national life it is the watchword, the flag, which has supported the courage of generals and roused the patriotism of troops. It has gone forth to meet the Tartars, or the Poles, or the French. It has thus been carried by Demetrius, by Peter, by Suwaroff, by Kutusoff. A taste, a passion for pictures, not as works of Art, but as emblems, as instructors, as lessons, is thus engendered and multiplied in common life beyond all example elsewhere." (p. 362.)

"There are, it appears, numerous Dissenters in Russia as in England; and it is curious to observe how Dissent, here as elsewhere, fastens on trifles and overlooks essentials. "They deem it a mortal sin in the national clergy that they give the benediction with three fingers instead of two." "It was a mortal sin to say the name of Jesus in two syllables instead of three, or to repeat the Hallelujah thrice instead of once." "Their converts from the established church are solemnly rebaptized." These "Rascolniks," the "Separatists," from the Church of Russia, amounting to as many as eight millions in the whole Empire, hold, what we could almost wish was held in England, that "it is a departure from every sound principle of Church and State to smoke tobacco.' "It is also, or was till very recently, a mark of heresy to eat the new unheard-of food of the potato; for that accursed 'apple of the earth' is the very apple of the devil, which was the forbidden fruit of Paradise." (p. 474, et passim.)

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Our Author treats these, and other trumpery grounds of dissent from the established Russian church, with a just contempt; yet we are not quite certain that he would not introduce a still more serious schism into our own church. For he concludes his work by holding up a Germanized Russian-one who was "master of all the recent forms of German thought and speculation" (p. 490) *-as an example and pattern for all English divines to follow; and then he raises the question,

"Will Russia exhibit to the world the sight of a Church and people understanding, receiving, fostering, the progress of new ideas, foreign learning, free inquiry, not as the destruction, but as the fulfilment, of religious belief and doctrine? Will the Churches of the West find that, in the greatest National Church now existing in the world, there is still a principle of life at work, at once more steadfast, more liberal, and more peaceful, than has hitherto been produced, either by the uniformity of Rome, or the sects of Protestantism?" (p. 492.)

* In a Note on this page Dr. Stanley tells us respecting another Russian, Mr. Chamiakoff, the poet, "He was fully versed in German theology. His admi ration of the character and learning of the late lamented Baron Bunsen was profound. He himself entered freely into the questions raised of late on biblical criticism, yet he never swerved in his faith and practice as an orthodox

Christian." "Are you not afraid of these German speculations?" was the question by an English traveller to another Russian layman equally devout and sincere. "Not for a moment," was the reply. "We have a singular gift of comprehending the ideas of others, and of amalgamating them with our own firm belief. I fear nothing, so long as we are true to ourselves."

These are significant words; and they are rendered still more significant by his condensing the whole of his hopes, and wishes and expectations, in that last word which dropped from the expiring lips of Peter the Great-" HEREAFTER." With this oracularly ambiguous word our Author closes, only stripping it, under his own manipulation, of all its ambiguity. He would thus insinuate the future possibility of a new development of Christianity, in which, if we understand his true meaning, for the sake of a hollow charity, it is to be emptied of its positive truth. Truly, we may exclaim, "The proper study of mankind is man!"

We remarked, at the outset, that Church History wears a forbidding and repulsive aspect. It is, indeed, a sad and melancholy picture of the perversities and aberrations of the human mind, and of the fantastic tricks it will play before high Heaven under the sacred name of religion. But it behoves us to remember, that the outward visible framework of the Church is not the Church itself, and that those who have obtained the highest places in it, through their ambition or policy, and have perhaps left a name behind them, will probably have no place, or only a very low place, in "the kingdom to come." Better be the lowest workman engaged in the building, than the highest part of the mere scaffolding. In all ages there have been those who would abuse or compromise Christianity to gain the favour of the world, which is now, as it was in our Lord's time, only another name for the professing Church. It is not only the great stirring spirits, the ecclesiastical Agitators of their day, who have made themselves "conspicuous" for the Christian virtues "by their absence," that will probably have to take a lower place in the allotments of Heaven than they occupied in human history; but also those of whom all men spoke well for what was termed their "mild wisdom" and 'judicious management." Taking the New Testament for our guide and criterion in judging the characters we meet with in Church History, our estimate of men, and of their utility to the Church, will differ widely from that formed of them by Historians, who, smitten only with the admiration of adventitious greatness, have been wont to invest specious guilt, when found in high places, in gorgeous colours, while they have rendered the good actions of truly good men, done in obscurity, still more obscure by casting them altogether into the shade. How few, except fishermen, would ever have written the history

of Jesus of Nazareth!

It ought to be a consolatory circumstance to those whose lot it is to labour in the low and obscure places of the Church, to remember that the names of all the Twelve, though they have not an equal place in History, are equally to be found in the foundations of that city, upon which rests for ever "the glory of

God." The estimate which the most conspicuous member of the Church now form of themselves, and which the world als forms of them, will, we may fear, be strangely reversed in the day of final judgment, when a meaning that was never before thought of will be given to those words of the Omniscient One, "The first shall be last, and the last first." We can imagine nothing more overwhelming than the frightful surprise that will then seize many a one, who passed in the Church on earth for a wise, judicious, holy, and highly Christian man, because he adapted all his actions and all his movements to the age in which he lived. When the ambition, the worldly policy, the self-seeking, the cunning craftiness, the moral cowardice, the fear of identification with Christ's true servants when under his reproach, come out as having been the basis of their whole conduct, even in their religion; then what a reversal will take place in their position, and how different will appear the history written in heaven from that recorded on earth. The best use we can make of Church History is to learn from it, that those are not to be envied, generally speaking, who have filled its largest spheres with their recorded doings, and that it is far better to have passed life in obscure and unknown goodness, than to have left a name only "to point a moral and adorn a tale."

