the Bass Rock.

Here he remained till January, 1678, when he was again tried, and the long-defrauded gallows obtained its dues. In his papers he justifies his attempt, as directed by the Spirit of God, and adduces the example of Phinehas in killing Cosbi and Zimri, and the law in Deuteronomy commanding false prophets to be put to death. He, too, has been canonized by the Covenanters.

After the adjournment of Parliament in 1674, Lauderdale tried another plan for reconciling the Covenanters, to wit: announcing a general pardon to all resorters to conventicles previous to that day (May 4th). This extreme measure failed entirely of any good effect. It was interpreted as a sign of weakness and fear the seditious field-preachers became more violent than ever, and conventicles abounded, to the great discomfort of the peaceable and well-disposed. Welsh, and others of the same stamp, forcibly entered some of the parish churches in Fife, and held forth in them. The evil spirit extended to Edinburgh, and in June a mob of women, headed by a daughter of Johnstone of Warriston, made an attempt on the Archbishop's life, as he was going to the Council; and he was only saved from serious injury, and perhaps death, by the address of Lord Rothes, who was in his company. When Lauderdale found that his clemency had been thus requited, he complained to the King, and received a royal letter ordering the laws to be enforced with all possible energy. A committee of the Privy Council, on which were the Primate and State officers, was appointed to inquire into the alleged offences; warrants were issued for the apprehension of Welsh, Blackadder, and other notorious criminals, and fines were imposed on the towns, parishes, and individuals who had connived at the conventicles. Thus Edinburgh was fined £100 for allowing the Covenanters to seize on Magdalen chapel for two Sundays, to be levied from those who were present at the outrage. Several heritors were fined heavily for "harbouring " the field-preachers; and orders were given to hold the military forces in England and Ireland in readiness to march into Scotland should their presence be required.

In 1675 Bishops Ramsay of Dunblane, and Lawrie of Brechin, with some presbyters of Edinburgh and Leith, busied

themselves in getting up a demand for a National Synod "for considering the disorders in the Church." The other Bishops were averse from the design, especially the Primate, and he exerted himself with the King to prevent it. This excited the ire of Ramsay, and he addressed a long and intemperate letter to Sharp, for which, in August, he was, by the King's command, brought before a council of Bishops at St. Andrews. Ramsay conducted himself with some violence, and demanded a convocation of the whole clergy to judge of his case. He afterwards gave in his answers, and it appears he was sus pended, and ordered to the Isles as a residence; but as, soon afterwards, he apologized and submitted, he was restored to his office and diocese. Four Presbyters, Cant. Turner, Henderson, and Hamilton, who had also been suspended for turbu lence and refractory conduct, made their submission, and were released from ecclesiastical censure. About this time, too, the Quakers were proceeded against, under the Acts against Private Conventicles, and were treated with some severity. In 1677 Robert Barclay addressed a very moderate and sensible letter to the Primate, pointing out the great difference between them and the Covenanters-they following the dictates of their conscience, and leading quiet and orderly lives, in obedience to the Government; the latter "believing not only military resistance just to protect themselves against authority, but also an offensive endeavour to turn out their superiors, and establish themselves in their overthrow, both lawful and laudable, as their practice hath sufficiently demonstrated." The Primate was so much pleased with this letter, that he procured the remission of the sentence against the Quakers and their release from prison. The beneficial effect of his interposition was hindered for a time by the folly of some few of the sect, but after two or three years they remained altogether unmolested.

As we have given an instance of the fury of some of the Covenanting viragoes in their attack on the Primate, it is fair we should reverse the shield and give an instance of the spirit and firmness displayed by a Church woman, Anne Keith, the wife of Mr. Patrick Smythe, of Methven in Perth. A large party came on his grounds, on the 19th October, 1678. to hold a conventicle, while the proprietor was absent. As this

She collected

exposed him to a heavy fine, if permitted, his courageous wife determined to send them about their business. an armed body, from her relatives and tenants, sixty in number, and advanced against the insurgents in person, holding a drawn sword in her right hand, and a light horseman's piece cocked in her left. Although the enemy were ten times the number of her followers, the determination of the lady, and the skill with which she took up her position, produced a wholesome effect, and the conventiclers retired, after some parleying, vowing, however, to return the next Lord's-day with a much larger force. Unfortunately we have no further record, but we presume they did not return; as the lady writes she had summoned a solemn court of vassals and tenants, well armed, to meet on that day at 8 o'clock in the morning, to the number of 500 men and boys, and had also sent to Edinburgh for two small brass field-pieces. "My blessed love," she says, "comfort yourself in this-if the fanatics chance to kill me, it shall not be for nought. I was wounded for our gracious King, and now, in the strength of the Lord of Heaven, I'll hazard my person with the men I may command, before these rebels rest where ye have power." Would that the men had been animated with the spirit of this valiant daughter of the Church!

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

The History of the Church of England. By J. B. S. CARWITHEN, B D., late of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford. Second Edition. Oxford: J. H. Parker. Imported and for sale by D. Dana, Jr., New York.

Few books of the kind have fallen in our way, of a more attractive and edifying description than CARWITHEN'S History of the Church of England. The work is in two duodecimo volumes, of something over 600 pages each, printed with good forcible type, and on clear, strong, handsome paper; not, indeed, in the best style of English books, but in a style seldom equalled by the American press.

