ochial duties, he found time to begin the book which has remained the principal work of one whose performance, however great, rarely rose to the level of his power. His History of Greece, unfortunately for him and for us, was a commission from Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia, and was originally intended to have been condensed into two or three duodecimo volumes. The scale was enlarged, but Thirlwall always felt cramped. He seems a little below his subject, and a little below himself. Yet, such was his ability that his history is usually allowed to fall only just short of Grote's, a work undertaken with far greater enthusiasm, and executed with far greater advantages. Sterling pronounces him "a writer as great as Thucydides and Tacitus, and with far more knowledge than they." The first volume was published in 1835, the last in 1847. A noble letter from Thirlwall to Grote, and Grote's generous reply, are published in the life of the latter.
In 1840 Thirlwall was raised to the see of St David's. The promotion was entirely the act of Lord Melbourne, an amateur in theology, who had read Thirlwall's introduction to Schleiermacher, and satisfied himself of the propriety of the appointment. "I don't intend to make a heterodox bishop if I know it," he said. Thirlwall so little expected the honour that he was absent on a pedestrian tour, and it was some days before he could be found. In most essential points he was a model bishop, and in acquainting himself with Welsh, so as to preach and conduct service in that language, he performed a feat which few bishops could have imitated. It cannot be said that he was greatly beloved by his clergy, who felt their intellectual distance too great, and were alternately frozen by his taciturnity and appalled by his sarcasm. The great monument of his episcopate is the eleven famous charges in which he from time to time reviewed the position of the English Church with reference to whatever might be the most pressing question of the day,—addresses at once judicial and statesmanlike, full of charitable wisdom and massive sense. No similar productions, it may safely be said, were ever so eagerly looked for, or carried with them such weight of authority. His endeavours to allay ecclesiastical panic, and to promote liberality of spirit, frequently required no ordinary moral courage. He was one of the four prelates who refused to inhibit Bishop Colenso from preaching in their dioceses, and the only one who withheld his signature from the addresses calling upon Colenso to resign his see. He took the liberal side in the questions of Maynooth, of the admission of Jews to parliament, of the Gorham case, and of the conscience clause. He was the only bishop who voted for the disestablishment of the Irish Church, though but as a painful necessity. Concurrent endowment would have been much more agreeable to him. For many years he was the only statesman on the bench; it would have been a great benefit to the Church of England had it been possible to have raised him to the primacy upon the death of Archbishop Howley. But such was the complexion of ecclesiastical politics that the elevation of the most impartial prelate of his day would have been resented as a piece of party spirit.
Thirlwall's private life was happy and busy. He never married, but found sufficient outlet for his deep affectionateness of nature in his tenderness to the children of others, and to all weak things except weak-minded clergy men. He was devoted to animals, and rivalled Southey and Jeremy Bentham in his love for cats. Perhaps the most durable monument to his memory will be his incomparable volume of letters to a friend, Miss Johnes of Dolaucothy, a young lady in every way worthy to be the correspondent of such a man. Even as letters these rank with the best in the language; but as letters from age to youth, sympathizing with all its feelings, entering into all its pleasures, at once inspiring and amusing, guiding without seeming to direct, and entertaining without seeming to condescend, they are unique in their delightful branch of literature. They are also important as revealing Thirlwall's mind on numerous subjects which he has not elsewhere treated, and most interesting from their picture of simplicity of character associated with greatness of intellect, and of the multiplicity of his intellectual interests, from which novels and fine art were by no means excluded. During his latter years he took great interest in the revision of the authorized version of the Bible, and was chairman of the revisers of the Old Testament. He resigned his see in May 1874, and retired to Bath, where he died on July 27, 1875.
As scholar, critic, and ecclesiastical statesman Thirlwall is almost above praise. He was not a great original thinker; he lacked the creative faculty and the creative impulse. The world owes such vestiges of his power as it possesses to a series of fortunate accidents—an importunate editor, vexatious church controversies, and an admirable friend. Though not most fully exerted, the force of his mind is perhaps best appreciated in the volume of his letters edited by Dean Perowne. His treatment of every question is consummate; the largest and the smallest seem alike to him. His character, with its mixture of greatness and gentleness, was thus read by Carlyle:—"a right solid honest-hearted man, full of knowledge and sense, and, in spite of his positive temper, almost timid."
Thirlwall's History of Greece remains a standard book. His literary and theological remains have been edited by Dean Perowne in three volumes, two of which are occupied by his charges. His letters on literary and theological subjects, with a connecting memoir, have been published by Dean Perowne and the Rev. Louis Stokes. His Letters to a Friend were originally published by Dean Stanley, and there is a revised and corrected edition. For a general view of Thirlwall's life and character, see the Edinburgh Review, vol. cxliii.; for a picture of him in his diocese, Temple Bar, vol. lxxvi. The review of his letters in Blackwood's Magazine for 1852 is by the late Rev. W. Lucas Collins.(r. g.)
THIRSK, a market-town in the North Riding of Yorkshire, is situated on the North Eastern Railway, and on the Codbeck, a branch of the Swale, 21 miles south of Darlington, 11 north-east of Ripon, and 210 north of London. The Codbeck is crossed by two stone bridges connecting the old and the new town. The church of St Mary, in the Perpendicular style, with parvise, chancel, nave, aisles, porch, and tower 80 feet in height, is the noblest church in the Riding. The chancel was repaired in 1844, and the whole building restored in 1877. The moat of the ancient castle built by the Mowbrays about 980 still remains. The principal modern buildings are the assembly rooms (1849), the mechanics' institute (1852), and the new court-house (1886). Standing in the fertile district of the Vale of Mowbray, the town has an extensive home and foreign agricultural implement trade. Iron-founding, engineering, tanning, and brickmaking are carried on, and there are large flour-mills. The population of the parliamentary borough, now disfranchised (area 11,828 acres), in 1871 was 5734, and in 1881 it was 6312. The population of the township in 1881 was 3337.
Thirsk owes its origin to the castle of the Mowbrays, and here Roger de Mowbray erected his standard, in conjunction with the king of Scotland, against Henry II. Upon the suppression of the revolt the castle was destroyed. In the reign of Henry VII., Henry Percy, earl of Northumberland, is said to have been put to death beneath an elm tree which formerly grew on St James's Green. Thirsk was a borough by prescription, but was never incorporated. It first returned members to parliament in the reign of Edward I., but not again till the last parliament of Edward VI. In 1832 the number of representatives was reduced to one, and in 1885 it ceased to be separately represented.
