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The argument, no doubt, is plausible, and to a regularly educated Roman Catholic would, without doubt, appear conclusive for the claims of Rome as against England, even were he ever so much disposed to favour Anglican claims. But it deserves to be considered that if this were absolutely conclusive, it was just as conclusive at any given period since the Reformation as at the present moment. Whatever were the advantages derived from the Reformation in Henry the Eighth's reign or in that of Elizabeth, in the point of view from which the Church party regard matters there has always existed this evil. A Protestant party, who to our apprehension have not much standing-ground, have held their own in the Church, and, sheltered behind the Thirty-nine Articles, have been able to make out a case which, we freely admit, on the surface of the Articles, and omitting all consideration of the dogmatic teaching of the Prayer-Book, would be quite tenable in most of its points. That it has stood its ground so long is mainly owing to the ignorance and defective education of the clergy. The absurdities of the Evangelical system, which have been propped up by a traditional hypothesis which has hitherto placed a barrier against the incursions of reason and of common-sense, have already given way, and amid the fray and in the battle-field in which theology and rationalism are fighting a deadly fight for the possession of the vantage-ground of the English Church, their place is nowhere to be found. It has been said, and with some semblance of historical proof, that Anglicanism has stood its ground by opposing Rome. It is certain it will do so no longer. The party whose whole tactics consisted in holding up Roman doctrines which they entirely misunderstood and misrepresented, to the abhorrence of Englishmen, is nearly extinct. It will never again play any part in the history of the Church of England, except, indeed, in petty wranglings amongst its own members over portions of exploded controversy. But its actual existence will continue as long as the Thirty-nine Articles remain part of the English system, for the reason we have already given, viz. that a prima facie view of the Articles is in their favour.

Now, in replying to the Roman attack upon our position, it would be absurd for us to put in the plea that we had reached a final state of perfection, or something as nearly like perfection as can be obtained by a National Church. Whether or not this was the view of cathedral dignitaries of a bygone age, whose sermons seemed to us always to begin either with the words or the sentiment, 'It is the wisdom of the Church of England,' &c. we need not stop to inquire. Certain it is that this is not the standing-point on which the Church of Eugland can take up her position for all time to come. We have before said, and we

confess we think it is the only plea on which our position can be justified, that we are in a transition state. No one, we suppose, would contend now that the Church of England sprung suddenly in the days of the Tudors into a perfect state of development, as Pallas was fabled to have sprung from the head of Zeus. No doubt the view under which the publication of the volumes of the Parker Society was undertaken, was something of the kind, but the people who believed in the Reformers do not seem to have cared to spend much time over their works. We never yet saw a copy of this celebrated series, which is now bought at waste-paper price, but what might fairly have been described in an advertisement as in an uncut state. There is indeed at the present moment an attempt to raise the battle-cry for the principles of the Reformation, and the truths for which our forefathers in the Protestant faith were martyred. But it does not meet with much sympathy. Those who know anything of history know that neither the men nor the principles will bear very close inspection. For good or for evil, the retrograde motion from those principles must be admitted to be a fact by those who have read the accounts of the Hampton Court and the Savoy Conferences, under James I. and Charles II. We shall hear for the future, fierce denunciations from two opposite quarters, of the bigotry and intolerance of the Reformers of the sixteenth century; whilst on the side of the third party, who will attempt their defence, there will be the faint admission that after all they were but fallible men, who cannot be trusted for every point of doctrine, nor justified in every practice of morality which they advocated. We may safely affirm that their day is gone by. And when this has come to be admitted on all hands, as soon it will be, people will begin to see the absurdity of tying down the intellects of people who have succeeded them after an interval of ten generations, to their opinions or their statements. For many years past it has been proclaimed far and wide that people do not choose to be bound by their opinions, and in the inevitable march of events the time cannot be far distant when it will be seen that no defence of subscription to their statements can be maintained. The first critic who shall take upon himself the office of dissecting the Thirty-nine Articles, with the view of exposing their misstatement of facts, their irrelevancy to the present state of opinion in England, or their inefficiency in restraining Roman practice on the one side, or Calvinistic heresy on the other, will probably be found to have much of the argument to himself. Public opinion will follow slowly in his train. And the Church of England will gradually be influenced by the tide of opinion. She cannot remain stationary. People will judge of the movement differently, according to the position from

which they view it. It will seem to Dr. Manning that she is consistently moving onward in the direction of latitudinarianism and general scepticism. To us it seems that she never had so Catholic a tone or such Catholic tendencies as at the present

moment.

