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1. Sacrilege and its Encouragement. A Letter to the Bishop of London. By BRYAN KING, M.A., Rector of S. George's in the East. Masters.

2. A Letter to the Bishop of London. By a Layman. Pickering. 3. The Outrages at S. George's in the East. A Letter to Sir G. C. Lewis. By Alpha. Masters.

4. A Letter to T. Davidson, Esq., Churchwarden of S. Paul's, Knightsbridge. By the Hon. and Rev. R. LIDDELL. J. T. Hayes.

THE notice of these Letters, all referring to the condition of the Church in the Diocese of London, aptly follows the notice of the Bishop's own Letter; for on the Bishop himself, we fear, it is impossible to avoid charging the whole of these sad proceedings, both in the East and West end of the metropolis. If the Bishop had done his duty by Mr. Bryan King, when Mr. Hugh Allen was first appointed to the Lectureship, the "Disturbances" which have now become so notorious, would never have existed; as it is only because the Bishop is known to be personally hostile to the Rector, that the Home Secretary and his subordinates in Scotland Yard and Thames Street have combined to perpetrate the most disgraceful perversion of justice that was ever known in a civilized country. And now the success of these Eastern rioters reacts, as might be expected, on the smouldering but not extinct malignity of Mr. Westerton and his employers, who are anxious to see if the Bishop cannot be frightened or cajoled into doing as good a turn for them as he has done for the rabble of S. George's.

Mr. Liddell writes, we are glad to see, courageously, as the consciousness that he is backed by 1,000 communicants may well urge him to do. We trust that the same consciousness will make the Bishop feel that he must not trifle with the religious instincts of such a body of persons.

By AMELIA MARY LORAINE, London: Newby. 1858.

Steps to the Mountains. A Tale. Author of "Lays of Israel," &c. MRS. LORAINE is known, we presume, to many of our readers as a graceful and imaginative writer. The little work before us will not disappoint their expectations from her pen. But indeed it possesses a higher praise than these qualifications-it is earnest, and directed with effect to the exposure and discountenance of prevalent evil, and the inculcation of unpopular good. The preface, which is admirable, sets forth some of the more prominent and startling facts to be found in public statistics, indicating a state of things terrible to contemplate, but much more terrible to neglect. The ignorance and abandonment of the labouring classes, the selfishness of those who employ their labour without caring for their souls,-are brought into vivid contrast, both in the preface and the tale, and shown to have assumed a formidable relation, which must necessarily, unless timely remedied, result in an inundation of unbelief and anarchy.

Lucy Sydney is the daughter of religious parents, who, in her rambles in the neighbourhood of their temporary country abode, not far from London, where her father is an eminent publisher, falls in with two orphan children, a boy and a girl, the latter of whom had received a

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"holiday" from her employer, Mr. Magog, a wealthy slopseller in London,-in other words, has been turned off for not working beyond her power. The boy maintains himself as best he may, by any random work he can obtain. They are, to use the words of the writer, a rough type of thousands of children which, despite our institutions, our schools, and our theorizing Christianity, augment fearfully around us. Scarcely one stately line of our domestic palaces that does not cast its hindward shadow upon groups of wretched tenements where such children dwell (strange, inconsistent proximity, whose only meaning seems to be sternly to satirize the fact, that, in so many cases the rich habitually turn their backs upon the poor) and from whence they issue forth with the day, sometimes to grow decrepid or consumptive in its long hours of illpaid labour, sometimes to beg, with the early, sullied, half-faded flowers they so much resemble, in their hands, extended again and again to us, as we pass and repass them in the streets, and at the doors of costly shops, and cross-surmounted churches, sometimes to—worse misery." These observations are continued in a similar practical strain : and Lucy Sydney exemplifies the practice. She gives herself, in a selfdenying spirit, to the recovery of the poor outcasts,-and succeeds. But self-denying duty often succeeds beyond its expectations and while Lucy reclaims the poor orphans from ignorance and drudgery to pure religion and honest industry, she is opening the way for reclaiming the whole family of the Magogs from their insensibility and selfishness; she rescues one of the daughters from an unprincipled adventurer; the counterpart of Count Haryzkampowicz in "The Owlet of Owlstone Edge," but no copy, as Mrs. Loraine's hero is of elder birth; and she obtains for her as husband Clement Magog, the son, who is a good Catholic, and who becomes an earnest clergyman: meanwhile she owes her life to the intrepidity of Walter, the boy whom she has rescued from igno. rance and ruin, who, at the risk of life, and with the loss of an arm, rescues her from a conflagration. This event is depicted with great vigour and graphic ability—as indeed all the descriptions are lively and picturesque. The style is throughout ornate and animated, and the religious principles of the writer are introduced naturally and unaffectedly, and with telling power. She is herself a sound Catholic, and she exposes, with an earnest but quietly jocose humour, some of the most common absurdities of the present day, as the identification of the Protestant and the Anglican, the Romanist and the Catholic. Indeed, the little book contains both wit and wisdom, and may convey to many a "sound Protestant" who could not endure a treatise, some startling. evidence of his mistakes.

