hurst, St. Leonard's, Wensleydale, Pollock, Pennefather, Jackson, Torrens, Lefroy. The great event of this year hitherto-one as remote as possible from political strife, uniting, indeed, in one enthusiasm all sects and parties except a fraction of those semi-savages who still infest parts of Ireland—is the marriage of our Prince; the arrival and reception of that model of all beauty and all grace, Alexandra of Denmark and of Wales. Truly the contrast is glaring with the last marriage of a Prince of Wales-married at the time already to a second lady, and openly cohabiting with a third: and so drunk at the wedding that he could hardly stand. Yet another and an awful contrast shall be noticed, which was seen by some of those present in St. George's Chapel, and by them will never be forgotten. Amidst the blaze and the triumph and the pageantry of historic glories, the happiness of the present and the hopes of the future, in a corner of a private chamber, and no sharer in the public ceremonial, stood the Queen with the heavy lines of unabated sorrow on her countenance, and in the deepest widow's mourning, strangely relieved, or rather made more remarkable, by the single broad ribbon and brilliant star of the Order of the Garter. John Bull, as might have been expected, in the ceremonial, in the procession, in the illuminations, bungled what was official, and did the rest with the grace and elegance of a cow cantering. But the thorough goodwill of the people enormously overbalanced it all. In that huge, ugly, unpicturesque mob there was but one voice, one spirit, one heart. I will now only touch, not dwell, on two matters more, both rather sadly differing from the serenity of politics commonly so called. The Lancashire distress shows hardly a ray of hope for a long time yet ahead. There is indeed no fear of starvation but there is no hope of adequate work; and there is the worse danger of the demoralisation of a brave and proud population, through long-continued enforced idleness and dependence. It is hard to realise the mental condition of a labouring man in the vigour of life, who had never dreamed of any means of support but his own honest work, with nothing to do all the long day for month after month. The great resource of emigration on an adequate or on any scale, in which you will take special interest, is hitherto steadily discouraged by the short-sighted selfishness of the employers, in the vain idea of a return of prosperity, and fear of loss of hands. It is lamentable to add that the needless aggravation of an exasperating harshness in the manner of giving relief has lately been brought to view; and the last news is riots at Staleybridge arising from this cause. That atrocious crime, the American civil war, will have to answer for few more deplorable calamities than this paralysis of the English cotton trade. I Church matters, also, are far from comfortable. do not mean that the Church Establishment is in any serious danger. As Mr. Bright's speeches have been the most effectual friends to Conservatism that it has ever had, so the doings of the "Liberation Society" have more strengthened the cause of that Establishment than anything done by its professed supporters. But the Church suffers from two causes, not uncon nected with each other: a diminution in the number of candidates for the Ministry, and internal dissension. The latter point is prominent just now, from the unusual fact that the most recent attack on part of the Church position has been conducted by one of her own Bishops. Bishops, and particularly Colonial Bishops, enjoy a position of such peculiar immunity from any legal process, that it is very difficult to deal with such a case. But in itself, though it happens to be unusual in our Church, I need not say that it is a mere accident. In the American Church, one Bishop joined the Church of Rome, another joined the Southern army; and the annals of the Papacy are full of Bishops censured and chastised for heterodoxy. In the general state of things, there is no cause whatever for surprise. Times of great intellectual activity always have been and always must be attended with danger, of one sort or another, to Christian doctrine. Whatever may come of it, one main element of disturbance in the Church-the desire for a large comprehension, for simplification of formularies on the basis of some assumed scheme, of Fundamentals or the like -can lead to nothing. No Church, certainly not one resting on the Bible, can ever be constructed to hold together long, on this supposed basis of simplicity. For the Bible, and the Christianity of the Bible, is not a simple thing, and cannot be, for the obvious reason that the subject with which it undertakes to deal, and to deal fully, is human nature surely no simple thing, but complex, manysided, mysterious, obscure. Meanwhile railways are burrowing under the soil of London, and the telegraph wires passing along the roofs of its houses almost every town has its Station, almost every village its Post Office: letters, the Book Post, above all, newspapers, are in constant and rapid progress. Many run to and fro, and knowledge is increased." Years ago, when this great material outburst was just beginning its career, a gloomy Tory writer in some magazine said, "So Nero danced and fiddled while Rome. was burning." As long as good and evil shall co-exist in this world, and as long as men have different temperaments, some dwelling most on the former, some on the latter, so long will this kind of feeling and its opposite co-exist. What is a kaleidoscope to one man is a kakeidoscope to another. Ever will the dull, the apathetic, the satiated, look round them and say, "There is no new thing under the sun :" ever will the sensitive religionist say, "To her funeral pile this aged world is borne," and anticipate the near approach of the last days, nay, will announce that they are already arrived ever will the cheery and the sanguine hold the exact opposite, and believe that the world is in its youth, and just about to enter for the first time on its real destiny. : So, I say, it will ever be, "until the day break, and the shadows flee away." Meanwhile let us at least hold fast our trust, that all around us tends or may be turned to good ;-" else," as I once heard it said, "else a man might as well spend his life sitting under a gallows, with a halter round his neck, reading a jest-book." |