mination of that gigantic wickedness from which nothing but an universal deluge could cleanse this polluted world." Supposing, however, that the inactivity of the Church was not shared by other religious bodies, and that these perpetually accruing masses of new population were marshalled, as they arose, under the banners of the various sects which wage war against her, what can be more certain than that, before long, the Establishment would fall before attacks which were continually increasing in power? Nor would the matter end here. Independency in church-government and republicanism in politics are ever inseparable companions. The same power that overthrew the Church would cashier the king, and disband his nobles. The scenes of 1642 would be re-enacted; but, as in this revolution the blood spilled, save in the battle-field, was of inconsiderable amount, so, we trust, would it be now. And, therefore, we say that, as compared with an atheistical revolution, a sectarian one would be a trifling evil. Not, however, that Naseby and Worcester are scenes to be desired, or that a king and an archbishop beheaded, and a despotism established, to be followed by a restoration, are matters to be lightly spoken of. However, let it be borne in mind, as a certainty altogether beyond dispute, that to one of these terminations we are hastening,--except the Church exerts herself to the utmost of her strength, and is assisted by strength from without, to meet the demands on her expansive powers which the rapid increase of our population is continually making. It is on this ground that we again say, as we said at the commencement of this article, that the Conservative who imagines that there is any other object of greater importance than that of aiding the Church in this her hour of trial, falls into an error of the most extensive and most vitally important character. We have remarked, that the chief object of the hostility of the Destructive party at the present moment is the Church. We may add, that the mode in which this hos tility shewed itself, though covertly and hypocritically, during the last session, consisted in opposing every plan tending to promote her efficiency, and eagerly supporting every project which promised to dismantle and reduce her actual and efficient operations into the smallest possible limits. The course thus taken by her enemies indicates with sufficient clearness the truest policy and duty of her friends. The maintenance of her rights and endowments is a part of that duty, but it is not the whole, or even the chiefest part. It is well to defend her privileges, and to contend earnestly against proposals of confiscation, however speciously they may be propounded. This is well; but this is not all, or nearly all. The Church is a public institution, for a public purpose. That purpose is the religious instruction of the whole people. In so far as she omits, in any place or in any way, the performance of this duty, she falls short of the object of her institution; and these shortcomings, if extending beyond a certain point, or continuing beyond a certain time, will bring upon her the charge of failing in her main purpose and intention. And whenever this charge can be both made and substantiated, and a remedy is not speedily found, the Church, as a national establishment, is gone-is utterly and finally lost. The way, and the degree, in which her efficiency or inefficiency operates on her safety or her danger, is most clearly seen in the course of the recent church-rate agitation. Wherever the Dissenters or Radicals imagined that they could, with any chance of success, assail the Church, there they have always commenced an opposition to the church-rates. And the history of those contests presents what might be thought a singular paradox, but which, on reflection, establishes the point on which we are insisting. In almost every case in which opposition to a church-rate has been successful, the rate proposed has been of a very small and inconsiderable amount; while, on the other hand, in those cases in which the opposition has failed, or in which the very attempt has been deemed useless, the rate has been high, and often even burdersome. A rate of a penny in the pound may be opposed with some hope of success; but a rate of a shilling is almost always carried by a large majority! This may appear inexplicable on a first view; but on a more careful consideration it is easily seen to be most natural. In Manchester, for instance, 252 New Churches. a rate of five farthings was vehemently opposed; and, as far as single votes went, was rejected by the majority. But how came the rate proposed to be so exceedingly low? Just because the surface over which it was spread was so immense. A population of 200,000 had only about a dozen churches. A reasonable allowance would have been seventy or eighty. But they had not a fifth of the number which ought to have existed; and it followed, arithmetically, that a five-farthing-rate was asked for when a sixpenny one ought to have been necessary. Had there been seventy churches and seventy parishes in Manchester, a sixpenny rate might have been proposed and carried in every one of them, without difficulty; but, as the case stood, two-thirds of the people of Manchester neither knew nor cared any thing about the Church. When, therefore, she applied, even for such a trifle as five farthings in the pound, "We know their indignant answer was, not the Church, neither will we be taxed by her." In these plain facts we see at once the real nature of the evil; and, discerning the evil, we discern at the same time the remedy. The Church has allowed large masses of the people, in particular spots, to accumulate together, without participating in her care or culture. They are strangers to her, and they treat her as such. These unprovided, untended portions of our population, are rapidly on the increase; and, should they increase much further, they will inevitably, having some voices in the legislature, exercise