statesmanship. But they were powerfully attracted by mutual affection and esteem. Lord Wellesley's despatches abound in warm tributes to the eminent qualities of the Duke, and there is extant a letter from the Duke, saying that amidst all the distinctions of his life he had never forgotten the honour of being Lord Wellesley's brother.' Their intimacy was resumed during the concluding years of Lord Wellesley's life; and a picture of the Duke, painted for the Marquess in early days, and given by him to the late Duchess of Wellington, was returned to the Duke at his own desire.*

Count D'Orsay was engaged on his portrait of the Duke when Lord Wellesley died, September 26, 1842. The day after, the Duke presented himself at the Count's studio in Gower House as if nothing extraordinary had occurred, and took his accustomed seat with the remark: You have heard of the Marquis of Wellesley's death: a very agreeable man-when he had his own way.' Who can tell how much genuine emotion lay hidden under the cold hard manner which the Iron Duke habitually assumed?

On the publication (1837) of the first series of Lord Wellesley's Despatches, the Court of Proprietors ordered a number of copies to be distributed in the Presidencies, giving as their reason that they felt it a duty to diffuse widely the means of consulting a work unfolding the principles upon which the supremacy of Britain in India was successfully manifested and enlarged, under a combination of circumstances in the highest degree critical and difficult.'

About the same time they voted him a donation of 20,000l., and the following resolution was passed by the Court of Directors on the 17th March, 1841, the year before his death:

'Resolved, nemine contradicente, that, referring to the important services of the Most Noble the Marquis Wellesley, in establishing and consolidating the British dominion in India upon a basis of security which it never before possessed, a statue of his Lordship be placed in the general court-room of this house as a PUBLIC, CONSPICUOUS, and PERMANENT MARK of the ADMIRATION and GRATITUDE of the EAST INDIA COMPANY.'

Considering how the same Company treated him on his

In a private letter to the most trusted of his friends (still living), Lord Wellesley writes, May 14th, 1838: I write one word to inform you of a very extraordinary and happy event: a complete, full, and cordial reconciliation between Arthur and me. He came here on Saturday, and nothing could be more satisfactory. This has nothing to do with politics. I write to Brougham to communicate this to him.'

return

return from India, we are forcibly reminded of Johnson's fine couplet :

"See nations slowly wise, and meanly just

To buried merit raise the tardy bust.'

Better late than never: the reparation, although tardy, was complete: if, indeed, anything can completely repair an injustice by which a brilliant career is blighted, by which the falcon, towering in its pride of place, is suddenly arrested in its flight. Lord Wellesley has suffered in reputation from another cause, which he would have been the last to deprecate-from being constantly contrasted with the hero of a Hundred Battles. It was said of the Comte de Mirabeau, the elder brother of the renowned Vicomte, that he would have been deemed a wit and a roué in any family but his own. It might be said with equal truth that the elder brother would have been regarded as the chief ornament and pride of any family but the Wellesleys. It is idle to talk of arms giving way to the gown-cedant arma toga-the popular voice invariably assigns the second place to civil virtue: glory and gunpowder throw the boasted triumphs of diplomacy and statesmanship into the shade:

'Whilst History's muse the memorial was keeping

Of all that the dark hand of Destiny weaves,
Beside her the Genius of Erin stood weeping,

For hers were the annals that blotted the leaves.
But, oh! how the tear in her eyelids grew bright
When, after whole pages of sorrow and shame,
She saw History write, with a pencil of light,

That illumed all the volume, her Wellington's name.'

When the Muse of History shall have fulfilled her high vocation, the Genius of Erin will be gladdened, and not surprised, to see another name, another yet the same, blended in the brightest pages of the volume with her Wellington's-to find the associate name of Wellesley, receiving and reflecting lustre, indelibly enrolled amongst those of the noblest, greatest, most accomplished, most eloquent, most honoured of her sons.

ART.

ART. IV. The Convocation Prayer-book; being the Book of Common Prayer: with altered Rubrics, showing what would be the Condition of the Book if amended in conformity with the Recommendations of the Convocations of Canterbury and York, contained in Reports presented to Her Majesty the Queen in the year 1879. London, 1880.

WE propose to lead our readers up to the consideration of

the volume, the title of which appears at the head of this article, by a few observations upon the Book of Common Prayer. The subject might at any time be regarded as one of supreme interest to Englishmen and to English-speaking people; but at a time of possible change in the condition of one of the most precious of English heirlooms, no apology can be necessary for inviting attention to some of its chief characteristics, and some of the conditions under which it has come to be that which it is. We do not, however, intend to attempt a history of the Book of Common Prayer, or a rationale of it, or a defence of it, or anything like a complete description or account of it; we rather invite the reader to a quiet discussion and contemplation of the book, reserving to ourselves the liberty of dealing with history, rationale, or what not, as may from time to time seem most agreeable or most useful. We shall thus prepare the way for considering the Convocation Prayer Book,' and be able to define more or less precisely the literary and ecclesiastical position which it occupies.

