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their usefulness, and would cause many readers to throw them aside

at once.

Four short manuals, from the pen of the Rev. G. Shuin, of Newton, Mass., contain some very useful matter, which may have more weight among some English readers, thanks to the freshness of their Transatlantic word-clothing, than the more stereotyped books they are accustomed to.

I. A Manual of Instruction for Confirmation Classes has a great deal of excellent practical teaching. See Chapters iv. and vi., on 'Special Seasons, and Home Piety, bringing to bear the dogmatic teaching given upon everyday life.

II. A Manual of Church History is well drawn up, and on the whole is moderate and fair in its dealings with the Reformation, the Jesuits, Ultramontanism, &c. The chapter called 'Since the Reformation' is interesting, and well written.

III. A Manual of Instruction on the Prayer-Book is interesting, from its bearing upon the Church's progress in America, and some of our English parochial readers may learn to value it and its PrayerBook more when seen through others' glasses.

IV. Questions about our Church is a little book intended for those outside the Church, who may be turning over in their minds the desirableness of joining her, and though not taking quite the highest ground possible, might be found very useful among Dissenters.

Each member of the whole batch will be likely, after its several fashion, to prove a useful addition to the parish tables of the parochial clergy.

THE RETROSPECT OF 1878.*

I.

DEATH has been so much more busy with remarkable men abroad than has been the case at home that, contrary to our usual custom, we will commence our Annual Retrospect with the foreign rather than the domestic obituary.

Scarcely had the year opened when the new Kingdom of Italy lost, first, its most distinguished military commander, the General La Marniora, familiar to all who remember the days of the Crimean War as having led the Italian Contingent which joined the English and French forces before Sebastopol, and a few days afterwards, at the moderate age of fifty-eight, the first King of the modern kingdom of Italy, Victor Emmanuel, who died January 9. Then, within a month, at the age of eighty-five, and after a pontificate of thirty-one years, passed away the spiritual potentate, who had so long and so obstinately confronted the new King, Pope Pius the Ninth; and almost immediately after him, the famous Jesuit astronomer and savant, Padre Secchi. But it has not only been in Italy that the

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year 1878 has taken away the leading ecclesiastical characters. Early in October died Bishop Doupanloup, the ablest of French Bishops; and on October 24, Cardinal Cullen, aged 78, who had long directed the policy of the Roman Church in Ireland. Seldom, indeed, has a single year seen the departure of such a group of men, who had exercised so large an influence in such extensive spheres of action.

At home our greatest loss has been that of Bishop Selwyn, the great founder and organiser of the New Zealand Church, and whose Lichfield Episcopate, if not equally brilliant, was at least not unappreciated by those among whom he laboured with an untiring and unresting devotion, which left him no time or energy for work beyond his immediate diocese. The extraordinary demonstration of respect at his funeral in Lichfield ought to be chronicled, as showing that faithful labours, such as his, do not fail of their due estimation. To our human judgment, his removal was painfully inopportune, being just before the commencement of the second Congress of the Bishops of the Anglican Communion, in which he would have been the one great link between the Bishops of all its several branches. It is somewhat singular that his Episcopate at Lichfield exactly filled up the space between the first and second of these important gatherings. He died April 11, and was the only Diocesan Bishop of the Church in England who died during 1878. But October removed from us the first of the revived Suffragan Bishops, Bishop Mackenzie, of Nottingham; and Ireland has lost the Bishop of Cork, Dr. Gregg.

Supreme in his own way as Bishop Selwyn had been, perhaps ar almost equally deep, though, of course, far less wide-spread feeling was excited at the death, on January 4, of Professor Mozley, whose general reputation had been lately so much increased by the publication of the now well-known volume of University Sermons, and the same month took away Mr. George Williams, vicar of Ringwood, best known through his keen interest in the affairs of the Eastern Church, and his long residence at Cambridge as Fellow of King's College.

Church architecture has lost Sir Gilbert Scott, whose fortune it had been to have superintended the 'restoration' of nearly every English Cathedral, to say nothing of churches innumerable either built or restored, so that whatever else may have to be said of him it is certain that no other individual man has left so strong a mark upon the fabrics of the English Church. It should be added that he was the architect selected, after a European competition, to build the Hamburg Cathedral, after the great fire in that city of about forty years ago.

