Basil, De Spiritu Sancto, c. 27. Both enumerate customs such as we find in the earliest forms and elements of the Constitutions. Neither of these drops a hint of these customs being in any way authentically recorded. They not only speak of them as unwritten, which, it may be fairly argued, only means not prescribed in Scripture; but imply, by their silence, that they were not written with authority anywhere. 3. When we look to internal evidence, the structure of these works makes it highly improbable that they were books of authority. It is scarcely to be supposed that the Bishops and Presbyters of Alexandria would have put out their code of Church Rules in a mythical form; it is inconsistent with the forms of all their canons that remain to us. These were always, so far as we know, brief and concise rules. That the Duce Viæ, with all its strange fictions, was anything more originally than the composition of some pious but fanciful writer, who wished to throw the rules for Christian life and Church government into a dramatic form, is difficult to believe. 4. The treatment of the other collections-those which we called the Hippolytean and the Didascaly-by their different editors, seems to imply the same. They appear to have considered it open to any one, on the whole, to modify them as he would. Some portions, indeed, are apparently preserved with care -the rules for catechumens, for instance, and some other partsbut, generally speaking, a comparison of the different versions and forms shows that they were not looked on as authoritative rules would be-sacred and inviolable. In this respect they are remarkably contrasted with the Apostolical Canons. With the exception of four Canons on heretical Baptism, which are not found in the Coptic and Ethiopic, the text of those Canons has been preserved intact, carefully guarded from alteration. The only changes, we believe, are those insertions which were made to give a colour to the fiction of their being set out by the Apostles, probably at a late date, and which may be corrected out of MSS. and versions.' The Constitutions, on the contrary, seem to have been regarded as common property. The composition of unknown authors, and originally to a great extent fictions, they have neither been treated with the reverence due to a code of laws in which each word is sacred, nor with the respect that is paid to the acknowledged words of a known writer. 1 Canon 29, As Simon was by me, Peter:' the word 'me' is not in the version of Dionysius Exiguus, nor in the Epistle of Tarasius to Adrian. Canon 50, the Latin has, The Lord hath declared unto us.' Kúpos nuîv in almost all the Greek MSS.; and in Zonaras and Balsamon it is Kúpios, or Kúpios nuv. Canon 32,' As our brother Onesimus; and Can. ult., The Acts of us the Apostles.' The Arabic paraphrase has, As Onesimus,' and The Acts of the Apostles.' See Beveridge, i. 17. 4. In the last Canon the list of Sacred Books has also been interpolated. 5. It seems a mistake to argue, from our finding any of these sets of Canons in a given language, that they were the Code of Church Law of that country. The notion proceeds on the questionable supposition that they were such at any time, or in any place. But, supposing even that they did originally express the rules and forms of the Church in which they were first composed, it seems almost certain that, before the time when they were translated—say, into Coptic or Æthiopic, they had ceased to be regarded as rules, and had become literary curiosities, or collections for pious reading. Had they been authoritative documents in the fourth century, we must have known it. They were current in the Church, bearing apostolic titles, and were naturally translated by those who wished to provide their countrymen with religious books-very probably the translations were the work of monks, more pious than critical. They are indeed interesting and valuable relics. The more pure we can make the text, the more nearly we can approximate to the original condition of the composition, the more interesting and valuable they become, because they may contain fragments of real rules; and even when mere fictions, they have an historical use quite independent of their authority. Even the Didascalia, fiction as it is, has some value-so far, at least, as it falls in with the testimony of other writers. The Dua Vie conveys but little information, but its antiquity makes it more interesting; it seems to bring us almost up to the time of the Apostles. The Hippolytean and the cognate Coptic Collections seem to have the greater value, from the multiplicity of other matter which they contain, from their appearing to be more like authoritative rules than the others, and in some cases to be ancient; but the alteration they have undergone, the appearance of their being local, and (as in the case of Confessorship giving Priesthood) expressing temporary and irregular forms of superstition, take away our confidence in them as expressing recognised doctrine or received practice. To conclude; one thing is quite certain-Of various ages and from various localities as these Constitutions seem to be, altered and added to by so many hands, they yet throughout present one idea of Christianity, as a sacramental and sacerdotal system. Confessorship, indeed, was thought in some place to supply the want of ordination. Still this very view, rejected as it was by the whole Church, implied that Orders was a great and special gift. Laymen appear, indeed, as teachers, and excellent things are said of their teaching; but it is only as Catechists, instructing those who have not been baptized; an office which all Christians would allow to belong to laymen. Bishops are the sole ordainers, and, in their having the power of ordination, differ from the Presbyters. The Bishops are elected by their flocks,―lay and cleric,-but