their power to the serious injury of the Church. The only course, it is clear, is not coercion or unkind treatment, but a speedy and earnest endeavour to do that which ought to have been done long since, to provide for their spiritual necessities, to cultivate their good will, and to make the Establishment known to them in its beneficent and maternal character and operations. Most obviously, too, the very first step to be taken is, to provide them some tolerable supply of Church accommodation. The first and most general way of becoming acquainted with the Church, is by becoming an attendant on her public services. But if he who has at least curiosity enough to wish bos finds tha attempt to learn something of her cha- It is a matter of sincere rejoicing There is one other point, which though altogether unworthy to be put into competition with the motives we have already stated, we may yet venture just to name, before we quit the subject. It has often struck us as very strange, in these days of wealth, display, refinement, and luxury, that mere taste did not lead some of the rich and noble into this line of enjoyment. What is more appropriate and becoming in a nobleman than a taste and knowledge of architecture? It would seem to be an enjoyment calculated for the especial privilege of the aristocracy, inasmuch as it is one in which they cannot Lord It is of necessity a costly pursuit; and yet it is far more rationally so than many others, inasmuch as its enjoyments are real, and its rewards permanent. It is by no means uncommon to see our rich men, whether lords or commoners, expending fifty or a hundred thousand pounds, in a few seasons, on the race course. In banquets and festivals, we have often the like display of munificence. Yet, when the year is past, what remains of all this éclat, and what has the expending party got, in return for his money, but a few lines in a Racing Calendar or a Court Journal? Does no regret ever accompany the retrospection of such piles of wealth so expended? Now imagine, for a moment, that only a similar outlay had taken place in the erection of beautiful buildings for the worship of God. How splendid a temple may be raised, especially in a country town, where stone and labour may be cheaply obtained, for the sum of six or eight thousand pounds! Half this sum generally suffices for a very good and substantial church for a thousand persons. We would not wish for larger buildings; for it is foolish to build on such a scale as to render the places only fit for men gifted with lungs of leather and catgut. We hold, however, that on such an object splendour and taste are fitly and worthily bestowed. We will therefore imagine a man of taste, under the advice of such men as Blore or Rickman, or Savage or Shaw, raising a series of edifices of real and exquisite beauty. In ten years the structure of ten such buildings would cost far less than many noblemen expend on the turf, and far less than others devote to fêtes and entertainments utterly destitute of any permanent object. And what a name would such a nobleman have raised for himself, in following this very simple, and, we should have thought, very natural course! With what just veneration would he be regarded even now, and how lasting would be his fame, even in centuries to come! How would the very mention of his name cause every eye to sparkle while he lived, and with what a halo of light would that name be clothed in all future time! Strange, indeed, has it often seemed to us, that men who have the power, without the least sacrifice or effort, so to gratify taste, so to exert the highest beneficence, and, at the same time, to win for themselves the best kind of fame through ages to come, should seem to overlook the whole, and turn to the trifles with which our daily newspapers are filled. There is, however, another thing which requires to be provided, as well as buildings for the purposes of public worship. We mean, a proper Purochial Organization. Compare one of our ancient towns, such as Bristol, or Norwich, or the City of London, in which every two or three hundred houses, and every two or three thousand persons, had a distinct church and a distinct clergyman to their own proper use, with one of the modern masses of population, in which eighty or a bundred thousand persons remain under a single rector or vicar, and have had some four or five chapels of ease, or district churches, lately erected among them. Compare Bristol with Liverpool, for instance, or Norwich with Manchester, or the city of London with Finsbury; the difference is striking. In the old towns you have peace and subordination, and a feeling of attachment to the Church and the Constitution; in the new, you have mobs and agitation, perpetual turmoils, "confusion, and every evil work." The difference turns wholly upon the existence or the want of a proper organization. Of old, there was not only a Church built, and a minister provided, for every two or three thousand people, but a parish was constituted, and furnished with its needful officers and appurtenances. Now-adays we have perceived the want, in many places, of sufficient church accommodation, and have built new churches or chapels, and have even, in many instances, "assigned a district," as the phrase is; and yet, after all, from the mere childish motive of not meddling with the state and dignity, the privileges and emoluments, of the original rector or vicar of the ancient parish, that parish remains undivided, with one spiritual head, one vestry, one set of overseers and churchwardens, and eighty or a hundred thousand inhabitants. We defy any one to shew us such a parish which either is or can be properly governed. The sysno, it is not a system, for no such thing was ever seriously intended tem by any one--but the practice of keeping in an undivided state these vast masses of population, exceeding in numbers many of our bishoprics, is wholly and most injuriously wrong. It is indefensible in principle, and in operation it