A history of the English Church at once sound, safe, and popular; without either the naked dryness of an abridgment, or the tedious dispersedness of local and technical details; the selection and grouping of the materials being such as to convey a just impression of the whole subject, and so complicated with the graces of thought and diction as to make the reader linger

and reflect, even while inviting and drawing him onward; such a history we have long thought an important desideratum in the literature of the Church. Certainly we cannot say that Mr. CARWITHEN has accomplished all that falls within the scope of such a work: probably this will never be done by any one man: but he has come much nearer our idea of what such a work ought to be than anything else we have seen. It will not be amiss to begin by giving some account of the author and of the performance.

The Rev. J. B. S. CARWITHEN was the son of the Rev. WILLIAM CARWITHEN, rector of the parish at Manaton, Devon; was born at the parsonage on the 10th of April, 1781; went through the preparatory studies under his father at the Totnes Grammar School; was entered at St. Mary's Hall Oxford, in February, 1796, took the degree of B.A. in February, 1800, of M.A. in July, 1803, and proceeded to that of B.D. in November, 1825. He was ordained to the Deaconate in September, 1803, to the Priesthood in August, 1805, and in September, 1810, was, on presentation by the Dean of Salisbury, licensed to the Perpetual Curacy of Sandhurst, Berks, and, in 1814, to that of Frimley, Hunts, an adjoining parish, having been presented thereto by the Rev. HENRY LEE, rector of Ash. As evidence of his high standing as a scholar and a thinker, it is enough to mention that he was appointed to preach the Bampton Lectures in 1809, and to serve as one of the Select Preachers in Michaelmas Term, 1812. The main bent and current of his mind is indicated in the title prefixed to his Bampton Lectures; which title runs thus: "A View of the Brahminical Religion in its Confirmation of the Truth of Sacred History, and its Influence on the Moral Character." Respecting Mr. CARWITHEN himself, it must suffice to add, that he was married in February, 1822, to HARRIET ELIZABETH, widow of the Rev. A. S. FAULKNOR, and "went to his rest," at the Vicarage of Sandhurst, on the 24th of February, 1832.

His History of the Church of England, of which the present is a second edition, was originally written and issued in two parts. The first part, bringing the narrative down to the Restoration in 1660, was published in two volumes in 1829. The second part, extending from the Restoration to the Revolution of 1688, was published in one volume in 1833. In the present edition, which comes from the superb house of J. H. PARKER, Oxford, the two parts are united, and form one continuous whole. It should be further noted, that in his first chapter the author presents a brief, rapid, well-wrought sketch of the English Church, under three heads: first, from the time of AUGUSTINE down to the Norman Conquest; second, from the Conquest to the reign of King JOHN ; third from Magna Charta to the Reformation. In the second chapter he makes a general survey of the state of Europe, of England, and of the Church, at the opening of the 16th century. From thence his narrative strikes right into the preliminaries of the Reformation, and flows on in smooth and equitable proportion through all the great passages of the Church, till it reaches the assigned limit. As showing how the work was regarded at the time of its first appearance, it may be well to state that a highly gifted writer, the Rev. E. SMEDLEY, reviewed the first two volumes in

the British Critic for January, 1830. In the course of his article, the reviewer speaks of the author thus: "He partakes in no degree of that puling liberalism which, through want of ability to apply any accurate scale of measurement to the comparative height of objects before us, adopts the short and easy method of reducing them all to the same flat, dull, and undistinguishing level." Again, on the appearance of the third volume, in 1833, the British Critic had a second article from the same pen, wherein the writer speaks as follows: "In fidelity of narrative, in accuracy of judgment, and in soundness of principle, this posthumous volume deservedly claims full brotherhood with its elders. Sober facts and sedate argument are the guides which Mr. CARWITHEN has chosen; and under their pilotage he has framed a work forming a most honourable monument to his own memory as a well-read historian, a sound divine, and a charitable Christian."

After all this, it may seem superfluous, if not impertinent, to add any commendation of our own. Yet we cannot well forbear to say, that we have found the book altogether delightful and very instructive in the reading. Authentic in matter, sound in doctrine, calm and moderate in statement, comprehensive in view, judicious in arrangement, easy, graceful, mellow, and varied in style, it presents, to our mind, such a combination of attractions as is not often to be found in that species of composition. Firmly self-possessed and self-moving, yet at the same time duly inspired with his subject, the author, though without making any boast of it, steers commendably clear of all those extremes which in our day have been aggravated into such screaming and howling conflict. The author evidently knew how to be just and true to the cause of the Church, without being false or unjust to any other good cause: his book, therefore, is free alike from Puritanical and from Papistical teaching; from Erastianism and from rebellion; he never pushes the claim of the Church or the Priesthood to the strangling of that civil liberty wherein Order presides; but writes in the spirit of a sober and considerate loyalty to all the powers ordained by GoD for the good of man. In fine, the work everywhere bears marks of a mild, gentle, benignant temper, and at the same time of having been written with a firm, fearless, upright, and straightforward hand. Of course a Church history has no right to blazon itself much with the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war:" therefore, to be true to itself, it must needs forego those vulgar attractions that lie within the scope of secular history. Nevertheless, to men of calm thought and placid feeling, the work in hand is replete with a quiet beauty that will outcharm all the storm and tumult of military preparations and catastrophes.

By way of specimen, we must content ourselves with producing a part of the noble description of that great sweet man, RICHARD HOOKER:

If HOOKER had not lived, it would have been incumbent on an historian of the English Church to have set forward the arguments of the other adversaries of Puritanism in full display and dilatation; but the energy of WHITGIFT, the eloquence of BANCROFT, and the mildness of SARAVIA, are combined in that immortal work, THE ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY. That this work is still considered as the standard to which the Church of England may confidently appeal, as exhibiting the true settled, and catholic principles of the English Reformation, is an