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dangerous to read in the dog-days. It is composed of such very inflammable materials, that the marvel is that it has not exploded by spontaneous combustion. Think of the choicest and fieriest combustibles of D'Aubigné, M'Neile, and Beamish, Mr. Marks and "his useful admonition," "that excellent little work, the Catechism of Puseyism," "Charlotte Elizabeth's powerful Strictures," and Mr. Bickersteth's "Divine Warning," all mixed up with strange fires, imported from Bishop M'Ilvaine and the Bishop of Calcutta! This is a theological handgrenade, alive with detonating and fulminating powders, which calls for the police rather than the reviewers.

And while we are on this inexhaustible subject, we can heartily recommend to tract distributors, (and who, in these days, is not a tract reader, writer, or scatterer?) "Puseyism confronted with the Church of England, and its true character shown," (Edwards,) which is not exactly that which its title promises; and "Puseyism in London," (reprinted from the Morning Post.) The last is admirable in matter and interesting in composition.

"Bishop's College and its Missions," (Burns,) by Mr. S. C. Malan, formerly a tutor in that noble establishment, is an earnest plea in its behalf, to which we wish all success.

"A few Reasons for deprecating the Attempt of the Bishop of London to alter the Service of the Church,"-lying and insolent to a degree which beggars description, and feeble withal.

"Ayton Priory," and "Hierurgia Anglicana," are mentioned elsewhere.

Two volumes of the Anglo-Catholic Library are just out; a volume of Cosins' Sermons, hitherto MS., which is a great addition to our old divinity, and the 2d vol. of Beveridge; we are glad to find this excellent undertaking proceeding so satisfactorily but we must again ask, where are Andrewes' Controversial Works?

"A Letter to the Rev. Philip Gell of Derby," (Mozley,) is very valuable, and bears out the view maintained in these pages of the sad character of the visitation sermon to which it alludes.

The Bishop of Madras's "Charge" has been published in almost every conceivable particular, it is the opposite of the Bishop of Calcutta's; in tone, if we are obliged to draw comparisons, we should say that it harmonizes most closely with the theology of the Bishop of Salisbury.

"Lilian Arundel," (Burns,) under the form of a child's book, is in fact, (like a similar story published some time since, "Little Mary,") a parent's book, that is, it will help mothers in the great work of education. We like it much, and thought as we read that we recognised the "fine Italian hand" of the authoress of The Fairy Bower, whose character-drawing in so small a compass is really surprising. If we are wrong in our guess, we are at least paying a compliment to the writer, which we feel to be, in some respects, deserved.

Among single sermons, "The Holy Portion of the Land," by Mr. Churton, of Crayke; "On the Ordination Services," by the Dean of Chichester; "Acceptable Sacrifices," preached in St. John's Church, Cheltenham, by Mr. Gresley Mr. Coleridge's, at the opening of St. Mark's College; and one by Mr. Sewell, to "Young Men," will engage attention from the reputation of their respective authors. To which may be added a useful address, "National Education, &c." by Mr. Nicholson, of Winchester; and a "Funeral Sermon on Mr. Blencowe," by Mr. F. M. Knollis, which is long, and written, we think, in very bad taste.

MISCELLANEOUS.

A Summer Day's Pilgrimage. No. I.-St. Alban's Abbey.

THERE are perhaps few, hitherto unnoticed, circumstances which have more contributed to the loss of Church feeling, or rather to its abeyance, than the paucity of old Catholic churches in London. So much are we necessarily influenced, even in the way of devotion, by ancient association, to say nothing at present of the actual difference, in kind perhaps rather in degree, of religious feeling excited by Christian art, and its opposite, the adaptation of Pagan proportions and details to the requirements of the worship of the saints, that we can scarcely realize how much loss the Church of England-it is hardly too much to say to the lowering of positive doctrine and obviously of practicehas suffered by the great fire of 1666 and the consequent destruction of the older sacred edifices of the metropolis. We are not now going into the question of Wren's skill and genius, which we are disposed to rate very high, indeed it is surprising that with the intractable materials and the stiff conventionalisms of design, which are the characteristics of the so-called classic style, this great man produced such wonderful diversity in details, and so often such solemnity of general effect in his churches; but considering his relationship with the foremost of the Landian School, the great Wren, Bishop of Norwich, and his own intimate connexion with Oxford, it is not a little remarkable that he was led so entirely to discard the essentials, at least those distinctive features which had hitherto been deemed essentials, of a church, as well as that style which, under various degrees of development, had been coeval with the Gospel itself in these islands. To say that the old Christian architecture was worn out is nothing to the purpose: for Wren only assumed to be a reviver and not an inventor; to adapt and reconstruct was his aim; and had he chosen he might just as well have restored pointed as Roman buildings. And though there is something in the argument that the oldest churches were Basilicæ, yet we must remember that the peculiar charm in them was that they were the conquered strongholds of heathenism; the sacred Presence was introduced, and had cleansed them for ever; the very fact that they had been seats of pagan judicature, halls or what not of the idols, made them visible trophies of the actual victory of the Cross of Christ rather than allow, with Middleton, "that, because by changing the name and consecrating the temple, the Pantheon serves as exactly for the purposes of the Papist as it did for the Pagan," therefore Christianity is paganized, we rather sympathize with Le Maistre, as quoted in Morus, "Tous les saints à la place de tous les Dieux! quel sujet intarissable de profondes méditations philosophiques et religieuses!" The Seed of the woman was openly in them displayed bruising the serpent's head; henceforth they were hallowed and consecrate to holiest uses; the lustration of faith had been

