as open as his eyes, has nothing whatever to allege against the discipline of the school or the progress of the boys in learning. On the contrary, he adopts the very flattering statements of the warden, and endorses them. We congratulate Mr. Sewell on this great fact.

The Strike. Parker's series. Part II.

THERE is no question that this is a very masterly little production, well and graphically written, but we have considerable doubts how far this style of publication is desirable, especially for the middle classes. The tendency of such works invariably is to cast a sort of prestige over the bold insubordination or daring evasion of the laws which they record. They have the same sort of dangerous influence over young minds which Jack Sheppard and similar books are apt to produce, though of course in a very minor degree. We should be heartily glad to meet with this clever author again in a publication of some safer kind.

Seven Fairy Tales (J. H. Parker,) remind us somewhat of the manner in which in our nursery days certain unpalatable nostrums were smuggled into our mouths in the shape of sweetmeats. The fairies in this pretty little book prove to be very homely duties not the most easy of practice to children. The little work, however, is so nicely written that we doubt not it will prove a favourite with them.

Mr. OLIPHANT's Plea for Painted Glass (J. H. Parker,) is written with very good taste and feeling, and in the full recognition of the transcendent merits of fourteenth century art. We trust, that as a professional artist, he will be able to carry out the views which he here enunciates into successful practice.

The Pastor's Gift, (Masters,) by the Rev. C. F. MILNER, seems only to be a second edition, mutato nomine, of "Holy Truths," divested of their catechetical form. We can but repeat our recommendation of it.

Another old friend which deserves special recommendation, is a new edition of Patrick's Parable of the Pilgrim. (Masters.) There are few books which contain more useful reading.

Mr. HEYGATE's Manual appears in a new and much more convenient shape-as one in fact of the Churchman's Library. A few alterations only have been made in it, but these are all for the better, and we recommend it with very great confidence as really meriting the title of "The Poor Churchman's Manual."

Messrs. Mozley have concluded and published the Readings for the Christian Year, which were begun by Mr. Whittaker. The four volumes are lettered respectively " Advent, Lent, Trinity, and Saints' Days" -an arrangement which somewhat oddly seems to exclude all the Great Festivals. The idea of the work nevertheless is good, and the editor appears to have selected from the best Anglican writers that he could; but the passages are not always very appropriate, and upon the whole it is rather a many-coloured production.

The Champion (Rivingtons) is the title of Nine Lectures on our Blessed LORD's Contest with the Devil, and Triumph over him by His Resurrection and Ascension. There is a little too much parade of a rather miscellaneous set of authorities; but the lectures are powerfully written, and the theology good. The author is the Rev. GEORGE RICHARDS, M.A., "Professor of Classics in Queen's College, Birmingham, and Senior Chaplain and Tutor."

L'Eglise Anglicane n'est point Schismatique, (J. H. Parker,) is published for circulation on the Continent. The facts are well selected, and the argument good, and it quite reads like an original French work. The author, it appears, however, is the late Mr. JAMES MEYRICK, and it has been translated by the Rev. F. GODFRAY, the very first of our French Scholars. The original English, we may add, is now published by Longmans. If it had been possible to let the book look less like an attack upon the Church of Rome, it seems to us that it would have been more likely to answer its purpose.

Mr. CHARLES MARRIOTT has published a spirited defence, upon philosophical grounds, of his connection with The Universal Purveyor; The Co-operative Principle not opposed to a true Political Economy. (J. H. Parker.) There is manifestly a strong yearning among men after some system of mutual protection in the supply of the necessaries of life. For ourselves we do not feel called to enter upon this difficult social problem; but would refer those who are interested in it to Mr. Marriott's tract.

Many of our readers will be glad to learn that Mr. ISAAC WILLIAMS has now published the third and concluding volume of his Sermons on the Epistles and Gospels, (Rivingtons,) embracing the Holy Days of the Christian Year. They take the form generally of a running comment upon the altar service for the day; a method to which the author doubtless has become accustomed in his works on the Gospels and Apocalypse.

