dom of Italy alone for fifteen millions-precisely the sum, I believe, expended for the same purpose in the single state of New York!"

And yet, besides the lay schools entrusted to the clergy, there existed in 1860, two hundred and sixty-three seminaries originally founded, in obedience to the Council of Trent, for the education of secular priests, but in which at the present time a number of youths not destined to the priesthood are admitted. So injurious to the public good have these seminaries become, that "in common with all other educational institutions, Signor Natoli subjected these seminaries to rigorous government inspection, and this step more than any other roused the ire of the Roman hierarchy. Fifty bishops refused pointblank to admit the inspectors to seminaries, and were closed by a ministerial decree or by order of the Superior Council of Education; ten were closed owing to the absence of the "ordinary" from the dioceso ; six by order of the bishops themselves; two for immorality, (the details of the immediate causes that led to their suppression are too horrible for reference); four owing to insufficient funds; nine because the buildings were required for military purposes; one owing to a flaw in the title deeds. Of these eighty-two suppressed seminaries, sixty-five belonged to the Neapolitan provinces, which still boast of fifty-eight; and had Natoli's term of office lasted a little longer, it is probable that he would have reduced them to fifty-nine, i. e. one in each province, and to these have admitted only such youths as should have embraced the priestly career."

It is said that Italy has 200,000 monks, 115,000 priests, 203 bishops, 72 cardinals, and a pope. France has one priest to 700 inhabitants; Italy one to 175.

ANGLICAN CLERGYMEN AND THE ROMAN CARDINAL PATRIZI.

In the Union Review, for January, there is a long letter from one hundred and ninety-eight Clergymen of the English Church, to the Roman Cardinal Patrizi, and the Cardinal's reply, all in Latin, and filling six pages of that Review. Not long ago, the Cardinal had conveyed to the English Roman Catholic Bishops, the displeasure of the " Holy See" at the coöperation of some of them with an Association for promoting the Unity of Christendom," numbering among its members Clergymen of the Roman, the Greek, and the English Churches. In the Letters of these one hundred and ninety-eight Clergymen, is the following sentence:-"To hasten that result we have already worked for many years. Whatever may have been less perfect in the faith of the flock, in Divine worship, and in ecclesiastical discipline, we have improved beyond our hope, and, not to be forgetful of other things, we have shown an amount of goodwill toward the venerable Church of Rome, which has rendered us suspected in the eyes of some. We humbly profess ourselves your Excellency's servants, seekers after Catholic Unity."

To this Letter the Cardinal replies in the following temper. He at once unchurches them in such language as this. The italics are our own.

"That, in your letter to me, you profess, with sincerity of heart and honesty of words, to desire that, according to the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, there may be one fold and one Shepherd, inspires this Sacred Congregation with a most pleas ing hope that, by the grace of Jesus Christ, you will at length arrive at true unity. But you must be aware lest, in seeking it, you deviate from the path. And the Sacred Congregation much regrets that this has actually occurred to you by your adopting the notion that those associations of Christians belong to the true Church of Christ, as parts thereof, which boast that they have the inheritance of the priesthood, and of the Catholic name, although they are divided and separated from the Chair of Peter. There is nothing more abhorrent to the government of the Catholic Church than that opinion. For the Catholic Church, as is pointed out in my letter to the bishops of England, is that Church which, being built upon one Peter, presents itself a body knitted and kneaded together in the unity of faith and charity. (St. Ambros de Offic. Ministr. lib. 3 c. 3 n. 19)."

The worst feature in this whole movement is, that such a body of English Clergymen can be found, who are so utterly treacherous to their own Church, and false to their own vows, as thus to ignore the Doctrinal Corruptions of Rome, in their desire for an outside, hollow, Visible Unity.