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sprinkled on them. And this reason might have its sublime influence until the gospel were thoroughly furnished from its own unearthly stores to bear with pagan architecture up to a certain point, that is, until Christianity had something of its own, something which had never been defiled with gentile associations, something evolved from itself, were not only tolerable, but such as the circumstances of the case at least permitted if they did not require.

The writer, then, of the present paper (and it is as well to premise that it differs, in some respects, from views which have been taken by other writers in this Magazine) objects to the force of the argument alleged from the fact that the earliest churches were Roman, and those built by the successors of Constantine in various parts of Italy were Romanesque and Byzantine, and of kindred or resulting styles, to the propriety of continuing or reproducing such churches, especially in this country, We are far from saying that the old Italian churches are not Catholic churches; they are churches curious and valuable in every point of view, most interesting and most Catholic; this we own frankly and without hesitation, and to say that they are not the most primitive form would only display very great ignorance. We can bear then with Bingham's ichnographies, (which are extremely incorrect, be it remarked) or with Sir George Wheler's valuable though little-known account of the early churches, or with Mr. Gally Knight's beautiful volume, or with Mr. Coddington's fervid letters: we admit all the facts fully; but they are, one and all, nothing to the point: the question is not whether such things were, but whether they are to be again, or ought to be again.

And this must be argued upon a somewhat deeper principle than has yet been examined: it is a subject connected, and that in no slight degree, with a question which promises to swallow up all others, the true idea of the Church's power of self-development. We may admit the use of many externals, the rite of washing the feet of the brethren, for example, that of circumcising Jewish converts, to take an illustration which, being scriptural, we would apply reverently, and such others; but if it be held that the Church is the permanent presence of the Spirit, if it has intrinsic and innate powers and gifts to abolish and to supersede, and to displace such things, why may not a similar power be imagined as applied to christian art? To say that this or that is primitive, and therefore must be done now, would carry us further than, or make us stop very short of, what most of us would be prepared for at the present day. It proves too much or too little. Anyhow we shall soon be called upon-are we ready?-to choose in the dilemma, "Primitive, and therefore right;""subsequent to the --," (for the limits are not yet settled) 66 -th century, and therefore wrong; Romish, papistical, modern, scoutable," &c. &c.

The line, then, which we think most tenable is, that ecclesiastical buildings which had formerly belonged to heathen purposes had a peculiar propriety and dignity, which, from the nature of the case, was then, and must remain, inalienable-that the immediately subsequent stage of art purely christian being one of transition merely, whether it is to be traced in northern Italy, or in Normandy, or in our own Norman edifices, was at the best but a tolerabilis ineptia, but that it

would be about as wise now to write books in Norman French while we

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as to build Norman, if such be the name, churches while we have the churches of Lincolnshire of us and among us. Having once evolved her own peculiar and restricted architecture, the Church, it seems to us, by implication forbad her children to retrace their steps; we are not now speaking of what the Church ought to do under given circumstances, but we have first to produce a fact, and then, if we can, assign a reason for it. The fact then is, that christian architecture was always growing and uniform and complete in itself as far as it went. Because this is to us decisive: if it be a fact that the Church never did go back to a style which had been fused into something beyond it, we desire no stronger reason to conclude that it never ought to go back either, 1. to a transitional style, such as the Romanesque; or 2. to a style never her own, viz. the Pagan, either of Egypt, Greece, or Rome, or the Apostate, such as Alhambra-Saracenic. There must be some deep reason for so remarkable a fact, that restorations, even in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, did not restore the discarded style: the Church, we repeat, never went back: decorated and perpendicular insertions were added to the Norman and early English churches : Wykeham remodelled the Winchester cathedral of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when it was twice as easy, and much more graceful and uniform, as we view such things, to continue it in the original style, and to carry out the first design. How was this? why was this? but at least to show that Norman had had its day, and never was to be revived; and if not Norman, à fortiori not Roman.

