known for us to enlarge upon them. Lord John's cleverness had simply been effaced as by a chemical agent-it vanished without a trace-his wiliness had found something quite as subtle, and a little more permanent. Lord John had lived and was not he was like the May-fly in Callcott's glee:

'Poor insect! what a little day
Of sunny bliss is thine!

And yet thou spread'st thy light wings gay,
And bidd'st them spreading shine.
Thou humm'st thy short and busy tune,
Unmindful of the blast,

And careless while 'tis burning noon,
How short that noon has past!'

And now was the Premier's hour of grace.
Forbear, my lord,
'while you have yet time; persist not in your rash experiment
'--retrace your steps.' The warning was solemnly uttered,
and dutifully; but there are ominous sounds, even those rare
ones of a bishop's warning, which devoted ears may not hear;
the presage came from a quarter where the Premier had learned
in bygone days to tremble; the warning was grave;

Nomenque erat auguris ingens;
Spernit Echionides tamen hunc, ex omnibus unus
Contemptor Superûm, Pentheus; præsagaque ridet
Verba senis;'-

And on the 17th December, the Friday in Ember Week, the Congé d'Elire and Letters Missive, containing the fatal name of Hampden, were sent down to Hereford. On Monday, the 20th, the Times' published Dean Merewether's formal petition to the Queen, of the same date, the 17th, as the receipt of the Letters Missive, to be released from the election-a document, we venture to say, of which the actual value in invigorating English hearts is incalculable-a document which will possess historical weight and interest in days now far distant, as the petition of the Seven Bishops possesses in our own days; and for which the thanks of the whole Church are due to the writer. The receipt of the Dean's memorial was curtly acknowledged by Sir George Grey, with the notice that the Queen had 'no commands.' On the 27th instant appeared a document, if possible, of greater energy; Dean Merewether's memorable letter to Lord John Russell, reciting the whole deplorable case, announcing that every means had been tried to avert the blow, that a correspondence had passed, that interviews had taken place, in which Lord John had persisted in his determination to let the law take its course,' but concluding with the assurance, that in spite of what nearly amounted to threats' on the Premier's part, 'no power on earth' should induce him to consent to the election.

And on the 28th of December, -immediately after that significant second lesson which announced an Apostle's protestation from the authority of a cold-hearted political deputy, the Russell of his country-at last, when it was found that an appeal to the royal tribunal of justice had failed, the Lady Chapel of Hereford witnessed an appeal to a greater judgment-seat than that of Cæsar. A majority of the Capitular body went through the form of an election-the Dean and Canon Huntingford being dissentient. This was to have been expected. The Dean openly declared that the Statutes required the election to be unanimous; -which it was not; and that the Dean and three Residentiaries must be parties assenting; which they were not. Under this view, which we believe to be the legal one, the election being void, will be annulled at confirmationthe next stage in the proceedings. And, quitting here the historical part of our task, we may conclude it with the wellomened words with which the bishops left the court of James II. The will of God be done.'

And we have arrived at something more than the crowningpoint of this particular and single narrative-at something more important to the interests of this kingdom than this the fitting catastrophe of the 'Hampden controversy.' Even in that, the less prominent light, this great Hampden case has been, at last, fairly played through. It has had its beginning, middle, and end; it is a true and perfect drama. It has a technical and rigid unity. It is one, whole and perfect, and has unfolded itself legitimately. From the first, there was a largeness and solidity in the question. It began well, and it has ended well. A protest, and a successful one for the doctrinal purity of the English Church, outraged in one of its chief seats and fountains of learning, has ended in a protest, and an influential one, for its spiritual rights. Depth and consistency have marked every successive stage of the case. It was for the purity of the faith that the University censured Dr. Hampden as a teacher of the Church's faith--it is for the purity of the faith that the Church has rejected him as a guardian of the Church's faith. Nothing less than the very highest, and most hallowed, and vital interests of the Church-its soundness in 'the Catholic faith '-being at issue, could have justified this protracted and painful struggle. For a less cause than this, such a triumph would not have been permitted. And comparing the present with the other historical grounds for rejecting an undue exercise of the Regale which may seem parallel to the present case, Dr. Hampden's spiritual incapacity for the Episcopate arises from a cause much more grave and serious. It is this fact which gives its critical and decisive character and mark to the case.

In the troubles of Archbishop Becket the principle contended for was the same, and the difficulties which the high-minded and uncalculating assertion of them had to contend with were the same. For, in 1163, as well as in 1847, could be found Bishops of England who contended, 'that the world must obey the 'world's laws; and that, by sacrificing the liberty of the Church, 'they in no way compromised the Church itself-indeed, to do 'so were rather to strengthen it; "for," said they, "an obsti'nate resistance can end in nothing but our own ruin, whereas, 'by giving way to the king on this point, we may retain our 'inheritance in God's sanctuary, and repose in the peaceable 'possession of our churches: for we are placed in difficult cir'cumstances, and the temper of the times requires of us large 'concessions." This was the language on one side; and it is equally true and thankworthy that the opposite language of the Archbishop might pass for one of Dean Merewether's true-hearted appeals, You disguise to yourselves your cowardice under the ' name of patience, and, on the pretext of concession, you would ' enslave the spouse of Christ. The cause of God is not so ill 'supported as to require the fall of man that it may stand. Nor 'is the Most High at a loss for means to uphold His Church, 'though unaided by the truckling policy of its [dignitaries].' What is asked by the State now was asked then, only 'to 'conform unreservedly to the usages of this kingdom,' which very request now, as then, is admitted, 'consistently with the 'privileges of the Church of Christ.' In the days of Becket indeed, this lofty language was used about the respective rights of the civil and ecclesiastical courts over criminous clerks: in our own times, peril to a sound confession of the truth of the cardinal doctrine of the Most Blessed Trinity itself has awakened it; but the language is in both cases the language of the Church opposing and protesting against the world and its powers.

