she encourages the pontiffs to recur to the Apostolic See, to obtain power to celebrate, without restriction or hindrance, that festival so lovely for angels and men, that of the Immaculate Conception of Mary." Thus we are brought to the practical end and purpose of the Charge; which is simply to announce that permission has been sought and obtained from Rome, to celebrate the Festival of the Immaculate Conception with high solemnities, on the second Sunday in Advent, and to insert the words Regina sine labe concepta in all Litanies of the Holy Virgin, whether privately or publicly recited; to give notice that no edition of the "Hours" of the diocese would be approved, unless this invocation were added to the Litanies; and to exhort all clergy with cure of souls to propagate in their parishes the worship (culte) of Mary of the Immaculate Conception, and to instruct the faithful in the spirit of this devotion. These notices are given in five articles* at the close of the document, which is dated from the Archiepiscopal palace, Nov. 21, 1842. The whole is concluded with the Litera Apostolica previously received from Rome, signed by Cardinal Pedicini, secretary of the sacred rites, and dated June 10, 1842. Now, who is the author of this publication, on which we have been. so long employed? Is he an obscure priest in some unknown and superstitious hamlet? No. Lyons is not a city unheard of in the annals of ecclesiastical history. Who has not read of the famous martyrs, whose acts are so valued a record of the Primitive Church, of the "poor men of Lyons," so notorious at the end of the twelfth century,-or of the council a hundred years later (Aquinas died on the road to join it, and Bonaventura during its session), when the Saone saw bishops from Greece and ambassadors from Tartary? Of this city the author is Bishop. He sits in the seat of the famous St. Irenæus. Nay more: he is the first Archbishop in the country which calls itself the most enlightened in the world,-the Primate of all the Gauls. He is also a member of the College of Cardinals, chosen within these three years by Gregory XVI. the reigning Pope. His title-page, as it lies before us, is conspicuously ornamented with the cardinal's hat, surmounted by a scroll bearing these words, “Prima sedes Galliarum ;" and a paragraph which we faute originelle, fût solennellement proclamée au milieu de sa liturgie, lorsque le sang de l'agneau sans tache, source de toute rédemption, est au moment de couler sur nos autels. Enfin elle encourage les Pontifes à recourir au siège apostolique, pour obtenir de pouvoir célébrer, sans restrictions et sans entraves, la fête si belle pour les anges et les hommes, de l'Immaculée Conception de Marie. Art. 2.-A l'avenir, toutes les fois que l'on chantera ou récitera publiquement les Litanies de la sainte Vierge, on ajoutera à la fin, immédiatement avant le premier Agnus Dei, l'invocation, Regina sine labe concepta, ora pro nobis. Les fidèles ajouteront la même invocation aux Litanies, lorsqu'ils les réciteront en particulier. Désormais nous n'approuverons l'impression des Heures du diocèse, qu'autant que cette invocation sera ajoutée aux Litanies. "Art. 4.-Nous exhortons tous les pasteurs des âmes à propager dans leurs paroisses le culte de Marie immaculeé dans sa conception, et à instruire les fidèles sur l'esprit de cette dévotion." The 3d article proclaims a plenary indulgence in the usual manner: the 5th inculcates charity to the poor in connexion with this particular devotion. have just read in the English Churchman, containing extracts from some French journals, testifies to his importance in France. On this high ground we build our accusations against Rome. In the face of this document, it cannot be said that a corruption, against which we Anglicans especially protest, is a floating and accidental one, having no connexion with the inner life of the Roman Catholic system. We find it authorized and sanctioned, promoted and propagated, by the very highest authority. Assiduous efforts are made to widen and deepen its influence, its present growth is hailed with pleasure, and its future advancement looked forward to with sanguine expectation. "Henceforward," says the Archbishop, "the city of martyrs, the city of alms, shall be more than ever, and for ever, the city of Mary."* It was our intention to have added some extracts on this subject from a kindred work lately published at Rome; but at present we forbear; and, indeed, nothing further is required to strengthen our case. We conclude by pointing out two or three simple circumstances which it is very important for those to take into account who would rightly estimate the place which the worship of St. Mary occupies in the system; and, let us be permitted to add, very important to be weighed and pondered by those who are tempted to join the church of Rome, and in danger of being involved, insensibly but irresistibly, in the most dangerous delusions, to the peril of their immortal souls. First, let us consider how entirely the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception, and the Assumption, have passed into the devotions of the Roman Church. We do not merely allude to popular books of prayer, to images and