Other ecclesiastical names which deserve commemoration are those of Dr. Saunders, for five-and-twenty years Dean of Peterborough, a name deeply honoured by the elder among us, but for the last few years little heard of through failing health; Dean Llewellin, of S. David's; Dr. Jenkyns, Canon of Durham, and for many years Professor of Divinity in the University of Durham, and whose lectures in the first days of that University attracted so many Divinity students to it; Dr. Symons, ex-Warden of Wadham College, a face

and figure long familiar to Oxford men; Mr. Wood Warter, of West Tarring, son-in-law to Robert Southey, and editor of his Remains, and Dr. A. B. Evans, Vicar of St. Mary-le-Strand, whose able, though somewhat singular sermons attracted so many hearers.

The Royal family has been invaded during the past year by the death of the ex-King of Hanover, the Duke of Cumberland, in June, and more recently, on December 14, the anniversary of her father's death, by that of the deeply lamented Princess Alice, Grand-Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt.

The roll of political characters remains comparatively intact-Lord Russell, who died May 28, at the age of 85, being rather a survival of an earlier era than a political name of the present, and Mr. Russell Gurney, however respected both in and out of the House, having hardly been a political character, although his name will be long associated with Parliamentary proceedings in connexion with the already decaying fabric of the Public Worship Regulation Act. In like manner it may be said that the death of Lord Chelmsford, though it removes one who had been a Cabinet Minister, scarcely removes a politician or a statesman. And Mr. Whalley, though emphatically a Parliamentary, was certainly not a political character. Art has lost Sir F. Grant; Ægyptology, Mr. Bonomi; and Literature, Mr. G. H. Lewes.

This obituary of the year may, perhaps, be fitly closed with a mention of the chief ecclesiastical appointments, which are as follows: (1) That of Dr. Maclagan, well known through his work at Newington and Kensington, to succeed Bishop Selwyn at Lichfield; (2), of Professor Perowne, to the Deanery of Peterborough; (3) of Canon Allen, to the Deanery of S. David's-an appointment most natural and most deserved; and (4) that of Mr. Ernest Wilberforce, to the difficult post of the chief of the Mission scheme devised as the memorial to his father, Bishop Wilberforce, and, therewith to the Canonry at Winchester, vacant by the death of Canon Woodrooffe. This appropriation of a canonry to the promotion of a great diocesan work is in itself a sign of the times, and deserves to be chronicled, and it is to be hoped that the success of the undertaking may be commensurate with the needs which exist for it in the populous centres in which the Mission is intended to labour.

The retirement of the Earl of Chichester from the Ecclesiastical Commission, and the appointment of the Earl of Stanhope in his place, should also be mentioned, and also Bishop Baring's resignation of the see of Durham. At the moment of writing his successor has not been appointed.

II.

The events of the year have been so almost entirely political, that its ecclesiastical history has been comparatively unimportant; and considering that, above all things, the Church at the present moment needs rest and quiet to pursue her course of leavening the nation and winning back the masses of the population who have grown up outside her influence, this is not to be regretted. Still the year has had

its ecclesiastical events, although they have rather been such as to be the seeds of things to come than matters of immediate results.

First and foremost should be named the passing of the Additional Bishoprics Bill, which passed its third reading on August 14, thanks to the pertinacity of the Home Secretary, Mr. Cross, whose services in this particular ought to be more widely known and appreciated than, we fear, they are. More than thirty years have now passed since the agitation for this moderate increase of the Episcopate commenced, and if on the one hand it is somewhat discouraging to see how hard it is for the Church to obtain the permission to spend her own members' money in properly equipping herself for her duties towards the nation, still, on the other hand, it is a testimony to the value of unlimited perseverance. Thus far the nineteenth century has added the sees of Ripon, Manchester, Truro, and S. Alban's to the roll of Bishoprics as they stood at the close of Henry VIII's strange and eventful reign; and the Act of 1878 has rendered possible the addition of sees at Liverpool, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and Southwell-an achievement which, if only an instalment of what is needed, is still of the most hopeful augury. We have always held that the career of Bishop Longley in the diocese of Ripon furnishes the highest example of the good done by the subdivision of our huge dioceses. The Church in that part of Yorkshire was almost created during the years of his Episcopate, and we were glad to see in a number of the Quarterly Review of last year some sketch of what was then accomplished: a real, though tardy acknowledgment. The new diocese of Truro appears likely to be about to furnish such another example, and perhaps ere long we may ourselves undertake an account of the prompt and vigorous manner in which its organisation has been effected, and of the work which is being already accomplished. Let us hope that the fortunes of the new sees of Newcastle-on-Tyne and Liverpool, where the need is at least as great as it was in Cornwall, may be as happy as those of Truro.