DR. SHAW'S TRAVELS IN ENGLAND.

Travels in England: a Ramble with the City and Town Missionaries. By John Shaw, M.D., &c. London: William Johnson, Great Marlborough Street. 1861.

Ir has probably been the lot of most of our readers to meet in company with some vivacious stranger who entertained them for the first quarter of an hour, but very soon became a bore. Such specimens of humanity are to be met with sometimes even in good society. They amuse you for a while with their high spirits and multifarious talk. They describe well, have seen everything, know everybody, rattle off a peremptory opinion on every subject, and entertain you by their easy impudence. But, after a while, you discover that they are shallow and impertinent, contradictory to their seniors, illnatured in their sarcasm, not very accurate in their facts; in short, you are obliged to put them down. Dr. Shaw's book reminds us of this class of forward young gentlemen. A book of "Travels in England" is no bad introduction to any company; and, for our part, we think "city and town missionaries no bad society to be found in. But when Dr. Shaw, or

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any other writer, abuses his opportunities, and annoys his fiends,-in other words, injures the cause of town and city missions by his ill-nature, ignorance, and prejudice, he deserves a much graver chastisement than our own good-nature will just now permit us to administer.

He begins the volume with four or five chapters of by no means disagreeable prattle, on a variety of subjects. He tells us "where travels should begin," and, like charity, we are informed they should begin at home. "We are of opinion also," says our author, "that they should end at home;" which, as he explains it, means, that when we have seen the world abroad, there is still a great deal left to be seen at home. But, in the course of these few chapters, the number of difficult subjects smartly handled, discussed in a few sentences, and finally disposed of, with a decisive verdict, severe and peremptory, is something wonderful. For instance: "In a pamphlet which," he says, "I read the other day, it is stated that in 1851 the number of proprietors in England and Wales amounted to 30,315; whereas, in the year 1770, there were in the same counties 250,000." We believe this statement is sufficiently correct. The numbers in 1770 were calculated by Arthur Young, the great agriculturist and traveller, a very good authority; and those of 1851 of course were taken from the Census. The conclusions, moral, social, and political, to be drawn from these facts are amongst the most varied, the most difficult, and at the same time the most important with which the statesman and the political economist have to deal. But Dr. Shaw cuts through all such Gordian knots with an amazing -perhaps we should have written, amusing-facility. England, he discovers, is ruined, or will be shortly: at least, she ought to be; for "wealth is monopolized by the few, which has given the land, as well as the commerce, into their hands." "A small man in trade or commerce now stands no chance against the large capitalist!" "The land is, perhaps, better cultivated, while the small cottager and tenant farmer are driven either into the towns, the colonies, or, as a last and very painful resort, the ill-fed Union, as his only salvation from actual starvation." Our only objection to this statement is, that there is no truth in it. There is no monopoly of money in Great Britain, though there are vast capitalists-millionaires -some of whom make but a sad use of their enormous wealth, On the other hand, there is a vast and scarcely disproportioned increase in the wealth of our middle classes, and in the comforts enjoyed by the lowest. There is no such thing amongst us as a vast despotism and monopoly of wealth, smiling in lordly contempt upon hundreds of thousands of our countrymen of the middle and artisan classes, who scowl defiance in return. The increase of wealth among the latter has been enormous since the days of Arthur Young, greater in proportion than

that of the large capitalists and landlords. The poor peoph of England, so called, have now forty millions sterling in t savings-banks; a sum which would have bought up, several times over, all the small landowners of 1770, whose disappearance, however, is a very interesting, and, as we have said before, a very important problem, deserving to be explained, and to have its probable effects brought out with more care and reflection than our political economists have yet given to the subject. But Dr. Shaw is troubled with no doubts. He settles the whole question in a sentence; and he returns, towards the conclusion of his volume, to the charge. The land is in the hands of 30,000 proprietors, once there were 250,000, therefore England is on the road to ruin. "The land, as well as the capital in trade, having got into the hands of the few, place the majority, who are as ambitious as themselves to figure in the world, to be well dressed, to travel, to dine well, to be entertained luxuriously, in the very unamiable position of having recourse to the tricks of trade to supply their wants, and to make up the monetary deficiency."

What makes this monopoly of the green sward of Old England (including Scotland) by the millionaires still more ominous, is the use to which they intend to devote it. This project is something too formidable for us to describe in our own words; we must give it in those of our author. There seems to be, dimly shadowed out on his mysterious page, a fearful conspiracy; we are not acquainted with the particulars. The son of William the Conqueror, however, wasted a hundred parishes to make the New Forest; and as we all know, he met with his reward. What shall be done unto those wicked capitalists who have actually bought up the whole of England and Scotland, on purpose to defile the land with bricks and mortar! And this, too, when, all the wealth being in their own hands, there shall not a soul be left to tenant anything better than a garret or a cellar; the rest having fled to the colonies, the workhouse, or the great American republic, where "the soil is in the hands of every man, able and willing to fight the woods, and to battle with the briars and thorns." Just now, by the way, we fear this harmless kind of battle is not the only warfare in which the emigrant must take his part. However, we transcribe the alarming page, -the very next to that on which we have been favoured with the dismal calculations we have just presented to our reader. "The rapidity with which they (that is modern houses made to sell and scarcely fit to inhabit; fungi, so slightly and jauntily constructed, that a fat drunken man might, in descending the staircase, annihilate the building, and smother himself in the ⚫ruins')

"The rapidity with which they start up, bids fair to turn the soil of Old England into new towns. Shall we have a kingdom of houses

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