We suspect that, notwithstanding all that has been written on the subject, there is a belief in some degree prevalent to the general effect that, down to the period of the Reformation, a Roman Service Book was used in England, and that since that time we have used a Protestant Prayer-book of our own. Such a representation, however, is really a misrepresentation, and it is well to understand this from the first. When Augustine came to England on his mission from Rome at the end of the sixth century, he found, perhaps contrary to his expectation, that the country was far from being entirely heathen. The British remnant had a Church of their own, and one which not only had a liturgy and customs differing from those of Rome, but even clung to its peculiarities with great tenacity. It would seem, in fact, that the old British Church had the Gallican, not the Roman Liturgy, and, moreover, that the Gallican came from an Eastern and not from a Western source. An attempt was made in the eighth century to enforce the Roman Liturgy universally, but without success. Thus it came to pass that there never was a uniformity of

service

service in this country before the Reformation. The Roman system was probably adopted in most of the monasteries, but so far as cathedral and parish churches were concerned, there was a variety of use,' notably, there was Salisbury Use, and the Uses of York, Bangor, and Hereford. Of these the first became the most general and the most favoured, and it may be regarded as the direct source of the Anglican Use of the present day, that is, of the Book of Common Prayer.

'Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, and Chancellor of England, remodelled the offices of the Church, and left behind him the famous "Portiforium" or Breviary of Sarum, containing the daily services; together with the Sarum Missal, containing the Communion service; and probably the Sarum Manual, containing the Baptismal and other occasional offices. These, and some other service-books, constituted the Sarum Use, that is, the Prayer-book of the Diocese of Salisbury. It was first adopted for that diocese in A.D. 1085, and was introduced into other parts of England so generally that it became the principal devotional rule of the Church of England, and continued so for more than four centuries and a half.'-(Blunt's Annotated Book of Common Prayer. Preface, p. xviii.)

The continued prevalence of non-Roman systems of worship, notwithstanding the efforts of Augustine and those who followed him, and notwithstanding the previous retreat of the ancient British Church and people to Wales, is a phenomenon perhaps not wholly explained, but the fact is undoubted; the differences between the Sarum use-to speak only of the principal formand the Roman are such as to prove beyond all doubt a difference of origin. To mention one simple but notable instance: the English custom, as the reader is aware, is to count the latter group of Sundays in the ecclesiastical year from Trinity Sunday; this is according to Salisbury use: but it is not according to Roman, which dates the Sundays in question from the Feast of Pentecost, and not from that of the Holy Trinity. The distinction remains to the present day.

6

Let the reader now fix his mind upon the Use of Salisbury as that out of which, by God's good providence, the English Book of Common Prayer was to be evolved. The condition of the Salisbury Portiforium' and other service-books, at the time when they were taken in hand for the purpose of being reformed and transformed as the needs of the Church demanded, was not, as may be well believed, precisely that which it was in the eleventh century, when they came from the hands of Bishop Osmund. Probably accretions had taken place from time to time; but even had it been otherwise, the 'Portiforium' could not have been permitted to remain as it existed in the Middle Ages;

for

for in the beginning of the sixteenth century a strong desire for reform and simplification manifested itself: in saying which we need not confine the remark to England; the desire for reform had nothing to do with King Henry's quarrels and troubles. A good proof of this is to be found in an effort which was made by the Pope himself: a reformed Roman breviary was, in fact, prepared by Cardinal Quignonez under papal sanction, and was published before the middle of the century, though it was soon suppressed. In England a reformed edition of the Salisbury Portiforium,' or breviary, was issued in 1516, apparently under the auspices of Cardinal Wolsey. This publication was a distinct step towards the English Book of Common Prayer, and it was followed by other amended editions, down to 1540, in which last it was ordered that the lessons should be read in English.

No mere new edition of the Salisbury Service Books, however, corresponded to the spiritual wants of the times. There were two points with regard to which a radical change was necessary. In the first place the whole conception of the Breviary was that of a book of service and devotion, adapted for a monastic life. It was quite impossible that the system which was applicable to the wants of those, whose only or principal business was the public worship of God, could be suitable for those who were living in the world, but who were desirous of sanctifying a secular life by such daily devotion as might be compatible with imperative demands upon their time. One of the evils of the monastic system had been, and is, that it draws a hard ungodly line between the life described as secular and the life described as religious; it tends to debase the secular life by representing a life of vows as emphatically religious, while it endangers the character of those who have assumed the life of vows by leading them to imagine that it is in itself a higher life than that stigmatized as secular.

In the sixteenth century monasticism received its death-blow in England: some may fancy and fear that it was scotched, and not killed; we believe otherwise, and that the phenomena which may be quoted in favour of an opposite belief are not more truly indications of life than the galvanic twitches of a dead body; but anyhow, it was believed at the time that the monastic system had come to an end, that the idea of Christian life based upon it was henceforth to be replaced by a higher and better idea, and it was thought right that the Salisbury breviary should be so simplified and changed as to fit it to the ordinary needs of people living a secular life, and yet wishing to consecrate that secular life to the service of God.

But