On

Next after this extension of the Episcopate, though widely differing from it, the most important of purely home-church matters has been the still further collapse of the unfortunate and ill-starred Public Worship Regulation Act. Its inception set the Church by the ears, its operation has been not so much to rend the Church, as at first was feared, but rather to set the lawyers by the ears. the whole, the Bishops have shown a wholesome dread of using so dangerous a weapon; and in the very few cases in which it has been employed, the issue has been to array judge against judge and court against court. It is needless here to do more than to refer to the not very edifying way in which we have seen the highest legal authorities belabouring each other in reference to ecclesiastical proceedings. The Lord Chancellor, the Lord Chief Justice, the Chief Baron, and Lord Penzance have all been involved, and some at least of them have seemed as if they were bent on showing that the legal mind, the legal pen, and the legal tongue could outdo the proverbial bitterness of the odium theologicum. What the issue of it all may be time only can show, but, at all events, thus much is clear-the unhandy Public

Worship Regulation Act is hopelessly discredited; our miserably disorganised system of Ecclesiastical Courts is seen to be what Churchmen have always considered it, and Churchmen need only time and patience to secure some more wholesome state of things in its room. Everything comes to him who knows how to wait. The present dead-lock is educating such of the laity as can learn, faster and better than any words of ours could do it, and it does not need much faith to be convinced that there is a Power which out of this permitted chaos will in His own time elicit the wished-for Kosmos. Let any Churchman contrast the feelings with which we were looking upon things at the opening of 1876 with those at the opening of 1879, and we feel that gratitude and hope must predominate. It is true that the Living Voice' of the Church has not yet found its fully developed organ, but it is a serious question whether as yet we are ripe for its bestowal. Meanwhile, the dioceses are gradually organising themselves; the informal and somewhat irregular Diocesan Conferences are bringing laity and clergy into wholesome contact, and teaching them, if not to act together, at least to understand each other; they are quickening the perception of diocesan unity, and it cannot be long before, from out of their tentative and local efforts, some mode of central action on the part of the Church at large, in which the spiritualty and the laity can combine with good effect must be developed. The course of the Church Revival has been eminently encouraging: first, the revival of parochial Church life, which may be considered as accomplished; next, that of Diocesan life, in the mid process of which we now stand; thirdly, that of the central and combined action of the whole Church, towards which we are dimly but certainly advancing.

III.

But by far the most striking event of the year was the second LAMBETH CONFERENCE, which was attended by exactly one hundred Bishops of the Anglican Communion, namely, the two English Archbishops, and twenty-six English Diocesan Bishops, and three Suffragans, the two Irish Archbishops, and seven Irish Bishops; seven Scottish Bishops; seventeen Bishops from the United States, and two American Missionary Bishops, together with thirty acting and four retired English Colonial Bishops.

The proceedings were private, so far as the actual discussions were concerned, and this was at the special desire of some, particularly American Bishops, though with the concurrence of all; but we cannot help thinking that on another occasion it may be wiser to have a brief account of each day's proceedings prepared and published, not so much with the view of satisfying mere curiosity, as with that of protecting the Conference from misconception, as otherwise incorrect accounts ooze out which, however misleading, it is impossible to correct. Thus some by no means satisfactory reports did get into the Pall Mall Gazette, and every one remembers that in 1867 the Guardian in like manner had its own accounts of discussions. With respect to its REPORTS, the first and second were of the most

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