conscious of some hesitation, more or less strong, in using some portions, often very trivial portions, of the many enacted services which they are now obliged to use without alteration or omission. A remarkable instance of this has just been made known. The most cautious of English prelates, the Bishop of St. David's, wrote to one of the ablest of English newspapers, the Spectator, to say that though he did not share in the hesitation and disinclination to use certain passages in the Burial Service, he nevertheless did feel a dislike to a passage which is much less known, which has been little controverted, to which no one, so far as we know, ever objected before. The Bishop observes: "I am, perhaps, unfortunately singular in my view of the subject; but, while I am more than satisfied with those portions of the service to which alone any exception appears to have been taken, and heartily agree with you in your excellent and timely remarks on its general merits, I must own that it contains some expressions which grate upon my ear, probably not less than others are offended by those which gave rise to Lord Ebury's motion. I may be over-fastidious, but I cannot help questioning the propriety of language which sounds as if we desired that the Allwise should bend his decrees as to times and seasons,' which 'he has put in his own power,' to the impatience of our wishes."

Many clergymen, too, who have no substantial disagreement from the most important part of the accepted Church doctrine, at the same time cannot satisfy their minds as to many casual allusions to incidental narratives in Scripture scattered through the Prayer-book, which seem to them to imply an assertion that certain narratives which they believe to be mythical are historical,- that certain facts did happen which they believe did not happen. If a good opportunity were given for the explanation of such minute objections, a very great number of them now unknown would soon be intelligibly and distinctly suppressed.

For the ascertainment of such objections a commission might issue from the Crown, which should report to what parts of the services they were applicable, and whether each objection seemed to be felt by few clergymen or by many. Such commission should report also to which parts of the service no objection was made, and to which parts, in their opinion, no objection ought to be made.

If all the clergy were obliged to use substantially the same religious services, though each clergyman might be allowed to omit some little; if there were certain passages which no one could omit; if no one could omit more than a prescribed maximum, -the essential quæsitum of a proprietary Church-a creed and worship in which the greatest number of persons could heartily believe, and would voluntarily join-would be attained. The

present services in the main correspond now with the general feeling of the country; and, if each clergyman were allowed a small license of omission, would cease to cause, what they now cause, a suppressed dissatisfaction in many clerical consciences, and a wavering unreality in yet more clerical intellects. Each clergyman would of course always read the same service, and would be required on stated occasions to give due notice to his ecclesiastical superiors what portions of the Liturgy he in future intended to omit; and, as we have before observed, certain vital portions should be fixed which he could not omit. The limits of this optional emancipation should be investigated by a commission, and it would be for Parliament to confirm what such commission reported. As it would be the simple concession of a regulated license, it need entail no long theological debate, and need excite no religious strife or angry contention.

If it were wished, the same license of omission and exception might be extended to the Thirty-nine Articles. The clergy might be required to sign the Articles, subject to certain omissions, which they should select and specify. The abolition of subscription would then be unnecessary, because its object would have been attained; and the indirect manner of attaining that end is scarcely an objection according to English habits of thought and practice, for in England we rarely reform any thing or create any thing in the most obvious and simple manner. The critical point is, that the clergy should be freed from the necessity of believing every word of the Articles and every word of the Liturgy; whether all subscription to either be abolished is, in comparison, immaterial. If the clergy subscribe, subject to certain omissions and exceptions to be selected by themselves, subscription ceases to be formidable. Either way, the necessary freedom is inevitably secured

To some these reforms may appear unpractical. They could not be carried at this moment, and they would be opposed by much intellectual prejudice and much unintellectual conservatism. But year by year the controversies of our time will augment till they render some such changes necessary. To others, such alterations may appear trivial, because they would not open the Church to every extreme heresy, or any very new form of belief. But it should be remembered that they are wholly based on the present creed of England. If that creed should change, further alteration in the Church would be necessary. But while that creed is what it is, these changes would, we believe, be sufficient and satisfactory. At any rate, in the expectation of many similar discussions for years to come, we offer them as contributions to the " Church of the future."

