gestion of the mere intellect, which banished the idea of God out of the university and out of the world. This was remarkably shown in the case of the late Arthur Hugh Clough. Compelled, as he thought, by the advances of modern criticism, to renounce every form of religion, considered as a positive system of facts and doctrines, his mind, which had nothing in common with the self-satisfied temper of the ordinary missionary of unbelief, became a prey to pain and despair unutterable. Who that knew him and loved him did not mark the cloud of settled sadness which, through all his later years, hung upon that massive glorious forehead, and dimmed the light of those sweet penetrating eyes? The cause was manifest. He thought that the world and he had lost their Father; and no mystic charm of poetry, though he was a true poet-no research in art or literature, though he was a born critic, could make him feel otherwise than as an orphan, sorrowing over a lost inheritance of love and light. Truly this kind of denial savoured much more of faith than the indolent acquiescence of many; this despair showed what it would really beglibly as free-thinkers discuss and anticipate the prospect-to lose Christianity out of the world.

"Ye hills, fall on us, and ye mountains, cover!"

Clough was one of the best of men; the purity and sincerity of his character, the sensitiveness of his conscience, inspired all who came near with unspeakable respect and affection. He is gone where all grief and doubt are healed: and those who loved him feel as certain as they can of anything in morals, that he has found there the Father and the Saviour whom in this world he believed himself to have lost.

But this assumption of the ultra-Liberal school, which is the sole reasonable plea for the exclusion of theology from the educational course, namely, that religion is a mass of crude, uncertain opinions, -is utterly untrue. The immense majority of Christians, in all countries, do at bottom hold a greater number of first principles and articles of belief in common than the followers of science, in many of its departments, have attained to. That there is one God-infinite, all-good, eternal; that Christ, true God and true man, was sent by his Father into the world to leave for the imitation of mankind an example of perfect holiness and obedience; that He died on the cross for all men, rose again the third day, ascended into heaven, and sent the Holy Spirit in power, to establish his Church; that there is for each man-his work in this life being over-a final judgment and a just retribution, these primary truths, and many others bearing upon them, are taught with like emphasis in the schools of Rome, Canterbury, and Geneva. It is true that Rome goes on to maintain that the Church founded on the day of Pentecost was provided with a

machinery enabling it from age to age to teach with certainty and authority, not only these primary truths, but many others deduced therefrom; while Canterbury, without utterly rejecting the tradition of the Church, deems that the surest test and touchstone of the truth of her teaching is the written record of Christ's words and works, which has descended to us from the apostolic age; and Geneva (including in the term all forms of dissent) breaks with the Christian past altogether, and trusts solely to the guidance of the record. Nevertheless, -putting prejudice and the odium theologicum aside,—is it not clear that the points of agreement here are really more fundamental than the points of difference? Can the students of geology pretend that the first principles of that science, if science it may be called, are settled with a corresponding definiteness and certainty? Yet geology can be taught without difficulty in university lecture-rooms to students attached to various systems; and so can chemistry, and physiology, and other sciences, in which many of the deepest problems are still surrounded with uncertainty, and variously solved. Why then cannot theology be so taught? It is not, as has been shown, on account of its greater uncertainty; it is simply because of its transcendent influence over the heart and life of man.

NOTICES OF BOOKS.

Cathedralia: a Constitutional History of Cathedrals of the Western Church, being an Account of the various Dignities, Offices, and Ministries of their Members, &c. By MACKENZIE E. C. WALCOTT, B.D., of Exeter College, Oxford, Præcentor and Prebendary of the Cathedral Church of Chichester, &c., &c. London Masters.

MR.

[R. WALCOTT'S reputation for diligence and for antiquarian attainments led us to open his "Constitutional History of Cathedrals" with the expectation of finding in it a collection of interesting facts skilfully brought to bear upon the illustration of the past and present condition of those great ecclesiastical institutions. The facts, indeed, are there in abundance; many of them curious, some of them interesting and important. But the facts themselves are not so numerous as at first sight might be supposed. If we simply turn over the leaves, they seem to bristle with facts and figures, and the one thing wanting would appear to be an index, which might enable the reader to rearrange for his own convenience the matter presented to him. It is a pity that Mr. Walcott has not provided such an index. He might have detected, while yet there was time to remedy the evil, the multitude of repetitions which his book contains. As it is, the student has to gather the information which he seeks out of a mass of names and dates strung together with little more of arrangement than this, that the chief officers in the several cathedrals are described in the order of dignity or precedence, the inferior members according to the alphabetical position of their names. There is not so much as a running title to afford him a guide to the whereabouts of a statement of which he may be in search. Even the arrangement which is adopted is not steadily adhered to. But it is unfair to make statements such as these without bringing forward some evidence to support them. A very flagrant case of repetition is to be found on page 65, where, speaking of the sub-dean, Mr. Walcott says, that the (Ecclesiastical) "Commissioners sequestered the estates of the office at Exeter." He then devotes eight lines