THE COLONIAL EPISCOPATE-Three new Colonial Bishops are now awaiting consecration, (the ceremony having been for some time delayed, in consequence of the difficulties raised up by the recent decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council,) and a fourth will, in all probability, be added to their number in the course of a few days. The three whose nominations are complete, are the Rev. Andrew Burn Suter, M. A., of Trinity College, Cambridge, incumbent of All Saints' Church, Mile-end New Town, London, who has been appointed to the Bishopric of Nelson, New Zealand, in the place of the Rt. Rev. Dr. E. Hobhouse, resigned; the Rev. Henry Lascelles Jenner, LL. B., of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, vicar of Preston, Kent, who has been nominated to the new Bishopric of Otago, New Zealand; and the Rev. John Postlethwaite, M. A., of Trinity College, Cambridge, perpetnal curate of Coatham, near Redcar, Yorkshire, who has accepted the bishopric of New Westminster, which has been formed out of an extensive district of British Columbia, now under the Episcopal jurisdiction of Dr. G. Hills. The fourth Bishopric is that of Victoria, Hongkong, vacant by the resignation of Dr. George Smith. When these gentlemen are consecrated, there will be forty-four Colonial Bishops in connection with the Church of England, in addition to Dr. Gobat, Bishop of Jerusalem, and the five missionary Bishops-Melanesia, Dr. Patteson; Africa, Dr. Tozer; Africa, (Niger Territory,) Dr. Samuel Crowther; Honolulu, Dr. Staley; and the Orange River States, Dr. Twells.

NEW BISHOP OF NATAL.-In consequence of the deposition of Dr. Colenso from his office of Bishop of Natal by Dr. Gray, the Metropoliton of South Africa, a new Bishop, it is said, has been designated, and will shortly be consecrated, but his name has not yet publicly transpired. Meanwhile, Dr. Colenso intimates his intention to maintain his legal rights as a Colonial Bishop, and to enforce his demands against the Colonial Bishoprics Fund, from which his salary is paid. In the suit which will be heard in the next term, Dr. Colenso, who is the plaintiff, sets out that when the See of Natal was founded, the council of the Colonial Bishoprics Fund agreed with her Majesty's government to appropriate for ever, out of the proceeds of the fund, to the use of the Bishop of Natal, the sum of 6621. per annum. He states that the annual income was duly paid to him after his consecration, by the Treasurers, down to and including the half-yearly payment due on the 5th of April, 1864, but has not since been paid.

NON-EPISCOPAL ORDERS IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH.-Several weeks since, a statement was freely circulated in the Sectarian newspapers of this country, and in one or two Episcopal papers, that an American Presbyterian preacher has been invited repeatedly to preach, and did preach in the pulpits of the English Church, and the fact was blazoned in a Church newspaper with exultation, as a rebuke to the late Pastoral Letter of the Rt. Rev. Bishop Potter, of New York. In the Colonial Church Chronicle (London) for April, we find the following.

"In answer to this question, we have received a letter from the Bishop of Lincoln, (whose attention we ventured to invite to the matter,) which we have permission to quote."

"I thank you for being good enough to call my attention to this American report. I find that a Rev. Mr. Bidwell, described as an American Clergyman, preached at Whaplode, on Sunday morning, Oct. 29th, and again in the evening, for the S. P. G. The weather being bad and the congregation small, and the sermon being unusually effective, the Vicar requested him to preach again the next Sunday morning for the same Society. This he did, and preached for the same cause at Holbeach in the evening. Mr. Francklin, the Vicar of Whaplode, assures me that he fully believed that Mr. Bidwell was Episcopally ordained in America, and that he did not for a moment entertain doubt that he was an Episcopalian Clergyman. The case is, therefore, the too common one of culpable neglect of the 50th Canon, but has no bearing at all on the admission of Presbyterian ministers into the pulpits of the Church of England.

(Signed)

J, LINCOLN."

This preacher, whose name is the Rev. O. B. Bidwell, owes it to himself to explain by what process he passed himself off as an Episcopally ordained Clergyman. Was it in the same way that certain Congregational Missionaries to the Oriental Churches, wore Surplices, and made the sign of the Cross in Baptism, like the English Clergy, until they had gained a foothold, and then threw off the mask?

ROMANISM IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.

The Union Review, (for May), the organ of the Medieval Romish party in the English Church, has an Article on Sacrifice. The following extracts need no explanation. It is sheer Romanism in its worst form. When the English Church is done with Colenso it has another work on hand.

15. That as Jesus Christ offers, and is offered on the Golden Altar naturally and locally, so also he offers, and, in union with the members of His mystical body, is offered, on all earthly altars supernaturally and supralocally[?]

16. That the sacrifice of the Cross being one with the sacrifice of the Golden Altar, and the sacrifice of the Golden Altar being one with the sacrifice of the Earthly Altar, the sacrifice of the Earthly Altar is one with the sacrifice of the Cross. 17. That, it being so, [which is not proved], the sacrifice of the Golden Altar and the Earthly Altar are as much sacrifices of praise, of thanksgiving, of prayer, and of propitiation for sin, as was the sacrifice of the Cross.

