the Laws for the Correction of Clerks," which was no sooner brought forward and its purport understood than the peers unanimonsly rejected its adoption. The bishops, being released from the trammels of Parliament and the questionable honour of the peerage, their income might be reduced and their number increased: the former we would fix at three thousand per annum and a residence within their diocese; and the latter at forty-eight, exclusive of the two archbishops, to whom we would assign four thousand per annum and a residence within the precincts of their archiepiscopal sees; and, depriving them of all patronage, we would enforce residence, as in the case of incumbents: so that, with nothing to distract their attention, excite jealousy, or engender discontent, they might associate intimately and pastorally with their clergy, and exercise their office with honour to themselves and benefit to the Church. We would vest the nomination of the archbishops in the hands of the bishops, and that of the bishops in the beneficed clergy, reserving to the Sovereign the right of selection in both cases from three names taken from the whole body of bishops for filling up an archiepiscopal vacancy, and from the beneficed clergy themselves of the whole diocese for the election of their own bishop. And seeing that the clergy, like every other class of men, should have a voice in the enactment of those laws to which they are expected to yield obedience, and that the giving to bishops a seat in the House of Lords is a very poor and defective substitute for the convocation, we would revive this ancient, this constitutional, mode of ascertaining the mind of the clergy, and of profiting by their experience in all matters proposed to be enacted or abolished which practically affected themselves and concerned the clerical order. The heads of the Church, meeting in their upper house of convocation, would carry far more weight than they do at present in their anomalous position in the House of Lords; and the clergy, who are at present wholly unrepresented (for they vote for members of Parliament only in common with the laity), would have, in the lower house, representatives from their own class, possessing a fellow-feeling with them, and in whom they would have full confidence. At present the clergy are by law excluded from the House of Commons, and yet they are never allowed to meet in convocation. 66 2 To guard against the maladministration of cathedral chapters, whose inefficiency and corruption is as notorious as that of their Popish predecessors, whom Cranmer speaks of as superfluous condition," we would abolish such corporate bodies, assigning a parochial district to their cathedrals as to any other VOL. XXII,-K parish church, and appropriating their revenues to the general fund for providing a parochial clergy. With reference to incumbencies and curacies, we would fix the income of the working clergy (and, as far as possible, all should be labourers in the vineyard), according to the duties required of them; population rather than quality of soil-spiritual destitution rather than paucity of labour-forming the ground of estimate, which, in no case, should exceed one thousand nor fall below two hundred per annum. We would make promotion, as far as possible, progressive: on leaving the University the graduate should undertake the duties of lay reader in some populous district, receiving a salary of one hundred per annum; on attaining deacon's orders he should labour under some experienced incumbent, and so, according to his faithfulness, proceed step by step, his prospect of preferment being secured by vesting the right of nomination to all livings in the beneficed clergy of each diocese, who should be bound to select the candidates in rotation, unless there existed any just ground for passing them over; in which case an appeal to the whole body of bishops, whose decision should be confirmed by the archbishops, should be open to the rejected party. We would also abolish all sinecures and useless offices, and exclude the clergy from all secular appointments and distinctions; the revenues of each diocese to be collected in a manner to be agreed on by the bishop and beneficed clergy; and, after providing for the wants of the diocese, whatever surplus remained to be paid into a general fund, and expended at the discretion of the archbishops and bishops in promoting the cause of true religion, and maintaining and perfectiug the efficiency of the whole Church as by law established in this kingdom. By this course the drones would be driven from the hive, the workers stimulated to renewed exertion, and the honey apportioned according to desert: the Church might then resume its proper station in the hearts of the people, and stand forth a realized emblem of sound doctrine, ministerial unity, Christian efficiency, and pure government; but, if the present state of selfish corruption, episcopal indifference, and clerical division, is permitted to continue, the fabric, already tottering to its fall beneath an incubus of its own creating, will quickly crumble into dust before the indignant voice of an insulted and neglected nation! 131 ART. VI.-King Charles the First; a Dramatic Poem in Five Acts. By ARCHER GURNEY. London: Pickering. 1846. 2. The Vision of Peace; or, Thoughts in Verse on the late Secessions from the Church of England. By WILLIAM JOHN EDGE, M.A., Rector of Waldringfield, Suffolk. London: E. Churton. 