to a statement of the duties of this officer at Salisbury, and proceeds,— "At Exeter the functions have wholly ceased, and the estates have been sequestered by the Commissioners." But this fades into comparative insignificance when compared with the occurrence of a statement respecting the capitular arrangements at Llandaff, at pp. 36, 62, 66, and with a slight variation at pp. 43, 180; with that of a somewhat similar arrangement at St. Davids at pp. 36, 43, and 50; or with the threefold mention, at pp. 31, 32, 86, of the Bishop of Salisbury as holding the Prebend of Potterne. The statements given are not always in perfect accordance. At p. 36 there is mention made of an arch priest (grand prêtre) at Lyons, but no such personage is found in the list of the dignitaries of that cathedral (p. 21, note). One officer of this name at Saragossa is mentioned, p. 36, three having been enumerated at p. 20. Three different derivations are given for the title "cursal at pp. 9, 87, 125; though it is but fair to say that the least probable of these (from cura salutis) is given by Mr. Walcott, not on his own authority but on that of Edwards. At p. 151 the lay clerks at Exeter are mentioned as deriving part of their income from the tithes at Woodhay. The facts are repeated, p. 162, but the name of the place is given correctly as Woodbury. It is somewhat provoking, again, to find nothing said under the head " Treasurer," respecting the foundation of that dignity in Exeter Cathedral, and then to find it brought in by the way at p. 185, under the article "Sacrist."

canons

It is a pity that Mr. Walcott has not taken more pains in verifying his statements respecting the present condition of the cathedral bodies. Much of his information is taken from the Appendix to the Cathedral Commissioners' Report. Statements given to the world in 1854 cannot safely be quoted in the present tense in 1865; and a careful reading of some of the returns will lead to a suspicion that they represent a transition state of things in which changes had been begun but not fully accomplished. In one point especially, the salaries of lay clerks, changes have been made in various cathedrals since those returns were drawn up. In some cases fuller information would have added to the interest of that which is stated. At p. 30 it is said that "at recent enthronizations the Archbishop of Canterbury sat in the Dean's stall;" and at p. 84, that "the Primate was enthroned in the chapter-house of Canterbury." Both statements are true, but it should have been added, that the real enthronization anciently took place by the Prior seating the newly appointed Archbishop in the patriarchal chair, a marble seat which was formerly placed to the eastward of the high altar, but was removed several years ago to the south transept. * And certainly, at the enthronization of the present Archbishop, he was placed in the throne in the choir, to indicate his authority over the diocese; in the marble chair just mentioned, as Metropolitan of the province; and in the Dean's stall, as head of the cathedral body; while at the end of the service he was conducted to the chapter-house, and there, having been placed in the seat of honour, received from all the members of the cathedral their profession of canonical obedience.

Many of Mr. Walcott's extracts from the ancient cathedral statutes are instructive, as illustrating the manners and customs of the times when they were drawn up. It reminds one of Falstaff's proportion of bread and sack, to find that each of the thirty canons of St. Paul's had three loaves and thirty gallons of ale daily, while the minor canons were allowed the more moderate () quantity of six gallons to two loaves. A sad picture of the

See the account of Winchelsey's enthronization in Hook's "Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury," vol. iii., pp. 391 et seq.

state of morals in the fourteenth century is suggested by the particulars recorded on pp. 159, 160. There are several interesting forms of installation, and others might have been added; as, for instance, those at Exeter, where every member of the cathedral body is installed, from the dean to the choristers. Further information might have been given on the subject of choir feast-money, mentioned, pp. 162, 164, as given at Exeter and Chichester.

On the whole, our impression is, that the book is well designed, and contains a great quantity of valuable information; but that it requires strict revision, both as to composition and in verification of statement, to make it of much use in forwarding the growth of a healthy public opinion on the matter of which it treats.

The Agamemnon of Eschylus, and the Bacchanals of Euripides. Translated by HENRY HART MILMAN, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's. London: John Murray.

The Agamemnon, Chöephori, and Eumenides of Eschylus. Translated
into English Verse by A. SWANWICK. London: Bell & Daldy.
The Prometheus Bound of Eschylus. Translated by AUGUSTA WEBSTER.
London: Macmillan & Co.

AMONG many tokens of the glory that surrounds the great names of Homer, Eschylus, Dante, perhaps the most significant is the spell with which they draw men and women of very varying degrees of power and culture to the work of translating. Students in the first dawn of ambitious or simply loving enthusiasm, statesmen resting from party contests or exhausting budgets, grave divines whose histories or commentaries seem enough to be a long life's task, poets whom the world reveres for their own words of power, all are drawn on as by an irresistible fascination. Each feels as if something had been left unaccomplished by his predecessors which he sees his way to attain. Each is probably conscious that he has failed to satisfy his own ideal, and notes a thousand defects beyond all that critics have pointed out, and leaves the field still open for the enterprise of others. For all, probably, it has been good that they have made the effort. The work has been its own reward in the elevation and tranquillity, the closer fellowship with noble minds, and clearer insight into their thoughts, which it brought with it. Few have failed so utterly as not to widen the circle of those to whom the great poems of the world are thus made familiar. We welcome these translations of Eschylus, accordingly, as proofs that the minds of students are turning to the dramatists as well as to the great epic poet of Greece, as helps to making English readers acquainted with their mighty and half-prophetic words. Wonderful as are the freshness and vividness of Homeric pictures the touches of deep pathos, the life and stir of battles, in which we see the dark blood pouring from the wounds, and hear the din of arms, we must turn to the dramatic poets in order to take a true measure of the height to which the Greek mind could rise, the musings and questionings which, spoken by the loftiest poets, woke echoes in the hearts of thousands. Homer may give us the mythology of Greece; we must look to the tragedians for its theology and Theodicæa.

We are tempted sometimes to wish that, side by side with that Royal

Mr. Walcott's use of pronouns is sometimes very puzzling, e. g., at p. 65 there is a statement respecting Glasgow, in which it is hard to discover who it was that "acted in the absence of the deanery." This last word is apparently a misprint for "dean."