18. That the relations of man to God being still the same, and the habitual confession of these relations the one idea of religion, and the Sacrifice of the Altar exhausting that idea, the Sacrifice of the Altar is the substance and sum of the religion of to-day.

THE FRENCH SENATE AND RATIONALISM IN THE PROTESTANT

"CHURCH."

This subject came formally before the French Senate on a Petition from M. de Conninck. In a speech, M. Rouland proved that Rationalism was not only rampant in the Catholic community, but had raised its hydra head in the very council chambers of the descendants of the austere Huguenots. He states that in Paris alone, at one of the late assemblies of the Consistory, 104 pasteurs had professed their firm adhesion to the ancient Protestant faith, while fifty-five had acknowledged their secession, and openly proclaimed Jesus Christ to have been simply a great man.

GERMANY.

A NEW SECT. The papers give an account of a new Sect in Germany called "The Cogitants." The following particulars from the programme now printed will suffice to show the absurdities which some "enlightened" people can swallow. The officers are to be a "cultus magistrate," and a "cultus master," the latter to deliver lectures in the "Hall of Devotion" every Sunday and Festival. The basis of these lectures is to be "spiritual and social dietetics." Sunday, the 1st and 2nd of January, 15th and 16th of May, 1st and 2nd of September, are to be observed as Festivals; in the morning, music and a lecture; in the afternoon, processions. God is a worn-out idea; Christ was a mere man. For Dr. Loenthal, the leader, Strauss and Renan are antiquated; he is further advanced than they.

ART. I.-JOHN KEBLE: POET, PASTOR, PRIEST.

It is not the word of fulsome adulation, or of unreasoning and random praise, to write it down, that no man living in this generation has wielded a deeper influence upon it, or reached forth so strongly upon the generations yet to come, as John Keble. There are some Summer days, whose perfect beauty lingers long. We watch them from their earliest breaking, on through the growing brightness of the morning, into noon's more glorious splendor; as they shade themselves, through the long tenderness of rosy twilight, into the silver shining of the moon. They are long days, bright days, and, lasting so from early dawn on till the midnight, the following day takes color from them. We call it by their name; compare it with their beauty. It is just such another, almost as fine; a very counterpart of previous loveliness. There are not many such days in a season; not many lives that liken themselves to days like these. But Keble's was a life like such a day; deep in its beauty; long in its lasting loveliness; and with the calm composure of consistent holiness throughout, that makes it a standard life for contrast and example. And we say, not 29

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merely of the English Church, nor of her daughter this side of the Atlantic; but of the age itself, in every English-speaking land, that Keble is its chief man of influence. Not in the noisy way; not in the superficial stir of life's exciting things; but as he swelled and deepened that strong tide of Christian feeling and religious faith, which, after all, bears on our race most mightily to its appointed end; and does most richly fertilize the world; and washes up, upon the shore of time, monuments of its influence, the most lasting and the most majestic. And we might ground this only, as of course we must mainly, on his poetic power and work, which rank him, after Milton, first and greatest of the Christian poets of the world. For the ballads that he made reached hearts that still refuse obedience, or render it unconsciously, to the laws that ruled his life.

Keble was born at Fairford, in Gloucestershire, on St. Mark's day, in the year of our Lord 1792, in a home of which his own lines must be no unmeet description :

"A holy home, young saint was thine,
Child of a priestly line,

Bred where the vernal midnight air

Was vocal with the prayer

Of Christians fresh from Paschal meat,
With supplication strong and sweet,
With fast and vigil, in meek strife
Winning their Pastor's life."

His father, the Vicar of the adjoining Parish of Colne St. Aldwyn's, was a man of devout learning, and prepared the boy at home for College, so successfully, that at fifteen Keble won a Scholarship at Corpus Christi. In 1810, he took his B. A. degree at Oxford, bearing away the highest honors which the University could bestow. Though only eighteen years of age, he achieved the rare distinction of "a double first ;" and was soon afterward elected to an open Fellowship in Oriel College. The year after this election, he won both the Chancellor's Essay prizes, in Latin and English.

His heart turned always to this sacred and venerable spot,

* Lyra Innocentium: On St. Mark's Day.