Nor is it at all to the purpose to say that mediæval Christianity resulted in pointed churches, chancel nave and aisles, because its external development was processional rather than congregational; but that we want spacious halls, which are not pointed, because our worship is congregational, and because we have no processions : for facts are against such a theory both ways. Processions are

compatible enough with churches of the Pagan class, witness St. Peter's; nay James II. then Duke of York, got the present plan of St. Paul's itself adopted and the aisles introduced with a view to use it just as it stands for the restored Roman ceremonial, when he could introduce Romanism: and on the other hand, a three hundred years' experience has shown that the churches of all others best suited to the due celebration of the reformed Anglican ritual are those spacious ancient fanes where "the chancels remain as they have done in times past:" besides, it is rather too much to assume that processions are incompatible with any "reformed" services.

The reformers, by their cautious and distinct avowal in this most noticeable rubric, one well-weighed and pondered after the first heady

We mention this because there are rumours of churches to be built with minarets and domes and horse-shoe arches, for all the world like Grand Cairo, Bagdat and Damascus, and the Arabian Nights! Why not revive the Mexican temples? A pagoda would do well for a steeple-and a clever adaptation from the Burmese Taj-Mahal would make a modern church architect's fortune yet.

rush and tumult of turbulence and spoil had calmed down, meant much. It was a distinct identification of themselves with the Church of fifteen centuries: it was to say, "We are the same, because our churches are the same; all that is essential in them and in the rites there celebrated we must have; we retain them all because we mean to use them all." And so, although, not in England alone but throughout Christendom, in as well as out of the Roman obedience, the Church was deprived of the technical skill, and her Bezaleel had departed, yet in the ancient spirit and after the ancient proportions, and with the ancient fittings, Andrewes* and Laud built and adorned churches, and shall we deny their title as the best exponents of Anglicanism? They did not go back to the basilica or to the semicircular arch or apse, and why should we? Even the ablest advocate

of the Romanesque in these pages is inclined to think that what he calls "the Gothic of James I." was a style of itself, perhaps a legitimate result of perpendicular; and of which we desire to notice that, be that as it may, it was neither Romanesque nor Pagan; it was neither the revival of what had past, nor the production of something new.

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All this Wren did not see: he brought into our English Church something quite as new to it as the creed of Calvin was to the Catholic body, and in its way, to us in England quite as great a solecism; and we are prepared for the charge of exaggeration when we say that we do not know how to estimate the damage which Sir Christopher Wren and his school have inflicted on the Church. Surely it must have been something like malice † in this great man to blow up with gunpowder the ponderous piers and columns of old St. Paul's: he did not rebuild it, not because he could not, but because he would not; at all hazards, he was resolved to build, not to restore. London is of course considered the model in all things for the whole kingdom: what received the metropolitan imprimatur would be imitated more or less throughout the country. Not only then would the literature and higher thought of England, whose home is the metropolis, be soon led to think that the revived pagan style was the proper one for temples of the reformed faith not only would the dwellers in London, the leaders not of fashion only, but of national feeling, soon acquire complete ignorance but also contempt of the ancient churches: and the result was, that from having before their eyes two classes of ecclesiastical structures, the elder class was identified by the people at large with a worn-out superstition as well enough for days of Romish darkness, but totally unsuitable for the Protestantism of reformed England, which found its symbolism in Wren's Roman churches. So complete was this feeling, that in one of the classical essayists of the Augustan age of Queen Anne we met the other day with a kind and handsome

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*There is yet extant the exact description of the chapel and altar furniture of Andrewes' palace chapel, which Laud copied, and where, among other startling things, occur a canister for the wafers-a censer for the incense lighted at the reading of the lessons-a tricanale for the water of mixture in the eucharist, &c." It is just published in the first number of a valuable Miscellany "Hierurgia Anglicana," (Cambridge, Stevenson,) edited by members of the Camden Society.

+ See Wren's Parentalia: though his work at St. Paul's and St. Dunstan's in the East, makes even his capacity questionable.

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