dent in the Antiquary.' We should be glad that the characters were not so exclusively high-born and high-bred: and speaking generally, at least from our own experience of school-boys and school-girls, the intellectual powers, as well as the acquirements, of her young people are in advance of their years.

It is satisfactory to find so many of our Bishops issuing with authority, Prayers for private use, with especial reference to the War. Foremost both as regards completeness, and what used to be called unction, stands a collection, quite a manual, under the Bishop of Oxford's imprimatur, 'Prayers to be used during our present Troubles.' (J. H. Parker.) The Collect for our allies' might with advantage have specially distinguished the Turks, and then of course it would have referred to their conversion.

Professor Ansted has printed, and Mr. Van Voorst has published, under the title of Scenery, Science, and Artist,' some notes of various mining districts in the south of France, Spain, Algeria, Sardinia, and North America. The writer has qualifications beyond the technical requisites of his profession; he is a very good describer of natural scenery, and in the Sardinian notes he travels over a country as little known to the run of travellers as the African Desert.

The provincial dialects of England are much misunderstood if they are only considered an illiterate and barbarous patois. In fact, they contain and preserve the elements and rudiments of our compound tongue. In Miss Baker's admirable Northamptonshire Glossary,' (J. Russell Smith,) we have rather a repertory of archaisms than vulgarisms. But it is much more than a vocabulary; it preserves not only dialectical peculiarities, but old and disappearing customs, and there is hardly a page in it which does not illustrate some detail of 'Folk Lore,' or which does not throw light on some obscurity in our old writers, or recal old habits and practices. We extract a curious article:

'FIG SUNDAY.-Palm Sunday. It is the universal custom, with both ' rich and poor in Northamptonshire, to eat figs on this day. On the Saturday preceding, the market at Northampton is abundantly supplied with figs, and there are more purchased at this time than throughout the rest of the year; even the charity children are in some places regaled with them. 'The observance of this custom is very local . . . may it not have some ' reference to our Lord's declining to eat figs the day after His triumphant ' entry into Jerusalem ?-Vol. i. p. 232. The fault of this work is that it gives much more than it promises; like Pegge's well-known book it treats of colloquialisms, and the ordinary proverbial expressions, which are in no sense local. For instance, 'pot-luck' is not a localism, and occasionally we should demur to the interpretation. The cant phrase to cut your stick,' Miss Baker connects with the Exchequer tallies; surely it is nothing more than a metaphorical expression of going on a journey, and preparing a staff for it. Miss Baker is the sister of the late historian of the county, and distinguished herself long before ecclesiology' became popular, by a very practical restoration of the sculptures of S. Peter's, Northampton, executed by her own hands.

·

Sympathising to the full with the practical pamphlet by A Layman,'

on 'The Late Payment of Weekly Wages,' (Rivingtons,) we can only say that our inquiries tend to the unsatisfactory conviction, that if wages are paid on Friday, the Saturday is lost; if on Monday, the week is broken. The present writer's opposite experience is drawn chiefly from the more respectable class of artisans employed in a printing-office.

Certainly Mr. Murray's little red feuilletons of Railway Reading are adapted to all tastes; the two last instalments are about as opposite as can be conceived: The Rejected Addresses,' illustrated by a perfect apparatus of illustrative notes, gay, lively, and sparkling and Mr. Henry Taylor's well-known Six Essays,' grave, thoughtful, and austere. In the last collection we have read with increased delight that most able paper on' Choice in Marriage :' it is the very best extant 'advice to those about to marry.'

The Bishop of Oxford's Charge,' (J. W. Parker,) is probably in the hands of most of our readers. Eulogy on our part would be unbecoming, but we desire to enrich our pages with an extract which immediate circumstances invest with great importance :

'The teaching of the Church of England, then, as to this great mystery, in strict agreement with the Holy Scriptures and primitive antiquity, is, I apprehend, simply this. First, that there is a peculiar and supernatural 'presence of Christ with His people in that Holy Sacrament. That in it 'He does in and by the due reception of the consecrated elements convey to the faithful believer a real partaking of His body and of His blood, whereby the souls of His faithful people are nourished and refreshed. 'But, secondly, that He has not revealed to us the mode or conditions of that presence; which, being Divine and supernatural, is not to be thought 'of, or made the subject of argument, as if it either were governed by the 'laws, or involved the consequences of a material presence. To the many 'questions, therefore, which may be raised touching the conditions, or 'mode of this presence, our Church gives no answer; but protests against their discussion as being curious and dangerous; as being likely to lead, and as having led those who entertained them, into many errors; and as, therefore, to be discouraged as attempts to be wise above what is written. 'As to one of these, indeed, because it specially threatened the faith of her own children, she has pronounced a distinct and emphatic censure; condemning the Papal solution of the mystery in terms which apply to it ' alike in its grosser form of an undisguised belief in the transformation of the bread and wine into flesh and blood, and in that subtle refinement of the fancy, whereby-whilst the theory of a material change is still pre'served-its grossness is veiled, for more educated intellects, by the declaration, that the substances of the bread and wine, in their highest • essential being, are removed, and for them miraculously substituted the ' essential substance of our Lord's body, whilst the accidents of that 'altered substance, such as taste, colour, shape, and the like, remain, 'through God's power, unchanged, so as to delude the senses. doctrine of Transubstantiation,-the fruitful source, or apt ally, in the 'Papal communion of so many and such dangerous superstitions,—our Church condemns in no faltering accents, as being unknown to primitive times, incapable of proof by the Holy Writ, but repugnant to the plain

