in the convent; thinks seriously and long about seducing Miss Catherinean arrangement to which, we are bound to say, the young lady is finally only half inclined to demur. But honour prevails, as this young hero had the good fortune to come of a strict Dissenting family (p. 34). Mr. Edward then, after the pattern of Luther and Cranmer, asks for the novice in lawful matrimony, to which all the family assent. All things now go smoothly as a marriage bell: there is only one difficulty, about an uncle, who happens to be 'grand inquisitor at Coimbra' (p. 58). This functionary does not mince matters-he hands over the tender damsel to her convent, where she soon dies of consumption. Mr. Edward rejoins the army, and also dies of his secret sorrow, leaving behind him, for the consolation of his sorrowing comrades, sundry disquisitions on suicide, and a copy of verses; and the 'tale' ends in this striking way—' Nay, religion itself displayed an example-THE END.'" (p. 87.)

Such a tale of true love, attractive as it might be to the ordinary magazine, has no peculiar charms for us. But a little further on with delighted astonishment we read what we could not resist transferring to our pages, apologizing for the inevitable dryness of even such valuable matter as the Ecclesiology of Holland House handled by a partial reviewer.

"The Nun of Arrouca' furnishes other curious and significant anticipations of its author's more recently developed religious sentiments. It has been, and is, a difficulty to thoughtful minds, how it happened that Lord John could co-ordinately sit under' Mr. Bennett and Dr. Cumming. We do not undertake to solve the difficulty. To set it down as a mere piece of inconsistency is an inadequate rationale; to view it merely as what would be called the eccentricity of high genius is perhaps nearest to the truth; but still this is a narrow and incomplete account of the matter. For ourselves we would suggest that, as great irregularities-apparent irregularities, that is -in a vast system, such as that of the planets, may one day be proved to be specimens of a very grand and lucid order, so it may be with Lord John. To understand and fathom him requires an equal mind; and where is that to be found? But this only by the way. What we are anxious now to show is, that in his celebrated and wonderful letter to the Bishop of Durham, Lord John was actually and penitentially unburdening a conscience, weighted with the dangerous responsibilities of years. With true spiritual discernment he reflected on the sins of his fervid youth. Not only had he to disavow participation in the mummeries of superstition' practised at S. Barnabas, but his own personal share in giving rise to them. This thought, which immediately suggests itself to the readers of the Nun of Arrouca,' surely invests that famous theological rescript with a deep amount of personal pathos. Here we see the penitent and pertinacious Premier going through a searching self-examination. It is not Mr. Bennett that he rebukes; but he sternly holds up the deplorable image of his past self to his own righteous hatred and rebuke. And we say it, not only with no unkind reference to the past, but with a profound admiration of Lord John's recent deep contrition, which we find and find too late-to be the true key of the Durham manifesto. Unthinkingly and precipitately we only at first saw, with the rest of the world, spite and folly in his letter to Dr. Maltby; now, on the contrary, we regard that document with pious awe. In it we behold his lordship donning the hair shirt, and wielding the discipline on his own guilty person. As we knew not his sin, so we could not conjecture the severity of his self-inflicted penance. But as we have already seen that the late Premier, unconsciously perhaps, adumbrated the French school of fiction, so we fear we must charge

upon him the incipient rise of Tractarianism itself, at least in one of its most formidable and popular aspects. It is usual to fix the rise of this 'pestilent' school in the year 1833; but its true date is the publication of the Nun of Arrouca.' The Cambridge Camden Society, and all the architecturalists and æstheticists of the day, have been dishonest enough to conceal their obligations to this work. If the mummeries' of ritualism find their first and most eloquent advocate in the Premier himself, how significant becomes his late, and personally so interesting condemnation of those debasing ‘superstitions.' Let us hear our author :

"The next morning his expectations were raised to the highest pitch when the monks conducted him to the church. The grandeur of the architecture, in the best style of Gothic, proved to him the munificence of the founders; the brilliancy of the gilded ceiling, and the profusion of marble and painting in the chapels, attested the wealth and prosperity of the institution. A railing, also gilt, extended across the church, and divided the nuns from the strangers and inhabitants who resorted to public worship."

