Espanol. On the cessation of the peninsular war, in 1814, this publication ceased also, as having no longer a raison d'etre; bat meantime its services to the government of the day had been such as to secure for its editor a pension for life of £250 per annum. Subsequently Mr. White lived chiefly in London, employed as a man of letters. Though in literary circles recognized as a man of fine talent, and known as a contributor to the Quarterly and Westminster Review, and other high-class periodicals, he scarcely succeeded in making a permanent impression on the public by any of his more formal publications. Of these the most
important were: Letters from Spain (1822), contributed some years before to the .Veto Monthly Magazine; Practical and Internal Evidence against Catholicism (1825); Poor Man's Preservation against Popery (1825); and Second Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion (2 vols. 1833). He died on May 20, 1841, in Liverpool, whither he had removed some years before. In 184.5 there was given to the world, as his legacy to it, by much his most striking and valuable work, The Life of the Rev. Joseph Blanco IV/he, written by himself, with portions of his Correspondowe; edited by John Hamilton Thom (London, 3 vols. 8vo). This book, at the time of its appearance, excited a good deal of interest, and is still eminently worth seferring to. The curious picture it presentsof a mind at once pious and skeptical, longing and sorrowing after a truth which it can nowhere find, or finding, contrive to rest in, has, in the present unsettled state of religious opinion, a very particular significance. Poor White's life-long "search for a religion" seems not to have been a successful one, and to have landed him at the last in a condition of nearly entire skepticism.