torically, the creation of a compromise, and the State, which upon that footing placed it in its civil position and still maintains it there, is interested in seeing that the terms of the compromise are in substance kept to, and is entitled, if need be, to compel their observance. The smallest reflection will show that an establishment is only possible by some such compromise, in a populous country where toleration is the law. What Coleridge said of philosophy is true also of religion: that there are two classes of minds in the world which differ on first principles nearly equal in power, which will never absorb or convert each other. Every man, he was accustomed to say, is born either an Aristotelian or a Platonist; and, in like manner, it may be said that every man is by nature either a Catholic or a Protestant in religion. such a country as England, an established communion, if it is to comprise any fair proportion of the people, and if it is to recruit the ranks of its ministers from the general mass of educated men, cannot be destitute of either element of religious opinion. There always has been, and there always will be, a class of persons who cling to the High Church traditions, and rank themselves as disciples of the High Church divines whose virtues and genius have adorned their communion in long succession. And, on the other hand, ever since the Reformation, a great party has existed in the Church of England, with its line of celebrated teachers, entirely opposed to the teaching of the High Church divines, and urging the farther development of the pure Protestant element of the Church. These bodies have in point of fact been always coexistent; and with whatever inconveniences these struggles may be attended, we should regret to see either of them eliminated from the Church, and the Catholic or the Protestant element left to unchecked action within it. They each represent a principle valuable in itself and containing an important truth; and, within due limits, their continued action in the Church is essential to the preservation of its historical character. Moreover, their continuance is part of the bargain which was made in the time of Queen Elizabeth, in whose days the great object of the State was to avoid divisions as far as possible, and to bring within the pale of the National Church all persons who could agree to certain specified propositions, leaving them to differ about all matters not distinctly specified. We are not now concerned with the wisdom or success of this plan. As matter of fact, it was in substance agreed, that persons of very different schools of opinion should share the advantages of the Establishment; and the legitimate descendants of any of these schools cannot now in fairness claim to exclude from these advantages the legitimate de

scendants of any other. Nor can the Church complain that the State holds her to a bargain so made, and refuses her leave, at her own pleasure or at the pleasure of a majority of her members, to alter its terms. It is, moreover, not only the right but the wisdom of the State to insist on the keeping of these terms; for, with all the divisions and consequent weakness which the conflict of parties in the Church has sometimes occasioned, no other scheme of Church establishment has proved equally favourable to religion, to toleration, and to freedom.

so many

The State, too, with which the Church has now to deal is by no means the same kind of body which might have listened to and granted her requests with confiding facility in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. Then it might have been sufficient to show that what was asked was desired by the great majority of her own members. But that will not be sufficient now. Now it must be shown that what is demanded, not only approves itself to the members of the Church itself, but is unobjectionable to those many powerful and rival interests of which the State is now composed. As a national institution the nation has an interest in the Church's working, and the right to control it. The Church holds vast public property. It has a great constitutional position and large legal privileges; and its tithes, its churches, its parsonages, its estates, and its bishoprics, are all links in the golden chain which keeps it in dependence upon the State, and by which the State maintains the right to influence even its internal affairs. It is not like any other religious body in the kingdom, and the analogies drawn from these relations to the State are fallacious and unpractical if applied to the relations of the Church. The sovereign must be a member of it, its chiefs are peers, its priests have all legal positions, and some of them great wealth; and it does not become a richly-endowed and protected community, whose members, with some exceptions, have shown no great eagerness to prefer liberty to position, to cry out as if it was oppressed, because the State, which protects it in the enjoyment of its possessions, claims to interfere as to the terms upon which they are to be enjoyed. The Church cannot expect to have the luxury of riches with the freedom of poverty; the patronage of the State without its control. • More counsel with more 'money, bounteous Timon,' says Timandra in the play. The restraint of the law and the responsibility of a public trust accompanies the possession of wealth which the law has conferred. Perhaps many of the clergy need to be told that although, so far as the Church is a divine institution and has a spiritual life, the State neither presumes to interfere with her, nor

could attempt it with success, yet that, in her civil position and worldly possessions, she is but the creature of the State, which might again, as was actually done at the Reformation, change her external circumstances, by imposing a wholly different set of laws as the conditions of her constitutional position. And it is plain, that so far as even internal regulations affect her external working, the people at large, of whatever religious denomination they may be, have an interest in it; and if good feeling keep them from interfering except with very strong reason, yet, with such reason, their right to interfere would be, we conceive, indisputable. They would not interfere as Wesleyans, or Independents, or Presbyterians, or Roman Catholics, but as Englishmen, interested in the working of a national institution, with as much right to an opinion and a vote upon it as upon the working of the peerage, or the law courts, or the Ministry, or any other public institution supported by the law or protected by it in great and peculiar privileges. It is nonsense to talk of Parliament having no more right to interfere with the internal management of the Church than it has to interfere with a Wesleyan conference or a Roman Catholic synod; if men can see no difference between public property and private property, and can recognise no practical distinction in the right of the State to deal with one and the other; if they really cannot comprehend that the property of the Church of England is public property, and that of the Wesleyans or Roman Catholics private, we have no means of addressing such minds.

