White, Joseph (2)

(called in Spain Don Jose Marya Blanco i Crespo), a Roman Catholic priest, descend ed from an Irish Catholic family which' had settled in Spain, was born at Seville, July 11, 1775. Being dissatisfied with mercantile life, he was educated for the Church, and was ordained a priest' in 1799; 'soon lost confidence-in Roman Catholicism, renouncing his adherence to it in 1810, when he removed to England; joined the English Church, but did not take orders in it; became a tutor in the family of Lord Holland; settled in London, where he conducted for some years a Spanish paper called El Espanol; received, in 1814, a pension for life of £250 per annum, on account of services rendered the government by this paper;' lived subsequently in London as a man of letters; edited for three years (1822- 25) another Spanish journal, Las Variedades; was editor of the London Review (1829); served as tutor in the family of archbishop Whately at Dublin, from 1832 to 1835; removed to Liverpool, where he joined: tie' Unitarian Society, of which the Rev. John Hamilton was then pastor; and died May 20,1841. He was the author of a great many works, among which are Preparatory Observations on the Study of Religion (1817): — Letters from Spain (1822): — Practical and Internal Evidence against Catholicism (1825): — Poor Man's Preservatives against Popery (1825): — Dialogues concerning the Church of Rome (1827): — Letter to Protestants Converted from Romanism (1827): — Second Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion (1833) and Life of the Rev. Joseph Blanco White, Written by Himself, with Portions of his Correspondence; edited by John Hamilton Thom (1845, 3 vols.). "This book, at the time of its appearance, excited a good deal of interest, and is still eminently worth referring to. The curious picture it presents of 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."