Mary Beaver; or the Housemaid's Wedding, (J. H. Parker,) possesses the merit (whatever that may be) of being perfectly probable. We do not see that anything more can be said in its praise.

Dr. MAITLAND is at all times a powerful opponent; and it is scarcely surprising that in his Remarks on the Bishop of Oxford's Charge (Rivingtons), he should have forcibly pointed out some of the difficulties in the Convocation question. But since his pamphlet was written Convocation has again met; and, we cannot but think, has received more damage from itself in public estimation than from the Doctor's ingenious attacks. In saying this, we do not refer to its hurried method of transacting business, which may fairly be referred to the shortness of the time allowed for its deliberations; but to the suggestions made on the one practical subject discussed, the fresh adaptation of our Services; among which was one for leaving out the Apocryphal Lessons, and another for hashing up a Second Evening Service, by Collects gathered from other portions of the Prayer Book. It would be an evil day indeed for the Church, if such measures were ever carried.

We are glad to find that Mrs. JAMESON is as favourable to the Religious Life in practice as she has shown herself to be an admirer, theoretically, of its chief saints, and of the art which has been employed in doing honour to their memory. Sisterhoods at Home and Abroad, (Longmans,) is the title of a little work that has just appeared from her pen, advocating their introduction among ourselves. It was originally delivered as a Lecture to some private friends.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN has published A Letter to the Bishop of S. Andrew's, showing "in what sense alone the Holy Eucharist may properly be called the LORD's Supper." The subject has been more than once alluded to in our pages, and is of more importance than may be at first sight imagined. The Letter contains a very striking passage from Waterland.

Two excellent pamphlets, on a very important subject, have reached us as we were going to press, viz., Our Cathedrals and their Mission, (Masters,) by the Rev. C. T. HEARTLEY; and What is the Use of our Cathedrals? by the Rev. J. INGLE. (Bell and Daldy.) The authors are both practical men; the former viewing the question in its bearings on the worship of the Church generally; the latter looking chiefly to the obligations resulting from existing statutes in reference to education, on which subject he is well qualified to speak, as the master of one of our most efficient chapter schools. The following are Mr. Heartley's concluding remarks :—

"Shall it be said that our day, which has done so much for Church revival, which has been, and is, so great in invention and in art, and in which, of all things, the study of music has made such progress, that it has come to pass that in nearly every market-town there is now a choral society, at whose meetings our mechanics and tradesmen, and indeed most of the more intelligent of the middle classes, join in the execution of some of the most difficult choruses in the oratorios; when such vast strides are being made in choral harmony, shall it be said that we are unable to fill the buildings which our ancestors erected, when the population was hardly a tithe of what it is at present, and when the knowledge even of reading was confined to comparatively few? It surely can never be said that we really are unable to do this for our Cathedrals, with their ample foundations, and with the framework, as it were, already made to hand; and when, in many a village, there is a daily offering of praise to GOD, with choirs in some cases as numerous, and in some respects almost as well appointed, as in many of our Cathedrals at present. If we do not restore our services to that grandeur which even the buildings require, by the introduction of numerous and well-trained choirs, to make an harmonious whole, it will not be because we cannot do so, but because we will not; it will be either because the funds for the maintenance of these institutions are diverted from the legitimate purposes for which they were granted, or are bestowed on men who are indifferent to the offices with which they have been entrusted, and careless of the duties which their position involves. The Cathedrals cannot remain as they are; this the voice of nearly the whole country may be said to assert. If they fall, one of the great and really popular glories of the English Church will be put out: if they rise in all that beauty and perfection which we hope for, then will they draw around them, and around the Church at large, a vast bulwark of devoted followers. The branches of the goodly tree once planted in every Diocese by the piety of our forefathers will again shoot forth, and spread, till its fruits at last drop into the remotest villages of its border."—Pp. 31, 32.

241

PROCTER ON THE PRAYER BOOK.

A History of the Book of Common Prayer, with a Rationale of its Offices. By the REV. FRANCIS PROCTER, M.A., Late Fellow of S. Catharine's Hall, Cambridge; Vicar of Witton, Norfolk. Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. 1855. (Cambridge Theo

logical Manuals.)