With these limitations very distinctly insisted upon, we can see no danger in conceding to the Church of England greater facilities of managing her internal concerns. Nor does the list of subjects given by Mr. Lathbury and Mr. Trevor, in the concluding chapters of their respective volumes, present much matter which we should be anxious to withdraw from the consideration of a properly constituted Church Assembly. Psalmody, ritual, church arrangements, discipline, including the difficult and important question of the Ecclesiastical Courts, shorter and more varied services, more freedom in preaching, division of parishes, increase of bishoprics, school regulations, cathedral reform, the foundation of an effective diaconate, are all amongst the subjects mentioned or suggested by the authors we have named. By descending more into detail the catalogue might be largely increased. But it is sufficient as it stands, to indicate the sort of questions upon which the opinion of such a synod might be invited, and to which their action might pro

perly be confined. For everything which they did or suggested, of course, the sanction of Parliament must be obtained, before their conclusions could have any legal validity. It might not, however, be necessary to go through the labour and annoyance of passing separate Acts of Parliament to give effect to each separate recommendation. It would be enough, according to several precedents of late years, that the recommendations of the synod, having been submitted to the approval of the Queen in council, like the schemes of the Ecclesiastical Commission and the ordinances of the University Commissions, should lie upon the table of each House of Parliament a certain number of days, and should thereby, unless objected to during that time, acquire the force of law. The assent of the Crown would of course be necessary before they could pass the synod in the first instance.

Before long, we trust, the whole subject will be undertaken by the Government, or by some one with their consent, capable of dealing with it. It is not a subject which will bear prolonged delay. A great many things in the system of the Church which need amending, never will be amended unless those who know most and care most about them are suffered to lend their aid in devising the remedies. There is so much of apparent and so much of real justice in the claim for some sort of representative assembly on the part of the Church of England, that it is tolerably certain the demand for it will not die away, nor will the feeling against it become stronger or more general. Nothing, probably, but the immediate action of a body totally unfit to represent the Church would prevent the creation of one really fit to do so. Men will see that chronic agitation on this subject is not a healthy state of things for the Church herself, and that it is not wise to deny to a large body of well-conducted men that to which in some shape or other history and principle alike show they have so fair a claim. It is perfectly true that the question is full of difficulties, and that any practical course respecting it will not be an easy one. Still it is unmanly to shrink from an important subject simply because it is an embarrassing one. It is not right to reject just demands only because it needs great consideration to settle in what shape they ought to be conceded. It is not worthy of the English people or the English Parliament, to refuse an improved system of internal government to the Church, because refusal is still quite safe, and acquiescence would undoubtedly increase the responsibilities of the civil

power.

ART. IV.-The Illustrated Handbook of Architecture, being concise and popular account of the different Styles of Architecture prevailing in all Ages and Countries. By JAMES FERGUSSON. 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1855.

A

GENERAL treatise on Architecture is unquestionably a task which requires in a writer who would do it full justice the possession of very great and very varied powers. It is one thing for the antiquarian to examine in detail a given period of national art, and another to furnish an adequate record of the art of every age and country from its humblest origin to its highest developments. Such a work calls for the high qualities of a mind unfettered by prejudice, a generous and ready appreciation of beauty or grandeur wherever they may be found, and an uncommon amount of practical information. That art which at first concerned itself with nothing more than providing shelter from heat or cold, has given birth to creations of almost more than earthly majesty, and won a name which declares its supremacy over all arts by pressing them each in their turn into its service, and moulding them at its will. The sculptor and the painter may look with contempt on the log hut or cave of the savage, but their highest works are subordinate decorations in the shrine of the Olympian Zeus and the home of the Virgin Goddess. If we despise the grotesque designs of Burmah or China, as the monotonous and barren repetitions of uncouth forms, we gaze with silent wonder at the gigantic strength which is enthroned in the stupendous minsters of Amiens or York or Cologne. But the special exercise of great mental powers is not alone required to realise the vast interval which separates the lowest from the highest architectural creations; a yet wider field opens before us, as we examine the various influences, whether political, ecclesiastical, or theological, which have affected the growth of this art in every age. The architectural remains of past generations, sometimes scattered over wastes in which the primæval solitude has regained its empire over civilisation, sometimes buried under the strata of more recent periods of history, are the most conspicuous and enduring monuments of nations, of religions, and of empires which have left no other trace upon this earth; and the hewn stones or dilapidated edifices by which these extinct races of men once dwelt, or reigned, or worshipped, still afford evidence of their character and their power, that may be compared by their results to the know