This

'words of Scripture, as overthrowing the nature of a sacrament, and 'having given occasion to many superstitions. But this direct condemna'tion of the teachers of error is not her common course. Rather, for the 'most part, has she guarded the faith by a simple denial of the erroneous 'doctrine, or even by asserting, with authority, the distinct truth, which 'those who have maintained the error she condemns, have endeavoured to disfigure, or deny. Thus in declaring, that “to such as rightly, worthily, ' and with faith, partake of that sacrament, the bread which we break, is a partaking of the body of Christ; and likewise the cup of blessing, is a partaking of the blood of Christ." And again, "that the body and blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper ;" and again, that "the wicked do not therein partake ' of Christ;" and once more," that the body of Christ is given, taken, and ' eaten in the Supper, only after a heavenly and spiritual manner;" she 'asserts those truths which are darkened by the confusing and erroneous 'doctrine of Consubstantiation, and denied by the cold naturalism of the Zuinglian theory, which resolves the reality of Christ's presence into the ' quickened apprehension of the devout worshipper; but whilst she has 'thus authoritatively reasserted the truths which were in peril, she has 'not stepped aside to censure by name either the one error or the other. 'This, then, being so, we may, I think, without difficulty, gather what 'should be our teaching as to this great mystery.

'We should first, and above all, in opposition to the unbelief which is so 'natural to the heart of man, insist upon the reality and truth of that super'natural presence which our Lord is graciously pleased to vouchsafe in that Sacrament to the worthy receiver. Next, we should discourage, to the ' utmost of our power, all speculations as to the mode of that presence, the 'reality of which we inculcate. Further, whilst we should distinctly con'demn every specific form of erroneous teaching, concerning the mode of 'that presence, which our Church has actually censured, we should watch ' against that dogmatical spirit which would lead us to anathematize all with whose statements ours do not exactly harmonize; remembering the 'moderation and wisdom which has led our Church to seek to maintain undefiled the purity of the Faith, by an unreserved and uncompromising 'reassertion of the truth which heresy assails, rather than by a direct condemnation of the holders of error; and being on our guard lest we be rashly led, on the mere strength of our individual judgment, to multiply 'censures which she has advisedly withheld. Lastly, we should labour to lead our people from curious questions as to that which is eminently a mystery, to be received simply by faith, and not argued out by the sub'tlety of reasoning, to an humble and unquestioning belief in the working of the Power of God, and to earnest longings for the great spiritual blessings, which, if they come aright, will be vouchsafed to them in thus par'taking of Christ. And if at any time we are forced to enter further upon this mystery, we should keep as closely as possible to the letter of Scripture, and to the inculcation of the doctrine as a revealed fact in its bearing upon practice; remembering, what is admitted even by Bellarmine, "that though it is a matter of faith to believe that Sacraments are instruments whereby God worketh grace in the souls of men, yet that the manner how

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He doth it, is not a matter of faith." Surely, to turn our own minds, or 'the minds of our people, to such inquiries, instead of seeking simply that nourishment of our souls which the Lord is then imparting to us, is as if they whose bodies He was graciously feeding in the wilderness with the broken bread and the distributed fishes, had turned aside from that pro'vision which He was making for their need, in order to ascertain whether, ' at the time of blessing, or in the breaking, or the giving, or the receiving, 'was vouchsafed the multiplication of the loaves and of the fishes; on which, instead, it was their wisdom and their duty thankfully to feed.