representations in churches, or to the high ceremonial and religious zeal with which the festivals of the Virgin are ordinarily accompanied; though these things might be held sufficient proofs. We refer to the Roman Breviary, than which nothing can be more authoritative. Let any one examine the services for Dec. 8 and Aug. 15; or that appointed for the third Sunday in September, the Festival of the Seven Sorrows of Mary; and then say whether the surest methods have not been taken to rivet in the minds of the people the most perilous views of the honour due to the Virgin. Another cause, of widest influence, leads to the very same result. Every one knows how largely art is intermixed with the religion of Roman Catholics. In ways far more manifold than can here be described, they act and react one on another. And no subject has been so inspiring to painters and sculptors, none has led to such noble artistic results, as the feeling of homage and devotion to the Virgin. So it was in times past. This feeling was full of inspiration for the early masters; and what the influence of their works may be on pure and imaginative minds, let those say who have seen the heavenly frescoes left by the hand of Fra Angelico on those convent * "Et désormais la ville des martyrs, la ville des aumônes, sera plus que jamais et pour toujours la ville de Marie." walls at Florence. So again in later times, when art was more earthly and artists less religious. We may instance that glorious picture of the Assumption at Venice, which is like a blaze of light at the end of the gallery where it hangs, the grandest perhaps of all Titian's works. And, as we write of Italy, there comes back on Our memory a picture symbolical of the Immaculate Conception, of a very different school from the former, but still of the same tendency. We forget where it is to be seen, but it is by Sassoferrata, and of softest and most impressive beauty. But we may say generally, that whenever a series of scenes from the Virgin's life are represented, in the highest or the lowest style of art, they always end in the Assumption and Coronation. So it is in those sculptures with which Borromeo surrounded the choir of Milan Cathedral. So it is in the rude wood-work of the old church at Sion, in the Valais. How are worshippers to separate the evil from the good, when they see them united in the aids and incentives to devotion? Lastly, we must say a few words of another agency, which interpenetrates the whole Roman Catholic Church, and carries with it, through many imperceptible channels, the same unfortunate effects. The devotion to the Virgin seems to be especially practised among the monastic bodies; and these bodies are the sinews and arteries of the Church. This subject cannot now be entered into fully, and we content ourselves with an allusion to some of the orders which took their rise in that great revival of the thirteenth century, which left such important results behind it. One order, which came into being at Florence, adopted the devotion to the Virgin Mary as a characteristic principle, and assumed a title indicative of the same; and what the Servites did then, the Augustinians appear to do now, in a different way; if one may judge from the spectacle which is daily witnessed before the celebrated image in the Church of S. Agostino, at Rome. Nor is the case different with the Dominicans and Franciscans, those two magnificent communities, who waged the war of the Immaculate Conception. We believe that the success of the preaching of St. Dominic has been partly attributed to his frequent invocations of St. Mary; and we ourselves lately heard one of the preaching friars at Naples, labouring to prove that, of late years, peculiar holiness in members of his order had always gone along with a peculiar devotion to the mother of our Lord. And, as to the Franciscans, it is to their great doctor, Bonaventura, that the Psalter of the Virgin is ascribed, though falsely; and it was Haymo, an early general of the order, to whom the worst portions of the present Roman Breviary are mainly attributable. And let it be remembered how important an office the first of these orders holds in connexion with the censorship of the press in Rome; and what copious supplies of missionaries (most devoted missionaries, it must be conceded) are yearly sent out by the second: and therefore, how that, by means of them, a corruption may at once be fostered at the centre of the Roman Church, and circulated to its remotest extremities. See the 75th Tract for the Times. 518 The Rector in search of a Curate. Hatchard. 