The book is got up with a view to the drawing-room, and its garb is even suggestive of the orange-blossom; but though well adapted for the ornamental table, it is, if possible, better suited to the town school or parish library, to which we commend it as a valuable addition, notwithstanding the refinement of its style. Literature is now becoming so much more generally diffused, and language is so much more cultivated, that a book so clearly written will not fail to find readers in a class, where, a few years ago, its phraseology would have rendered it a sealed volume.

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We are glad to find, in Trevenan Court, a tale which for once avoids the unseemly mingling of love-making and religion. The work, from first to last, enunciates boldly the unpalateable doctrine of self-sacrifice; and the whole tone of feeling and principle which pervades it is so good, that we can overlook the absence of any very remarkable genius in its pages. Artistically viewed it is wanting in imaginative power, and animation; but the pure spirit breathing through it saves it from being dull or commonplace.

Snow-drop, likewise a production of the Channel Islands, is from the pen of a writer of some ability, who might do good service with her attractive style if she chose. But here again we stumble on a highwrought religiousness brought into action by the uncontrollable mischances of the course of true-love. It certainly seems to us that we have had enough of these works, harmless as they are, and we would recommend the present author to aim at something higher. The writer makes a strange mistake in calling the second celebration on a high festival the "post-communion."

The Curate's Wife, (Mozleys,) is a very graphic and heart-stirring description of the miseries endured we fear by thousands of clergymen in consequence of their improvident marriages. It seems written with the definite purpose of calling forth summary aid for such persons; and we trust indeed that where individual cases are known it may not be withheld. But surely the evil in the abstract requires a remedy of a very different nature. Setting aside altogether the question of the celibacy of the clergy on religious grounds, the merest common sense must show the absolute culpability of the marriage of a priest on means which are not only barely sufficient, when alone, to enable him to maintain his office with respectability; but totally inadequate for the support of a wife and family. How is it possible that he can rightly perform his clerical duties when life becomes a continuous struggle for subsistence? It is not too much to say that a person who has placed himself in this position is simply unfaithful to his Master, and dishonest to the Church he serves.

We have read with much pleasure a Lecture on Gravestones, Epitaphs, and Cemeteries, delivered in Cape Town, by the Rev. ALBERT WOOD. The lecturer writes with a good deal of humour and spirit; and certainly our South African colonists have not in this respect improved upon the habits of England even in its lowest and most neglected localities.

It is impossible to notice all the sermons and volumes of sermons that accumulate on our table. We must, however, make an exception in behalf of the third series of SEGNERI's, which is quite equal to its predecessors and of an Easter volume, by the Rev. W. P. S. BINGHAM, which is much above the average. Of the Oxford Lenten Sermons, the Bishop's and that of Mr. LIDDON, strike us as very powerful (the latter, however, being too long.) And we are specially glad to particularize one by the Dean of CANTERBURY, vindicating very forcibly the doctrine of good works. In one or two passages, however, there is a curious admixture of a more questionable theology.

The publication of the names of the 10,000 clergy who have protested against Lord Ebury's Revision of the Prayer Book, by Messrs.

Bell and Daldy, is a fact which in these days of apathy should be acknowledged with thankfulness. It is a very deep-seated conviction which alone can have stirred up so many quiet-loving parsons. They are just as 24 to 1 against the Revisionists; and many more names, we are sure, will yet be added.

We cannot at all commend The Church and the Ulterior Views of the Non-Conformists, by a Layman, (Wertheim.) It is written in a very bitter spirit.

Another Pamphlet on The S. George's Riots has reached us as we were going to press. It is in the form of a Letter to Lord Brougham, and is entitled, An Appeal to Justice and Common Sense, (Painters.) Alas! where are they to be found?