CURRENT LITERATURE.

I. History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Disgrace of Chief-Justice Coke, 1603-1616. By Samuel Rawson Gardiner, late Student of Christ Church. 2 vols. Hurst and Blackett.

THIS is the most important historical work of the quarter. "It is only," says Mr. Gardiner in his preface, "after investigating the circumstances under which certain dominant ideas have arisen, that it becomes possible to enter into the feelings of those who entertained them, and even approximately to draw the line which separates a blunder from a crime. It is for this reason that the first fourteen years of James I. are especially worthy of study. At the end of 1616 the Constitution, at least in the minds of the supporters of the Crown, had assumed that form which was always defended by them, in the course of the ensuing conflict, as the true Constitution of the country. The prerogative had established its claim to be considered as the regulating part of the machinery. The sittings of parliament had been suspended without any immediate prospect of their renewal. The judges had been taught, by a practical example, that they held their offices only at the good pleasure of the sovereign. In short, these thirteen years and a half were years of constitutional change, no less real because it was carried on within the letter of the Constitution. It was in them that the weapons were forged which were to be used by James and his son, with such unfortunate results for themselves."

It will be seen by these words that Mr. Gardiner considers the period he has chosen for his historical studies as the momentous era in which all those arbitrary principles were framed and developed, against which the popular and constitutional party in England were constrained to protest, and eventually have recourse to arms. This is his answer to the assertion of Hume, that in the maintenance of their prerogative the Stuarts never exceeded the Tudors; though the spirit of the nation had changed, yet, judged by the letter of the Constitution, the measures of James I., or at least of Charles I., were no more illegal than those of Henry VIII. or Elizabeth. For those supposed aggressions on the liberties of the subject which led to a civil war, and developed the energies and opposition of Hampden, Pym, Selden, and Elliot, abundant precedent could be found. The difference of the two eras consisted only in this: under Elizabeth all parts of the Constitution equally and progressively developed themselves, and so one part counterbalanced the other; under the Stuarts the royal prerogative had assumed dimensions incompatible with those rights and liberties which had descended to the people undiminished, yet unprogressive, from the last reign. The political monster-births of the seventeenth century were not, according to Mr. Gardiner, a fungus or an excrescence caused by some adventitious matter not natural to the body politic, but an undue development of one organ, which in its overgrowth threatened destruction to the rest, and ultimately to itself. The kingcraft of James, the cunning of Salis

bury, the brilliant genius and profound philosophical abilities of Bacon, all lent their aid to this disastrous object; and like the Cyclops, though of unequal size, they all equally helped to forge those chains by which the liberties of the people should be kept within due bounds, whilst the royal prerogative ranged and roamed at large.

Undoubtedly this theory of Mr. Gardiner's, worked out by great research, by a most honest and conscientious inquiry into the statepapers and correspondence of this reign, will prove very attractive. Unjustifiable as might be the motives and purposes of James and his courtiers, they are redeemed from that insignificance and even meanness thrown over them by popular historians. It sorts better with our notions of the genius of Bacon, and even the talents and experience of Salisbury, to be told that they were not merely led by the caprices of the moment, or ministering to the idle tastes and pedantic follies of a shambling and irresolute king. There is something in Mr. Gardiner's view to justify the oft-repeated compliment of Bacon, hitherto regarded as gross flattery, when he compares James I. to Henry VII., and indorses the epithet of the Second Solomon. It may not be a grandeur without alloy, but it is a grandeur strangely at variance with the popular conceptions of this reign, to learn that the thoughts and measures of James I., not unlike those of Henry VII., were steadily turned to the purpose of fortifying the monarchy against popular aggressions, and developing the prerogative within the letter, and therefore within the limits, of the Constitution.