Thus, for example, instead of speculating upon what is received by the unfaithful in the Lord's Supper, or dogmatizing thereon as to what may seem to some to be infallible inferences with regard to a matter on which Holy Scripture is well nigh silent, and as to which, if the presence be, as we undoubtedly believe it is, indeed immaterial, we have no data for con. 'structing an argument, we should remember that, though our Lord's pro'mise is sure, and though, therefore, where the whole appointed rite is 'duly performed in all its parts, including equally the consecration of the 'elements, and their faithful reception, the presence of the body and blood of Christ are certain to the faithful receiver, yet that we have no right to 'stop after the prayer of consecration, or at any other intermediate point in that which by the Lord's appointment is one undivided whole, and to 'argue that at that time, that Divine Presence must have been granted, 'which is promised only to the act of duly giving and receiving, and not to any of its several parts. We shall, therefore, do well, as to this myste'rious matter, to confine ourselves to asserting with our Church, that the ungodly are, in partaking of the consecrated elements, "in nowise par'takers of Christ," and yet, that, in eating that bread and drinking of that 'cup unworthily, they partake not of common food, but, as our Church 'teaches again, "to their own condemnation do herein eat and drink the sign or sacrament of so great a thing," as the Body of the Lord, and do 'that, for the doing of which of old many of the Corinthian Christians were "weak and sickly, yea, and many slept."'

A cloud of little Classic Texts,' from Mr. J. H. Parker's accurate press, meets us. They are saited for school and college lectures; and are as portable and as neat as the Elzevirs. It must have been by a prolepsis of this series, that Parson Adams is said to have carried Æschylus in hiз pocket.

The valuable and varied collection, published under Mr. Wm. Jackson's editorship, Stories and Catechisings on the Collects,' has been followed by a cognate collection of 'Stories and Lessons on the Catechism.' (Mozley.) It is a problem how to connect dogmatic instruction with narrative: very generally the latter is an imposition if the former is faithful. To say that Mr. Jackson, or the authoress who writes under his sponsorship, has in all cases surmounted the difficulty, would be an exaggeration of praise: but it is met, and generally surmounted. The Stories, we have reason to know, work well: and this is the best or only test.

Mr. R. H. Graves, an Irish Clergyman, has published an analysis of Mede's well-known work on the Apocalypse, under the title of An Analysis

of the Revelations.' (Hodges & Smith.) The author was not called upon to miscall one of the Books of the Bible.

Archdeacon Denison, in the preface to a characteristic and warmhearted sermon, lately preached at Wells, on the 5th November, (Masters,) has set down the exact state of the case between Mr. Ditcher and himself. We extract it in the Archdeacon's own words :

The Commission has been issued, bearing date "Lambeth, November '30." It is to sit at Clevedon, January 3, 1855.

That there may be no room for dispute as to the fact of the present 'assault being directed against THE DOCTRINE OF THE LORD'S SUPPER, I 'subjoin the charge against me, in its eight Counts. I am charged with 'maintaining false Doctrine under all the eight counts.

'CHARGE.

1. That the Body and Blood of CHRIST, being Really Present, after an 'immaterial and spiritual manner, in the consecrated bread and wine, are therein and thereby given to all, and are received by all who come to the 'LORD'S Table.

2. That to all who come to the LORD's Table, to those who eat and 'drink worthily, and to those who eat and drink unworthily, the Body and 'Blood of CHRIST are given, and that by all who come to the LORD'S Table, by those who eat and drink worthily, and by those who eat and drink unworthily, the Body and Blood of CHRIST are received.

3. That the universal reception of the inward part or Thing signified, ' of the Sacrament, in and by the outward sign, is a part of the doctrine of 'the Real Presence itself.

4. That worship is due to the Real though invisible and supernatural Presence of the Body and Blood of CHRIST in the Holy Eucharist "under 'the form of bread and wine."

5. That the act of Consecration makes the Real Presence.

6. That the act of Consecration makes the Sacrament, through the operation of THE HOLY GHOST, to be CHRIST'S Body and Blood.

7. That in the LORD's Supper the outward parts or signs, and the inward parts or Things signified, are so joined together by the act of Con'secration, that to receive the one is to receive the other.

8. That all who receive the Sacrament of the LORD's Supper receive the Body and Blood of CHRIST.

All which said Positions or Doctrines I, the said Reverend Joseph 'Ditcher, do further expressly charge and complain to be directly contrary or repugnant to the Doctrine of the Church of England, and especially to the Articles of Religion as by Law established, or some or one of them. 'N.B.-With reference to the language of Counts 1 and 3, I have to 'observe, that being advised, after Sermon I. was published, that the use of the word "in," in this context might appear to some to savour of a belief in some material Presence, I carefully avoided the use of the word “in” in the 'same context in Sermons II. and III., and in my VIII. Propositions. It is used, indeed, in the Preface to Sermon II., but here only because I was 'quoting statements previously made, and answering objections taken to such statements.

I was ready to have given the above explanation, if, in answer to my