The present generation may perhaps see the actual or at least the virtual abandonment of the Thirty-nine Articles, by the common consent and united efforts of Churchmen and Latitudinarians, and the next will probably witness the last struggle between the two parties for the possession of the Established Church.

187

ART. VII.-History of France under the Bourbons. By C. D. YONGE. London: Tinsley, Brothers. 1866. Vols. I.—IV.

A MORE Complete and definite subject than that treated of in these portly volumes cannot be found in the whole domain of historical research. It presents a drama that appears constructed in obedience to the severest laws of antiquity. Eschylus might have found in it a trilogy ready shaped for arrangement; the sublime humanity of Sophocles, or the passion of Euripides, might have adapted it. We are not insensible to the fact that we justly expose ourselves to the censure of reviewing, as a whole, an unfinished work: for Professor Yonge is yet a debtor to the public to the amount of two volumes. This, however, is one of the points on which our author seems to us to have betrayed a want of judgment, and a failure of historical instinct. We are not in the least degree hinting that the 'France under the Bourbons' is too voluminous--that the projected six might have been concluded in four tomes. We neither hint nor think this; but we hold, that with the young Martyr of the Temple, the dynasty of the Bourbons, properly speaking, determined; that the Constitutionalists of the Restoration, who had been in the day of agony the betrayers, as far as in them lay, of the throne, through their own revolting selfishness, were but Bourbons by accident. They neither embodied the traditions nor represented the principles of France or of Henry IV.; and therefore they might have been well left unnoticed in a work treating, not of the French under the Restoration, but of France under the Bourbons.

Professor Yonge has not made in the present work his first literary venture: he has already given to the world 'The History of the British Navy,' which has been well received, and enjoys an honourable repute. He writes in a calm and unimpassioned style; and his page breathes more of Stanhope than of Macaulay. Our author thus creditably fulfils one of his professional duties, for he is Regius Professor of History in the Queen's College of Belfast. But he is also Regius Professor of English Literature, and we heartily wish we could say that his sentences were as easy and grammatical as his sentiments are philosophical and deliberate. A professor of English literature ought, by all 'the branches of learning,' to write good English. In saying this, we hope we are not adding to the wrongs of Ireland: anything that will justify some new form of Fenianism, or lead to some

6

fearful quotations from the Psalms. Sentences whose clauses are coupled together by and which,' are not positively ungrammatical, but they are next door to it. The following may be Queen's College English, but, be Canterbury's Dean the witness, it is not Queen's:

'He was known by sight to the deputations from the most distant provinces, for he had reviewed them in a body the day before, when several had been separately presented to him, towards whom for once he had discarded his habitual reserve, assuring them of his fatherly regard for his subjects, not only with condescension, but with cordiality.'— Vol. iv. p. 236.

Or again:

'By the side of Descartes, Mirabeau was now laid with a pomp which was not, in the eyes of his countrymen, more extraordinary in that the grief which had dictated it was for the time real, than because it was the first instance of honours being conferred on a man whose acts had been those of peace, which had previously been reserved for the heroes of the sword.'-Vol. iv. p. 264.

Perhaps something might be made out of these lines if tried diagonally. Or again:

'Louis, who had refused to let them die for him, having only given their death the additional sting that it had been no service to him.'— Vol. iv. p. 425.

Is this a sentence?

The only reduction of expenditure which the minister could devise being one which he made the Assembly demand of him, as such, the demolition of those fortresses which were not required for the defence of the frontier, the real inducement to this measure being the degree in which it would weaken the governors of the central provinces, and prevent them from hereafter becoming formidable to the crown.'—Vol. i. p. 273.

Sentences which consist of absolute clauses loosely strung together are the worst possible specimens of English composition, and the very last to be expected from a professorial desk. We have taken at random but a few out of very many like instances which we noted as we read on; but these are enough to justify the judgment we have formed. Nor would Professor Yonge misapply his time by giving some attention to the pruning of his sentences. He knows, no doubt, better than we do, that the law applies to prose as well as verse, which demands us to clear our sentences of the verba lassantia aures. Yet we prefer withal Mr. Yonge's negligence to the affected and ambitious style so common in our day.

There is one omission of our author's which we must point out, and at the same time endeavour to supply. A history of France under the House of Bourbon might have been fittingly introduced by a sketch of the history of that family. It was the oldest sovereign dynasty in the world, except one case. It

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