"He heard with pleasure, however, that on that same night a solemn service was to be performed to entreat the favour of Divine Providence upon the arms of the allies. About nine in the evening he repaired to the church. The altar and the choir were brilliantly illuminated with wax tapers. The rest of the church being left in darkness, had an appearance of being larger and grander than it really was— monks passing to and fro in the side aisles appeared at a vast distance, and gave a picturesque solemnity to the scene. A fine picture of Murillo, representing S. Bernard, kneeling in the white dress of his order, with the Virgin and angels in the heavens, hung over the altar. The incense rose in fumes from the censers; the mind of Pembroke was already toned to the occasion, when the nuns began the Jubilate. He had not before perceived that they were behind a grating on the side. The sweetness and harmony of their voices went at once to his heart, and made him for a time a convert to their faith. 'Why,' he said to himself, why should not the senses which have been given us by the Divinity be thus innocently gratified to do Him honour? Why should not religion call our whole being to its aid?' In these feelings he continued to listen, and to look with ecstasy on the scene that was going on."

"He was about to answer when a knot of white riband in the form of a cross fell from the veil of the younger through the grating. He took it up, and putting it in his bosom, hastily said, he thus constituted himself her knight,'

"Now we must say that Lord John has much to answer for! if he has repented much, he has much to repent of. Here is the whole thing—the whole tissue of mummeries '-painting and gilding, wax lights and crosses. chanting and intoning, pictures and rood-screen-all praised, all apologised for ;

"Why should not religion call our whole being to its aid ?"

66

'Why, these are Mr. Bennett's own words, deliberately anticipated and published by Lord John himself thirty years ago. Well might he, in the bitterness of his heart, recall these sinful encomiums upon the mummeries of superstition, when writing to a Protestant Bishop in November, 1850.

"After this, as though to complete the awful cycle of his former sins, at p. 32 we find our noble author informing us with much satisfaction of the spiritual improvement which his heroine derived from the practice of meditation, and from reading-saints and angels! do our eyes deceive us?—' the mystical works of Saint Theresa !'

"And of a similar most unprotestant character is that scene at p. 45, where Miss Catherine goes to a 'white' church, and-but we prefer our author's own words:

"He entered the door, and could see the altar only by the light of two small lamps that were burning, one on each side of it. He walked up to it, and was turning to quit the place when he saw a female figure with the face covered kneeling in a side chapel. Her black dress made a dark shade on the pavement, but her head was scarcely discernible. He approached gently very near her, and heard these words in the voice of Catherine: Relieve me from this burden, blessed saint! Save me from this crime, unhappy wretch !'"

"Here we pause: this scene, coupled with its consequences, lets an unexpected light on another dark passage of recent controversial discussion. We all along thought my Lord Ashley's flight about the Lydian worship too great a stroke for that very respectable, but not very original, person; besides, we never quite understood it-we had difficulties about the rites which might in some cases be observed in such a locality as the river-bank. The fact is, Lord Ashley has been plagiarising from Lord John Russell; but in order to conceal his theft, he left out the details of the cultus. The author of the 'Nun of Arrouca' is equally fond of these river-side mysteries, and is more explicit

"About half a mile from the bridge, close to the river, stands a white church, before which a row of trees, leading to the door, have been planted. To this church Catherine was in the habit of repairing . . . Edward came to the church [and there found Catherine praying to the saint, as above]. . . She got up and left the church; he slowly followed. . . . . He pointed to a stone bench which overlooked the river; a birch tree waved its leaves over the bench, and the moon shone brightly on the water. . . . They both sat down.. As he uttered these words Catherine leaned towards him, her soul seemed to melt at his voice; by an impulse of the moment he moved towards her, and their lips met."—pp. 43-48.

"Oh, murder, then !' as the Irish say: here the whole mystery comes out. 'Worshipping with Lydia by the banks of the river-side,' according to this, the first, exposition of those solemn, yet unspiritual rites, means a young officer kissing a nun by moonlight, on a stone bench overlooking the river, under the birch trees. He follows her to church by the river side, she little loth.

"Fugit ad salices et se cupit ante videri."

"The climate is warm. Portuguese ladies of nineteen are proverbially icy. Lord John is graphic and the scene closes. And no unpleasant thing this Lydian worship, when thus developed, the profane will say.

"All that we say is, Lord John has been very unfairly treated. Here are all sorts of people filching our good and great Ex-Premier's notions, and never breathing a syllable of 'The Nun.’ The conspiracy is general. Lord Ashley and Mr. Bennett, Tractarians, and cheerers of the Freemasons' Tavern, all owe what they will neither pay nor own. An unseemly proverb there is about giving somebody his due. We will not repeat it; but for Lord John's sake we will say with Goethe

'Honour to those to whom honour is due !

Old Mother Baubo, honour to you!'

"It is a real satisfaction to exhibit Lord John as the true old original Tractarian, Camdenian, and Lydian."