WE are entering upon a new stage of an old controversy. The strictness with which rubrics have of late years been regarded has within the last twelve months been wonderfully relaxed. The newspapers teem with correspondence on the subject of the alteration and improvement of the Prayer Book. One man advises the omission of this part of the daily service, another the shortening of that; one writes to tell us that he reads one lesson, a second informs us that he reads another; one, omitting the opening Antiphons and Exhortation, begins Matins and Evensong with the Confession, another commences with the LORD's Prayer; one leaves off at the third Collect on ferial days, another at the usual termination; this man says the Litany separately in the morning, that man says it similarly in the evening. On every side-even in quarters which hitherto have been characterized by too stiff and rigid an obedience to the letter of the rubric-we hear not only of plans for new-modelling our present, or adding further, offices and directions, but of experiments tried with the view of rendering the authorised services more adapted to modern requirements.

The suggestions made in Convocation have occasioned a general expectation of changes in the Book of Common Prayer, and in the transitionary state half the clergy of England seem to have set to work proposing alterations and amendments. We must add that the sagacity of the authors of many of these recommendations does not equal their temerity, and their knowledge of the subject is considerably inferior to the self-complacency with which they vaunt their very crude opinions. Certainly the present feeling has taken a more healthy direction than the similar rage for alteration in 1689, and again, five and twenty years ago. We do not now hear much in high places of changes to be desired in the doctrines of the Prayer Book. That these should be jealously guarded and maintained, seems on all hands to be considered of the greatest possible importance. But the desire of alterations of some sort has gone abroad, and men with the very slightest acquaintance with ritual matters, coolly parade their impromptu suggestions, which, if adopted, would probably change the whole character of our Common Prayer. It appears to be thought quite an easy task to arrange and re-arrange services, and any man who has cursorily VOL. XVII.-JUNE, 1855.

2 I

read Wheatley fancies himself competent to sit in judgment on our present "use," and propose reforms which shall improve and perfectionate our public worship. Doubtless there is a good spirit at the bottom of all this talk,-an earnest desire to make the Church popular and able to meet the requirements of these our days; and we hail it as a sign of real and living action. Only we would have more attention paid to the subject, before any changes are sanctioned. We must be better acquainted with the sources from which our present Prayer Book was compiled, before we are able to deal satisfactorily with its revision, or to make additions to the services provided therein. It would be a thousand times better to leave the Book as it is, than to admit any suggestion which is not based on ancient precedent, and whose adoption is not absolutely required. Let us study the "uses" of the early English Church; let us compare, and classify, and understand these, before we attempt to meddle with our authorised formularies. Even in the matter of a change of lessons, which is required for many reasons, it would not be safe to trust to the most enlightened modern judgment, without regard to that Catholic system of interpretation which assigns certain portions of Holy Scripture to certain parts of the Church's Calendar, with an appreciation of the inner meaning of God's Word, which later commentators have too generally neglected. And so in other points: we must use our models, we must ourselves learn, ere we can hope to effect any alteration which will be at the same time an improvement.

It was with these thoughts in our mind that we took up Mr. Procter's volume on the Book of Common Prayer; and we will say at once that we were more than ordinarily pleased with the manner in which the design he had set himself was accomplished. Commencing with an account of the Service Books of the English Church, and the Books of private devotion in use before the Reformation, the author traces the history of our present Prayer Book till its final settlement in the reign of Charles II. An appendix contains an account of the offices of the non-jurors, the Scotch Church, the American Church, and the sects of the Socinians, and the Irvingites, together with some notices of occasional offices, e.g., the ceremony of touching for the king's evil, consecrating churches and vessels for the Holy Eucharist, reception of converts, the Bidding of Prayer, &c. We then come to the "sources and Rationale" of the offices contained in our present Book of Common Prayer. And here due justice is done to the Sarum originals, whence for the most part our present forms are drawn. After all the attacks which had been made upon it, and in spite of all the changes which had been effected, the Prayer Book in 1662

"remained the same Book of Common Prayer, as to all its distinctive features. Some particulars of small consequence were amended;