1847. AMONGST the many captious objections which our adversaries, Papist and Puritan, are in the habit of bringing against the theory and practice of the English Church, there is none, perhaps, which has greater weight with the young, the ardent, and the imaginative, than the often-repeated assertion that she does not give sufficient scope for the indulgence of those warm feelings, and deep sympathies, and high aspirations, which a wise and benevolent Creator must have given to us for some useful and beneficent purpose. The charge might be easily retorted: it would not be difficult to show that both the Vatican and the Conventicle inculcate principles and practices inconsistent with the legitimate exercise of either the heart or the imagination: the legitimate, we say, for we are bigoted enough to see nothing either praiseworthy or pardonable in the misguided fervour which pours itself forth in idolatrous love towards any (though they be the highest and holiest) of the creatures of God; or in the ill-regulated passions which drove the schismatics of an earlier age to deeds of violence and sacrilege, and which, in the present day, are wont to dissolve in the less mischievous, though scarcely less questionable, excesses of a religious revival. We like to call things by their right names; and, in our vocabulary, he that bows down to a carved or graven image is an idolater-he that murders his king a regicide-he who makes devotion the pretext or the prelude to profligacy a dissolute blasphemer. The charge, we say, might be retorted; and who is there that has examined the question practically, testing his results, not by the figments of advocates or the follies of dupes, but by the experience of history and the realities of life, that will not at once acknowledge the truth of such a charge? Our intention, however, in the present paper, is rather to encourage our friends than to attack our enemies—rather to exhibit our own strength than to point out the weakness of our opponents; and, leaving Popery and Puritanism for the time to the care of their respective adherents, to content ourselves with repelling the charge so boldly and frequently preferred against our spiritual mother" our dear mother of England." We might easily deal with our subject in the abstract: we might show, by à priori reasoning, that the truth of God must be most suited to the perfection of man's whole nature, and consequently to the legitimate development of each portion of it: we might proceed to prove in detail the accordance, or, if we may use the word, the unanimity, which exists between the Bible and the Prayer Book, and thus establish the claim of our Church to such a suitableness; and we might conclude by exhibiting this fitness in each individual case, and show how each truth propounded and each rule laid down tend either directly or indirectly to effect the object in view. But, as far as regards the point at issue, we are spared the time and trouble which such an undertaking, however successful, must necessarily consume. The poems now before us furnish indisputable proof, not only that Anglicanism is compatible with high poetry and deep feeling, but that it tends to foster and to cherish them-nay, more, that there is such a full agreement, such an inherent fitness between them, as renders poetry its appropriate vehicle, and emotion its natural expression. The first of these pieces is a poem, in a dramatic form, by a layman: the second is a short composition by a clergyman; and both are, we trust, the types of large and daily increasing classes of our fellow-Churchmen-men who are devoted to the cause and attached to the principles of our Church—but who love her too deeply, and understand her too well, to allow any minor differences to divide them from those of their brotherChurchmen," who are daily and hourly increasing in conformity to their Lord, and who, in drawing continually closer to him, are therefore of necessity ever approximating to each other:" and heartily can we join with Mr. Edge in his anticipation that "the time surely is not far distant when all such true-hearted and faithful men will perceive how much of their present difference is one of words rather than of things, and ...... at once recognise, appreciate, and love their Saviour's image in all who bear it." Both of these poems are, strictly and correctly speaking, the embodiment and expression of Church of England principles, the leading idea in the one being that stern unbending sense of right and truthfulness which has prevented our spiritual mother from using any of those unlawful means, or resorting to any of those questionable measures, from which her adversaries of various denominations-Romanist, Presbyterian, and Independent-have derived and continue to derive so much of their strength; whilst the "Vision of Peace" is characterized through out by that intensity of unbounded love which beams throughout the formularies of our Church, and shines so conspicuous in the lives and deaths of her saints and martyrs. And, under the influence of these principles, Mr. Gurney endeavours to rouse us from the wavering, and painful, and humbling weakness of the present, by calling us to contemplate and to profit by the lessons of the past; whilst Mr. Edge has undertaken a more delicate task-that of speaking to the present, of the present, and teaching us by our own example. But let us proceed to the consideration of the works themselves. The form of Mr. Gurney's poem is somewhat peculiar, combining, to a certain degree, the features of the epic with those of the tragic: for ourselves we should have preferred the more classical and, we think, more pleasing form of a trilogy—a form, too, which Shakspeare has consecrated to English historyyes, for ourselves, we should certainly have enjoyed the perusal of this poem more fully had it been broken into three distinct but inseparable parts, each carrying on the interest to a certain point, and winding up the tale sufficiently to make us pause and consider the past and proceed with greater eagerness to the future; and, we think, that this plan would have had many other advantages. The plot is, however, artistically speaking, almost perfect; but we will not balk our readers by detailing the mode in which each succeeding scene links the beginning with the end. The characters are finely drawn: they are clearly imagined in the poet's mind, and accurately yet boldly transferred to his canvass: they are, generally speaking, exact portraits: that of Cromwell is, from first to last, singularly correct and eminently successful-nothing is set down in malice and nothing in extenuation-we speak of the poem not of the notes. Take for instance the following scene, which takes place just before the catastrophe : "CROMWELL and RICHARD CROMWELL remain alone together. "Cromwell. Now speak. "Richard. O father! I have sought for days A hearing-hoped, too, to the last. "Cromwell. "Cromwell. "Cromwell. Thou art bestraught !" (p. 223). Poor boy |