are approved by the Bishops of the province, and consecrated by them. They confirm the baptized. Baptism is solemnly administered;-sponsors answer for those who are not of an age to answer for themselves. The holy Eucharist is throughout the Oblation-the Oblation of the Body and Blood of Christ. The Holy Sign is made, and the people are directed how to make it. The dead are remembered in prayer. Fasting is ordered. The great festivals are solemnly observed. The hours of prayer,-night and morning, and the three day hours,-are kept. The religion depicted in them is a practical and a heart-felt religion, whilst it is, and because it is, a sacramental, a ritual, a sacerdotal religion. Whatever be the history of the Constitutions and their portions, whatever else they show, they show that our religion has, in this respect, ever been the same; and that when we come up to the verge of the Apostolic age, and almost within hearing of the Apostles' voices, we find Clergy and Laity, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, ordaining and ordained; Baptism and Confirmation; the sacred Oblation of the Body and Blood of Christ; the participation of it as a means of life; and no trace of the beginning of such a system can be found, except with the Lord and His Apostles. 310 ART. II.-Poems. By MATTHEW ARNOLD. A New Edition. Longmans. 1853. THE appearance of the name of a son of Dr. Arnold on the title-page of a volume of poems, cannot but excite a kindly interest in all those who admired, even when they could not agree with, his well-known father. Our good-will, moreover, is conciliated towards Mr. Arnold himself, by the filial consideration for his father's name which has led him to publish two smaller volumes anonymously, and to reserve the avowal of his own authorship, till success, important in its nature if moderate in amount, had shown that he was not likely to discredit a name which any one might be proud to bear. He is not without grounds for the confidence he appears to have assumed. The volume indeed is open on many points to critical remark; but no one of any poetical feeling can peruse it without recognising in the author the possession of remarkable powers, even where a mistaken theory of poetry has thwarted their development and cramped their exercise. All persons of taste would not agree that it was a volume throughout of remarkable excellence. We should not ourselves be inclined to say so much. But we should think little of the poetical sensibility of any one who could be blind to the loveliness, or deaf to the harmony, of many of the separate poems which it contains. No young poet, even if his powers are the greatest, can ever shake himself free at first from the influence of his forerunners and contemporaries. Originality of style, at least where the style is good, comes late, and is the result of mature taste and experienced powers. And this is especially true of those greater and more cultivated authors, whose genius is the healthiest, and whose own style ultimately the most original. Penetrated with the beauties of their favourite masters, which none can so thoroughly appreciate as great disciples, the echoes of their predecessors' strains may be caught lingering in their own; and their manner takes the unconscious impress of the models they have so reverently studied and so profoundly admired. Take the early works of Shakspere himself, and see how much of Marlow and of the still older dramatic writers is to be found therein. It is, perhaps, profitless to add examples after an instance so great and so undeniable, yet Spenser, Milton, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Tennyson, in their early works, exhibited traces of the influence of their predecessors in the art. To go further back, the whole range of Latin poets, with (perhaps) scarcely an exception, in the great bulk of their productions, formed their styles distinctly upon Greek models, which to them were ancient, and occasionally descended to direct verbal imitation. It is not therefore in the way of blame that we note the influence of great masters upon Mr. Arnold's style; but as a mark of his powers being yet immature, and that it is at present impossible to predict with any confidence the position in the poetical commonwealth which he may be hereafter entitled to assume. For at present even the best of his compositions, with perhaps a single exception, are referable to some well-known original, which the cadence of his verses, or the general tone and spirit of his work, whether intentionally or not, at least indisputably, recall. The models are indeed various and good, but the imitation is obvious though successful. Taste, therefore, rather than power, is as yet the characteristic of Mr. Arnold's inuse; and he succeeds less in creating a fresh impression upon his readers, than in reminding them of other great writers, and in reproducing the effects which those writers have already succeeded in creating. Take for instance the following passage from one of his latest poems: 'As when some grey November morn, the files Or some frore Caspian reed-bed, southward bound First, with black sheep-skin caps and with long spears; Next the more temperate Toorkmuns of the South, And those from Attruck and the Caspian sands; Sohrab and Rustum, p. 11. This is a direct and very successful imitation of Milton's manner; not only the general air has been cleverly caught, but the very phrases and words are Miltonic. We have no objection to the passage in itself, but we feel that the thing has been done, and better done, before. Equally close and equally successful is the imitation of a different model in the passage we subjoin from an earlier poem on the striking story of Mycerinus, as given in Herodotus: 'Seems it so light a thing then, austere Powers, To spurn man's common lure, life's pleasant things |