So again in the days of S. Anselm. Far are we from undervaluing the principle which involved him in his life-long dispute about investitures. We admit to the full how deeply the liberties of the Church may be perilled, especially in a formal ceremonial stage of society, by what seems so very a trifle as this or that hand giving ring and pastoral staff. But in a practical, and as it is called, sensible age of the world, it is something to find, that if the Church and the world must be fairly pitted, when a fight à l'outrance is inevitable, that it should be about creeds rather than copes. The last have their value: and if it is once fairly made known and admitted on both sides, that the two parties have rested the whole question of Church rights and Church authority on so insignificant a subject as a surplice, and that this, and nothing less than this is at issue, the battle may as well be taken upon 'the Prayer-for-the-Church-militant question,' to name the most insignificant point conceivable, as on any other. Only the difficulty is to make-by-standers certainly, and sometimes, even-the combatants feel what they are contending about. In this instance, the whole world can see what is at issue-creeds, and nothing else. This is an intelligible issue. The casus belli is formidable, all admit. It is something that the scoffer says of the Church of England that it does not require merit, but 'conformity; not mind, but FAITH.' - (Weekly Dispatch.) Just so: we accept the distinction, and the character which it implies. We know, and every body knows, what we are now fighting for.

Once more: in the very last case in which the Regale and Pontificale came into direct collison, and the victory-chiefly, perhaps in remembrance of the Church's sin, in the events connected with the Revolution of 1688-was with the secular power in suppressing the Church's legislative functions in Convocation, it would be an insult to the memory of even Bishop Hoadly, to suppose that the question at issue in the Bangorian controversy, great as it was, came up to that involved in the appointment of Dr. Hampden.

And if we claim in this sort of way an advantage-not that our cause is better than that of our fathers, but that it is more intelligible, the particular form in which the secular and spiritual powers have clashed, is, perhaps, the most happy which could have been selected. If it has begun to be felt, that, whatever value and meaning the Royal Supremacy had while it was a fact, and when wielded by the vigorous hands of Tudor and Stuart in the days of Divine Right, and displayed in the mixed person of the Anointed Sovereign Lord and Master, the one and sole visible impersonation of Power, all these advantages became questionable as soon as the English Monarchy degenerated into a theory, a still more vulnerable part of the old Churchand-State system presented itself in the statute about the election of Bishops. If the Royal Supremacy itself has so far, from the stress of circumstances, and the irreversible tide of liberal opinions, changed its character, that it amounts to the Supremacy of the Prime Minister-himself an officer not recognised by statute law -and if the Supremacy of the Prime Minister is, in fact, only an accident of the polling-booths; - if this is found a difficulty hard to reconcile with a living view of a living Church, what defence could be set up for the particular mode in which this very inconsistent creature, the Supremacy, chose to exhibit itself? Human fancy in its wildest vagaries could not picture a more complete theoretical absurdity, than the English election of Bishops. To give in form a licence for a free election, and yet in fact to prescribe under the most severe penalties, even to that of perpetual imprisonment, and loss of all preferment and worldly goods to the electors, the single person who alone must be elected -to require in the same statute the most solemn deliberation and prayer before election, and the necessity of giving due attention to the meetness of the person elected, and yet to give no choice even between two nominees-to link together fate and freedomto put the Congé d'Elire whose very essence is freedom of election, and the Letters Missive the only notion of which is direct immediate nomination, into the same official envelope-to enact by statute this cumbrous farce of an election, where there is no choice, in one clause, and in the very next to provide for its failure, and to supersede it, by what would have saved all these words and parchment, the simple sic volo sic jubeo of letters patentall this had only to be known to crumble away at the very lightest touch, like the buried bodies of old Etruscan kings, which sleep in solemn state and regal splendour, till the first flash of daylight melts them into something less substantial than dust itself. Whatever the present age is, it is not an age of shams and sillinesses, and mere idle old worn-out act-of-parliament paper bugaboos. And of all the insults, not so much to such a corporate existence as the Church, but to the human mind itself; of all the deplorable and melancholy monuments of folly and weakness, coupled alas! with desperate wickedness, which history has to recall, let the theory according to statute law of an Anglican Election of a Bishop bear the palm. It is nothing to say that English common sense has kept the absurdity in decent concealment; or practically has checked and neutralized it: wherever an injustice and a folly lurks, under the awful name of law, some unjust man, or some fool, somebody weak enough, or wicked enough, will be found to bring it into a little brief and noxious vigour and activity. To be sure, its first pranks are its last. The trial by duel was on the Statute Book, and some wily Old Bailey practitioner knew it, and brought it into court thirty years ago: the consequence was disastrous to society, for the murderer was let loose upon it, though the law itself was instantly repealed. So, with the statute of Præmunire: 'the law must take effect,' says Lord John Russell, though he knows at the very moment of uttering this pompous and pedantic phrase of tyranny, that there is not a man within the four seas who would or could defend such a monstrous, glaring, wicked absurdity.

The Statute under which English Bishops are electedelected! is that of 25 Henry VIII. cap. 20, sec. iv. v. vii. Its birth dates A.D. 1533; and we really believe that it was very little known except as a sort of antiquarian curiosity, till Mr. Hurrell Froude, in the year 1833, published a vigorous series of