1843. By a CHURCHMAN. London: PART of our education consisted in a branch of literature now too much neglected, and which lives only in the recollection of such greybeards as ourselves, or in the healthy practice of dame schools; it was the "getting by heart" divers copies of verses. These pleasant poetical prolusions, we own, were of very diversified character; besides crude lumps of Watts and Cowper, some even took the undignified form of anonymous fables and apologues. Treacherous memory has displaced them by sterner, and often less profitable lore; but being addressed, at least in theory, to "the heart," we gladly own that some scanty traces of our youthful accomplishments remain. Of our pleasant confabulations of foxes and geese all traces have departed, save that which usually makes the least impression on the fancy; and contrary to the recognised laws of thought, we have preserved only that dull tag of a fable which youthful moralists usually make it a point of duty not to retain-we mean the sage and unpalatable "moral," which, from Esop to La Fontaine, like the dose of rhubarb, which it is held right by all motherly dieticians to season our juvenile luxuries, points the otherwise too pleasant fiction. The homely couplet runs "The faults of our neighbours with freedom we blame, But tax not ourselves, though we practise the same.' We are reminded of this simple warning by the present state of the Religious Fiction. In the vulgar Low Church periodicals, one staple complaint against "the Tractarians" is, their use of tales of the imagination." Mr. Paget's last novel," "The Reverend Novelist," "Mr. Gresley's Love Tales," are stock rómo of reviling -stereotyped heads of declamation-common-places as stately and crushing as undeniable-useful alike to point a sneer, or to veil an inuendo. And yet, if our memory serves us right, the credit, however questionable, of inventing this class of works, is not quite attributable to the orthodox writers of the Church; but little acquaintance with what one of our contemporaries calls "Popular Religionism," will show that the Lichfield divines found this weapon ready forgedthey are but humble imitators of their present critics. We have forgotten neither "Calebs in search of a Wife;" nor The Velvet Cushion;" nor "Father Clement;" nor "The Siege of Londonderry;" and other, in every sense of the word, fictions, from the Charlotte Elizabeth scandal-shop. The Oxford writers here, at any rate, can substantiate but flimsy claims to originality; and the work which we are about to notice, shows, that if the " Evangelical" churchmen were not above opening this mine, neither are they prepared to relinquish its useful veins. Disdaining to quit what their organs would wish us to believe a preoccupied stage, they not 66 66 only become play-wrights themselves, but steal our plots: they dress our lay figures in their own tinsel, and they not only condescend to be imitators, but plagiarists; and under their rather unscrupulous novel-craft, Bernard Leslie" is travestied into the "Rector in search of a Curate;" and the Yoricks, if such they be, of Portman-street and Rugeley, must at least admit rivals on their throne, in the facetious jesters of Piccadilly or Fleet-street. We, at least, can afford to call attention to a fact which other critics find it convenient to suppress; we have not been backward in owning our suspicion, whether mere fiction is a legitimate weapon in the Church's armoury. We own that it is a missile brilliant and effective, but like the Greek fire, it is one which is apt to burn the compounder's fingers; or, like its pyrotechnic substitute, it may amuse women and boys, but it is apt to explode with more sparks than shot. It is too showy and attractive to tell upon a serious contest; it suits Pekin rather than Salamanca; it is more of the fancy than of the heart; it does no execution. But good or bad— Church-like or emasculate-sound or trifling-dignified or the reverse -our adversaries have no right to complain, if-and we own it to be a questionable point-any respected writers who claim and receive our sympathies, if not our more cordial approval, choose to have recourse to it, they are far from standing alone in their tactics; others can imitate as well as abuse them. The "Rector in search of a Curate," is a novel of the most approved type; it has several nice young men, and nice young ladies to pair off with them; it has the legitimate amount of declarations of attachment; a disappointed swain who never told his love, and a successful rival who did, and consulted papa first, which is pretty, and dutiful, and unusual; it has the prescribed quantum of teaparties and smart dialogues. It has sweet glimpses of evangelical domesticities and charming families. It has the still life of rectorial conservatories, where the curate and the parson's daughter "walk for a few minutes before dinner," p. 160. Moon-light reveries; the damsel's dress, and the Corydon's hair, are duly chronicled; the brother jokes knowingly, and the sisters simper sympathizingly; the mother is prudent, and the father conciliating; the house is furnished, and the fiancée blushes-no; looking again, we think that she is of sterner stuff; the friends of the family congratulate and make presents: "Lo! two weddings smile upon the tale." The happy pairs retire to their duties, parochial and connubial; and it all ends in smiles and happiness, just like the story-books: the bride's signature to the register is not forgotten; her" firm voice," and scarcely perceptible tremor," (p. 364,) do credit to the heroine's nerve, though, by an unaccountable gaucherie, her chip bonnet and orange flowers are not described; and while "the ordination" of the selected curate heads the last chapter, lest the tale should terminate in anything like inconvenient and inconsistent solemnity, the new |