abounds with the germs of every evil. Next to the erection of places of worship, the proper organization of parishes around them is the work of the greatest importance to England at the present moment. In conclusion, however, we must again entreat our friends among the opulent and powerful of the Conservative body to believe, that there is no one object to which their minds and their efforts can be directed with so beneficial an effect, as the helping forward this work which is now, happily, every where begun, of making good the deficiencies which a drowsiness of above a century had allowed to prevail in our Established Church. Other measures and other exertions may be successful and beneficial for a moment, but their results fade away: while this is of an abiding character. Nay, more, it is reproductive. Confirm and establish the present generation in the love of their venerable Church, and their children will be even more devoted and zealous in her cause than they. Assist a dark and heathenish neighbourhood to erect a new church, and in a few years after they will find that one is not sufficient, and will experience no difficulty, among themselves, in raising funds for the erection of another. Meanwhile, we repeat, as we began, the safety and security of the throne and the aristocracy are bound up with the Church. Till she is overthrown, the danger only threatens them from afar; but when once her battlements are laid in the dust, Windsor and Belvoir, Arundel and Chatworth, may quake to their foundations; for within two years after Westminster Abbey is let to the Society for Ancient Concerts, Burlington House will be sold by the Commissioners of the National Woods and Forests, as the site of a bazaar or a cotton-factory. " STRAY REFLECTIONS. Moon-beams that have lost their way."—Altered from BYRON. HARRY STATE OF THE STAGE MEMOIR OF THE MAN IN THE MASK OLIVER YORKE SIR EGERTON BRYDGES' SONNETS OUR minds sometimes revert to our past Numbers-their contents die not, for us, with the expired month. Considerable care and attention having been bestowed in their production and selection, on our parts, our imaginations retain the impress of foregone conclusions. Hence, sometimes we are haunted with the Memory of our thoughts, as are other men with the Conscience of their deeds and, indeed, our Writings may be denominated (as they discourse of certain legal specimens of caligraphy) deeds though invalid from the first, being in most instances without a name. Poetry and law, however, differ here greatly; as, with the former, deeds thus qualified are among the chiefly impressive and effective; and in respect to periodical publications, it is well known that their anonymity is one grand eleinference with the public taches to the Man in the Mask, and what a thrill pervaded the meeting when he entered Westminster Hall, on occasion of the grand Fraserian Debate, with the report of which, even now, all Europe is ringing from side to side! To the advantage of these remarks our unnamed Contributors are welcome, but we lay no claim to any such benefit ourselves. We have a name, it is (hark to "the replication of the sounds!")-OLIVER YORKE. Papers to which that name is attached derive therefrom an interest which nothing else can give, and are quite as good as if they had no name at all, or better. Similar praise may be awarded, as the deserved meed, to other articles of avowed authorship in the Queen of Magazines; and REGINA herself is potent in raining influences and adjudging prizes in behalf of candidates ignorance arises from its being unworthy of their inhabitation. Mighty little knew it of Sir Egerton Brydges' merits as a sonnetteer, until we evoked the Ghost of S. T. C. to trumpet forth HASTINGS' SONNETS. Reader! the needful information. on Harry Hastings?" If they liked BY SIR EGERTON BRYDGES. BUT in this rural life, 'mid nature's forms Their skill in webs with mingled figures wrought. They add to what external sense supplies; Not bodily only! Bursting from the woods, And blazing towers, and spires, and cities bright, The tumbling torrents; from the forest-mass That Chandos of Sudeley places great value on these effusions is sufficiently clear; and whatever he valued, we should feel inclined to esteem: for he is a good judge of poetry - even of his own, and this is saying much. How few can judge that of others even! It is not that we are wanting in poets, even now; but we are horribly deficient of good critics. The multitude, left to choose for themselves, prefer fustian before the finest thinking, feeling, speaking. A noisy, declamatory style, is a sure passport to success with the uninstructed; the recondite graces of the true minstrel escape their gross vision. Hence Byron bore away the palm from Wordsworth and Shelley, though his best thoughts were stolen from them; and his own chief merit lay in an ostentatious diction, which, again, was as pretty a piece of mosaic as one could wish to meet with in a summer's day. Of the taste of the crowd, the state of our theatrical exhibitions may be VOL. XIII. NO. LXXIV. taken as the exponent. Bronze Horses and melodramatic processions are a kind of visible bombast, with which the vulgar are fooled to the top of their bent. Vandenhoff is a great actoronly second to Macready; but it is grievous to see him prostituting his powers in the embodiment of a tag-rag and bob-tail character, traduced from the French of M. Scribe. Why is not Macready brought out in some legitimate work, new or old, in company with Vandenhoff? Who recollects not with delight the concurrence of these two finished performers as Othello and Iago? For ourselves, we can answer safely, that we never experienced more pleasure than in the contrast of the styles exhibited on that occasion by these two splendid artists. The play, moreover, in its other characters, was, at least, well performed; and nothing interfered to qualify the pleasure- not even the personalities of Harley, who, if not quite a Roderigo, was quite as great a fool. |