But though we might be tempted to admit such consistency of purpose in the politic mind of Bacon, and of some others, the greatest difficulty against this admission will be found in the character of James himself. Popular belief guided by popular instincts, and still more confirmed in these impressions by the great novelist, will hardly be induced to attribute so profound and consistent a design to James I.; it will hardly confound him with his grandson James II. Undoubtedly he was desirous that the House of Commons should be kept in good order; that it should listen, like "beardless boys," to his speeches, and be profoundly impressed by his wisdom and his eloquence. He hated to be bothered; he disliked business. He had come from Scotland with no pleasant reminiscences of Buchanan, Knox, Presbyterianism, and the Gowries. England was the promised land. He had expected to sit down in quietness and enjoy himself at the banquet which the frugality and stern administration of Elizabeth had prepared for him. His notions of the English Constitution, in church and state, were measured by these feelings. He had seen under Elizabeth a submissive parliament and very obedient bishops,-a striking contrast to his rougher experience of Scotland,—and he anticipated the same. He thought he had found the secret of her plenty, peace, and prosperity; and he formalised the thought, to which all his former suffering at home seemed to bear evidence, by his favourite maxim, "No bishop, no king." Long before his arrival, every statesman of any account had paid him the utmost deference; all parties had sought his favour,Church of England, Puritan, Catholic; Essex and Cecil, Northampton

and Raleigh. On his arrival, Bacon was just ready to welcome him with his Advancement of Learning. "Beholding you not with the inquisitive eye of presumption, to discover that which the eye telleth me is inscrutable, but with the observant eye of duty and admiration, leaving aside the other parts of your virtue and fortune, I have been touched, yea and possessed, with an extreme wonder at those your virtues and faculties which the philosophers call intellectual." With such language, such submissiveness, reflected in every part of England, we can see no reason, even if the character of James encouraged such an hypothesis, for supposing that James had so deep a design as is attributed to him by Mr. Gardiner. It seems to us a much more probable supposition, that he had miscalculated the temper of the people of England; he had expected to find them compliant and submissive. Their long and patient reluctance to oppose his measures he construed into a general admiration of his wisdom and of the moderation of his rule. This is evident from his public behaviour on all occasions. He talked to the House of Commons like a parcel of schoolboys; and to the Puritan divines at the Hampton-Court Conference as if, in his own words, they were truants and deserved the rod. "We have kept such a revel with the Puritans here this two days," he tells one of his correspondents, "as was never heard the like; quhaire I have peppered thaime as soundlie as ye have done the Papists thaire." Such self-complacency is incompatible with a deep-laid design of systematically subverting the constitutional liberties of his subjects,―if, indeed, such a phrase could convey any distinct meaning to Englishmen in the first half of the seventeenth century,-and of developing the prerogative in the way Mr. Gardiner apprehends. That is attributing a degree of caution, consistency, and prudence to James utterly foreign to his habits. Mr. Gardiner has produced instances of arbitrary and unjustifiable acts, on the part of the king and his advisers, which seem to fortify his hypothesis. He can appeal to the opinions of those who have carefully studied the constitutional history of the reign, and, better still, to the evidence afforded by the state correspondence of the time in support of his theory. But such evidence is not sufficient; it can be explained on better grounds than the assumption of a purpose foreign to the temper and inconsistent with the general character of James. That in succeeding to the throne of Elizabeth he should have imagined he more than inherited her authority and her claims on the obedience of her subjects; that he should have visited with severe and arbitrary penalties instances of disobedience to his wishes; that with his own special ignorance, and in the general uncertainty of constitutional rights, he should have overstepped the limits of the prerogative, was natural enough; any opposition seemed to him to exaggerate itself into the crime of disaffection. We admit that the royal prerogative was brought more frequently into play as part of the state machinery under the Stuarts than under the Tudors, but not in the way which Mr. Gardiner apprehends. The Tudors wielded that strongly, and without conscious effort, which James exercised feebly and inconsis tently. They persuaded the people that the royal supremacy was iden