love the Church, because they have in its clergy warm sympathisers and good friends; but they can seldom be induced to enter the church door; the smaller shopkeepers are always found to be regular attendants at the neighbouring chapel; but, (unless on the occasion of a baptism or marriage,) they are never seen at the parish church. The services of the Church of England are, as at present conducted in too many places, too intellectual for the great mass of the people, and not sufficiently objective to make them attractive to the ignorant. An attempt to approach nearer to the Roman Catholics in the manner of celebrating High Mass would be of immense service to our Church; and if we could introduce such a little office as is often seen at the Brompton Oratory and other places, where the people seem to have everything their own way, except that a young Priest gives out the hymns, and recites a few Aves and Pater Nosters, the whole being followed by a good extempore sermon, and the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, we should have little cause to complain of the inroads of the Methodists. But whatever music is sung, it ought to be the best of its kind-if Gregorian, then not Parisian; if modern, not operatic. It will often be found advisable to revert at a High Mass to the custom of having a good choir in the organloft to sing the Gloria and Sanctus. Many Anglicans will doubtless object to such a suggestion; but it is the custom of Europe, and ought not to be despised. In attempting to reform our English Church, many absurdities have been perpetrated of late years. Thus, when it was discovered that stoles were articles of priestly attire, we were straightway deluged with them on every possible occasion,-so that we have seen two or three hundred clerics marching with pendant stoles to a church where there was only one altar, and no celebration to take place at the time! Even cathedral tradition, had it been respected, would have saved us many such exhibitions. Then, again, the Morning Hymn, which was used as a remnant of the processional, was frowned down because it was utterly opposed to the rationale of the Church service, which began with confession, not praise. Hymns, as opposed to Tate and Brady, for a long time met with deadly opposition, because they were not in the Prayer Book; but the metrical version of the Ten Commandments was quite allowable, because it had the good fortune to have received the sanction of the printer. Even when men did get beyond this piece of petty conventionality, they would hear of nothing but the ancient hymns, set to tunes which at the time none could understand, and very few sing. The consequence was, that though the Church was well rid of its former abominations, and was on the fair road to improvement, yet the service of an out-and-out High Church Parson was as uninteresting and dead as it could well be; and no wonder that the worthy churchwarden who delighted in the rolling bass of Shirland, and used to help the clerk out in his spelling, bristled up at having to intone all day long on G, or at being allowed, by way of variety, to try his hand at "Hostis Herodes impie." Gallery singers, no doubt, represent the clerks of the rood screen, (at Norwich the choristers still ascend to the rood on Sundays,) just as the parish clerk, who in the course of time has grown from boyhood to wheezing old age, reminds us of the office of a Server; but Anglicans, like true reformers, would hear of nothing that could plead tradition. Antiquity alone received favour at their hands; and as they had read that monks and clerics used formerly to chant in the choirs, they at once dragged their little charity-boys to the front, and launched out into full cathedral services. The change, luckily, was of great benefit, for it introduced congregational singing in the Divine offices. All we now plead is, that where congregational singing is thought inexpedient, the choir may be allowed to resume its old place in parish churches-the western gallery -the clerks of the chancel being reserved for the due performance of ritualistic functions, and as effective aids to the people in singing the Hymnal and Psalter of the minor offices. We conclude by hoping that musical excellence will always be cultivated in England, and that music may be so applied to our services, that it will deepen the people's devotion for the Eucharist, and will induce them to take greater delight in the more homely offices of religion. [Though the writer of this Paper sometimes travels over similar ground to that occupied by an able author in our last volume, and not unfrequently crosses his lines, we gladly give it a place, considering the value of some of its suggestions, and the notable fact that musical people and musical critics, like doctors, frequently differ both in stating principles and in remedying defects.-ED. U. R.] ART. III.-CARDINAL XIMENES. IN TWO PARTS. PART I. On the 27th of April, 1857, the city of Alcalá de Henares, was gladdened by a remarkable ceremony. Nearly all the ministers of state, dukes, marquises, rectors of colleges and universities, military officers, clergy of every degree, and a vast concourse of the faithful, came to deposit the remains of Cardinal Ximenes in a crypt of the Iglesia Magistral, just 340 years after his decease. The standard carried before him at the siege of Oran floated on the air, and in the choir his breviary, pastoral-staff, and the keys of Oran were exposed to the view of the crowds assembled in the nave of the beautiful Gothic Church.