Dr. HUSENBETH has put forth a very useful, interesting, and complete Manual,—which is just what it professes to be and nothing more -Emblems of Saints: by which they are distinguished in works of Art. (Longman and Co.)

The Rev. ALEXANDER RAMSAY, in a well-meant Tract entitled Sixteen Pleas for Infant Baptism, (Wertheim,) has put forth some views of theology which we do not remember to have seen anywhere else.

Mr. Cowan's Second Series of Sermons quite answer to the title of Plain Sermons (Skeffington). They are also orthodox and pointed, and bear impress of the author's individuality-a qualification which conduces much to a preacher's success.

Short Notes on the Acts of the Apostles, by the Rev. H. DOWNING, (J. H. Parker,) are better than we should have expected, seeing they only profess to be derived from writers of the modern German school, like Ölshausen, and were intended for the use of teachers in the compiler's own school.

There is no more difficult art than that of "lecturing." When, therefore, we say that the Rev. JAMES DAVIES appears to us to have hit the right mean in his lecture on Imagination, (Masters,) between what is too high and too low for an average audience of persons who want to be amused and should be also improved, we mean to award very high praise to his little essay.

From the prolific press of Messrs. Clarke, of Edinburgh, we have to acknowledge three substantial volumes, viz., Tholuck on the Gospel of S. John; Hengstenberg on Ecclesiastes; and Kusta's History of the Church, reaching down to the end of the fifteenth century.

The Society for making known the principles of the Church of England on the Continent have put forth, under the able editorship of Dr. GODFRAY, a volume entitled, Des Principes de la Reformation en Angleterre, in which the Bishop of Oxford's Fifth of November Sermon occupies the first place. We do not for a moment doubt the good intentions of the gentlemen forming this society, and we quite believe that a few tracts setting forth the Catholic character of the English would be very serviceable for circulation on the Continent; but we cannot think it fair, under the pretext of vindicating ourselves from false aspersions, to employ language which no good Catholic would allow himself to read. We allude to such phrases as "the impure Confessional," "Pagan purgatory," &c., &c.

THE NEW ESSAYISTS: DR. WILLIAMS AND OTHERS.

(Continued from p. 240.)

WE must now proceed to consider Dr. Rowland Williams's Review of "Bunsen's Biblical Researches." Here we cannot but notice the way in which a work like Mr. Rawlinson's "Bampton Lectures," having just appeared upon the same subject, is entirely left without notice, except an ironical sneer. The article is written as if all persons who had considered the subject had given in their adhesion to the baron. As the preceding writer joined Pagan Greece and Rome with the holy nation and with our LORD JESUS CHRIST as our teachers and examples, so does Dr. Williams bid us look to them also for traces of Revelation. The idea of GOD as the universal FATHER is to be substituted for that of GOD as having chosen out a peculiar people to be the special sanctuary of His Revealed Truth. The professed record of revelation is therefore to be paganised in order that the worshippers of other gods may be brought within the sphere of an imaginary revelation. We say imaginary, for the idea of revelation being thus widened, its character forthwith disappears. Miracles are objected to as vouching for revelation, and therefore, of course, revelation in its true sense there can be none, for revelation is the greatest of all miracles. We say the greatest of all, except perhaps one, which is existence itself. When philosophers can explain how we exist, they may complain of disturbances in the order of existing things. When they prove that God did not create us, they may boast that GOD cannot speak to us. However, they have, it seems, an idea that the development of moral consciousness is a more philosophical notion than that of GOD speaking to man by accredited messengers. The simple result, of course, is just to cut man off from communication with GOD, leaving the word 'GOD,' as an idea at the root of action, but inoperative and inaccessible. The triumph of modern research in history will be, it seems, to eliminate the idea of Divine interference; for of course, when we are told to "trace the footsteps of the Eternal on other shores than Palestine," we are driven simply to confess that what happens, happens for the carrying out of His Divine purposes. No one doubts God's wise government of the heathen nations of all times. We may be quite unable to explain it. That is another thing. But to speak of a revelation of GOD amongst them in any sense is to destroy the meaning of the word. Let us see how ancient history is to be approached, according to the Bunsenic evangelisation.

"We cannot encourage a remorseless criticism of Gentile histories and escape its contagion when we approach Hebrew annals; nor acVOL. XXII.-JUNE, 1860.

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