Noble minister, and admirable ecclesiologist! ecclesiologist of all forms of worship-of the Christian Church, and of the Lydian sect! What reward can be invented great enough for him? Let a special meeting of our whole society be forthwith called, and

let the dignity of Arch-Patron be solemnly bestowed upon Lord John Russell, and as the modest olive crowned the Olympian victor, and still humbler parsley the champion of the Isthmus-so let a coronal honourable yet unostentatious as these be prepared for our own great man-a chaplet of native foliage, simple but precious, and such that its medicinal virtue shall counteract the over sweetness of his nature, a coronal of the leaves of Durham Mustard!

CHAPTERS ON PAINTED GLASS.

III.-ILLUMINATED WINDOWS.

OUR readers will remember that in some remarks which we made last year upon what we then thought, and still think, too trenchant a condemnation of fresco painting, as a method of church decoration, by Mr. Pugin, in that clever pamphlet of his in which he smashed the first of the Rambler's model churches, we took occasion to point out how such painting contributed at all times to the artistic effect of the structure, while painted glass was but a day-light beauty, and after nightfall might almost be looked upon as detrimental to the effect of the building which it filled, owing to the cold fantastic outline of the lead lines which then come out into prominence.

Feeling this as we do, it is with no common interest that we now lay before our readers the details of one of those bold applications of the science of modern times, which have become so common that their absence is now almost a greater wonder than their presence, by which painted glass is made to contribute its share to the artistic whole of the building, which it fills, by night as well as by day. This result is of course obtained through means of gas, and the locale of the experiment is the House of Lords. Round the stonework of the windows, small gas pipes have been run externally, and these are pierced with numerous small jets; the result is, that after night-fall, the windows shine forth with their appropriate hues, not very brightly, not so as to contribute to the practical illumination of the chamber itself, but so as to add a new element to the artistic features which combine in producing the whole beauty which it should be the end of the creative mind of the first artist to produce.

The effect, in short, is a perpetuation of that singular, almost unearthly effect which must be so familiar to any of our readers who has worshipped in churches like S. Saviour's, Leeds, or S. Barnabas, in London, when the entire structure is lighted up for evensong, and yet the departing day still leaves its traces in the paling hues of the windows. We do not of course mean to say that the artificial light of gas is equal to this inimitable result, and we were conscious of something at first almost unnatural in the changeless perpetuation of a

combination, whose effect we could not but think depended in no little degree upon its transitoriness.

But with all these abatements which candour alone compels us to make, the experiment is very successful as a first attempt, and it will be a shame if it is not taken up and improved upon for the honour of Almighty GoD in His churches. We need not point out how plastic may be its working; how in great churches it may be used perpetually and for all the windows, in others only accommodated to the east window. Again, it may be applied to the distinction of great festive seasons. But enough of this; it is sufficient that the experiment has been made, an experiment which we may say has often haunted our day dreams, and that it has been so far very successful.

It is obvious that its general adoption will be detrimental to the elaborate external mouldings of the windows to which it may be accommodated. But as its use must be chiefly confined to town churches, we are not very sorry at the restriction which it creates; for elaborate external mouldings to the window tracery is not the most fruitful method of expending time and money in a town church.

In conclusion, we must remark, that in the House of Lords, great injustice is done to the experiment, by the actual system of lighting of that ornate Hall; which was adopted with no reference at all to this developement. Between each of the windows, which range clerestorywise, stands a niche at present empty, but destined to receive one of those antique heroes, who-as an orator at a public meeting, inviting his loyal auditors to do the same, stated—" rallied round their sovereign at Runnimede." The actual illumination of the House of Lords, wisely as things then stood, is arranged to bring these into prominence; the consequence is, that a pair of branches terminating in a large gas flame is attached to each niche, and that these flames of course tell primarily upon the windows in front of which they are placed, and go as far as any thing can well do, to ruin the effect of the illumination on the other side.

LEGAL OPINION ON THE POSITION OF THE CELEBRATING PRIEST-SS. PAUL AND BARNABAS, PIMLICO.

We propose, from time to time, as occasion may arise, to furnish our readers with papers relating to disputed rubrical questions and points of discipline, regard being had more especially to the legal view of the

cases.

In our last number appeared, what may have in some measure given rise to this determination, viz., the case relative to the sale of in pews Yeovil church; which we shall consider as the first of the series. In our present number we have furnished our readers with the case and opinion lately taken by the congregations of SS. Paul and Barnabas, in regard to the ritual observances in practice at those churches, and which not only called down so strong a condemnation from the Bishop