* Few, if any, names are dearer to the Spaniards, than that of Ximenes de Cisneros. They talk indeed with pride and delight of Isabella in the camp, of Ferdinand's conquest of Granada, of the exploits of the Marquis of Cadiz, of Gonsalvo de Cordova, Columbus, Cervantes, St. Theresa, Calderon, Isla, and Feyjoo, but Ximenes alone among their countrymen was distinguished highly in various branches, and can be pointed to as a mortified prelate, a general, a statesman, and a man of letters. The impress of his genius on society was thus multiplied fourfold, and if the Church was loud in praise of his goodness, the world was no less so in extolling his greatRegard him which way you will, in the cloister, the camp, the cabinet, or the study, you will find him equally possessed of mental power and unbending resolution, equally fruitful in expedients, and bold in enterprise. Lord Chatham owned to Fox, that of all characters in history, Ximenes was his favourite.t ness. It was his lot from the first to battle with difficulties and endure hardness as a good soldier of the cross. Born in 1436, of a family decayed though ancient, he was compelled to give private lessons on civil and canonical law in order to complete his studies at the University of Salamanca. There he first showed that preference for biblical research, which afterwards made him so famous, and there by the advice of his father he resolved to seek his fortune in the living heart of Christendom. The very thought of Rome and the tombs of the Apostles filled him with enthusiasm, and though twice on his journey he fell among thieves, who plundered him and stripped him of his Don Roman Goicoerrotea. Madrid, 1857. + Horace Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George II., vol. iii. p. 19. clothes, he pursued his way till he reached his destination. Six years were spent in study and pleading in ecclesiastical courts under the shadow of the Papal throne. It was an atmosphere as congenial to Ximenes as to most persons it would be distasteful; and when he was recalled to Spain by the death of his father, and he set his face towards Toledo, with a view of becoming the support of his poor relations, the Pope gave him an expectative letter, in virtue of which he was to occupy the first vacant benefice of a certain value in that diocese.* The Third Council of Lateran, and several Popes, had forbidden such promises, yet still they were made. The Archpriest of Uzeda died, and Ximenes claimed his living. "No," said the Archbishop, "I deny your right, and will resist your claim." Accordingly, Padre Ximenes was lodged as a prisoner in one of the strongest towers in his own parish, where the mailed and martial Archbishop Carillo tried in vain to break his inflexible will. In this confinement, a friend reminded him of another prisoner there, who had formerly been freed and raised to the archbishopric. Such he predicted would be the lot of Ximenes, and so it proved. He held it a point of conscience to cleave to the appointment to the benefice, since it involved what he conceived to be the rights of the holy see. From Uzeda he was removed to the fortress of Santorcaz, and after six years of imprisonment the Archbishop yielded to the requests of his niece, and restored the resolute captive to freedom and his benefice. It was soon exchanged for a chaplaincy in a pleasanter diocese, and at Sigüenza, Ximenes, now in his forty-fourth year, devoted himself assiduously to the study of Hebrew and Chaldee. His delight was in the law of the Lord and in that law he meditated day and night. He would willingly, he used to say, exchange all his legal knowledge for the explanation of a single passage of Scripture. His sense of its inspiration was like Dante's, who speaks of reading in God for reading in the Bible.† Never was a mind cast more completely in the monastic mould than that of Ximenes. Made Grand-Vicar of the diocese of Sigüenza and agent of the estates of Count Silva de Cifuentes, whom the Moors had captured, he sighed for total release from worldly business, entered a convent of the Franciscan order at Toledo, and thence removed, at his own earnest request, to a lonely and distant monastery in the midst of a forest of chesnuts. There the hermit of Castanar, as we may fairly call him, made a grotto like an ancient anchorite, drank Barrett's Life. He follows chiefly Fléchier and Marsollier, who relied principally on a Latin translation of Gomez. + Purgatorio, iii. 126, Avesse in Dio ben letta questa faccia. water from the spring, and filled his scrip with fruits and herbs. There, clothed in a hair-shirt, he allowed himself no other indulgence but the glories of nature in her solitude, the manna of holy Scripture, and the interchange of psalm and prayer. There he chastised his body with the discipline, and enjoyed so keenly the communications of divine grace, that in after life, when he had reached the pinnacle of his grandeur, he used to look back with envy and regret on the days he had passed in the peaceful and angel-haunted chesnut shades of Castañar. But it was not long before he was transferred to Salzeda, and was there chosen by the religious to be their guardian. His late diocesan, however, bore him in mind, and lamented that parts so extraordinary as his should be buried in a convent. He recommended him to the Queen as her confessor, sent him a message to repair to Valladolid, where Isabella held her court, conducted him as if by chance into the royal apartment, and presented him in all his hermitlike simplicity to Ferdinand's most devout and beautiful consort.* But Ximenes was not abashed at the presence of royalty. His native dignity, candour, and unfeigned piety, made so strong an impression on Queen Isabella, that two days after she informed him of her wish that he should be her confessor. He modestly declined a post so much at variance with his mode of life, and, like a true monk, was obedient to the precept Coram magnatis non libenter appareas. But the Queen's commands might not be resisted, and Ximenes was duly installed as her adviser, and the more he sought to avoid interference in political matters, the more constantly did Isabella seek his counsel. Circumstances soon led to his appearing in the character of a reformer. Elected Provincial of the Franciscan Order for Old and New Castile, he travelled through his vast province on foot, begging his way, never mounting the mule his brother Franciscan led unless indisposed, and often subsisting on a few roots. The Order had fallen from its pristine zeal, and was divided into Conventuals who relaxed their rule, lived in stately edifices and indulged in prodigal expenses, and Observantines who strove to adhere to the letter and spirit of the precepts of their founder. To these last, Ximenes belonged, and, backed by royal authority, he obliged the monks who, like Jeshurun, "waxed fat and kicked," to amend their ways or vacate the sanctuaries they profaned. A bull for the same *Prescott's Ferdinand and Isabella, ii. 252, 254. Von Hefele's Life, translated by Dalton, p. 31. |