Are not these Services as striking alike in these main outlines as they are totally distinct from the Roman Vespers ? The Lucernarium is a most striking and characteristic point of resemblance; the part played by antiphons of the form of responds is very similar in both, though quite different from their use in the Roman Vespers; and the absence of a Capitulum would alone strongly differentiate them from the last-named. The Ambrosian Vespers which we have singled out as exhibiting the purest and most ancient model, viz. those of Holy Week, approach even more closely to the form of the Mozarabic Vespers during Lent and Holy Week, which are those of which we have the fullest account. The agreement is in essentials, the divergences are in embellishments. At all events we think enough has been said (and a close examination only strengthens the conclusion) to show the very strong similarity between the two Uses, even if we cannot assert positively that they are merely parallel developments of the same Use. We have ourselves no doubt whatever that the Ambrosian Liturgy (in the strict use of the term) was originally a Gallican one, and that it has been brought to its present condition by a process exactly similar to that which we find operative in the other semi-Gallican Missals, notably the Missale Vesontionense and the Missale Francorum, in the latter of which the Roman modifications have (we think) been carried to even greater lengths than in the Ambrosian. At any rate we cannot understand anyone comparing the three and failing to recognise that they all belong to the same order of phenomena. If the Ambrosian Liturgy was originally a Gallican one, it will not surprise us to find that the Ambrosian and Gallican courses were very similar, or even that they were identical. No one can really appreciate the force of the numberless little resemblances between the Ambrosian and Mozarabic Breviaries without a minute comparison of the two books; we would indicate the following as worthy of consideration:-The form of opening and closing the Services; form of Benedictuses (the first part of the Song of the Three Children); the use of Attende Calum instead of Benedictus in Advent and Christmas-tide; the use of hymns all through Holy Week; the use of eight verses of Ps. 118 in Lent as an addition to

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1 Benedictus is omitted on Sundays in Advent, Christmas-day, Circumcision, Epiphany, and on Dedication Sunday, on the last of which it is replaced by Clamavi' (Jonah ii.). This omission of the Canticle of the Incarnation on the very days when of all others we should expect it, would be preposterous, unless it is a relic of a time when Benedictus was still sung at the Mass on those days.

Lauds in the Ambrosian and to Vespers in the Mozarabic Breviary; the wealth of Collects, Responds, Antiphons, and the frequent use of Dominus vobiscum; the independence of the Breviary and Missal after the seventh Sunday after Pentecost; the provision of variable parts of the Service for only seven Sundays after Pentecost (after which the seven Services are repeated in rotation as often as necessary); the six weeks in Advent; the celebration of the Annunciation in Advent; the Sunday before Epiphany; the absence of any changes at the fifth week in Lent; the Gloria Patri continued until the middle of Holy Week; and the ritual distinction between the week-days of Easter and Whitsun weeks. Other curiosities of the Use are: antiphons are used only at Nocturns, Lauds, and Vespers, and to Nunc Dimittis at Compline; the version of the Psalter is not the same as that ordinarily used, nor is it the Itala; from a comparison with the various versions we came to the conclusion that it might be described as in the main the Psalterium Romanum, with a very considerable number of readings from the Itala. We have one more curiosity to bring before the reader, which we think will be of especial interest to English Churchmen, as being a great help towards understanding the rationale of our own Evensong. On certain feasts of patrons and titulars (and in certain churches only, we presume) two lessons are said at Vespers. These come one after each of the two Vesper-psalms; that is, of course, after the collect that concludes each psalm. Here, then, we have a Vesper Service (rare indeed, but existent) that in structure approaches our own very nearly indeed. Surely this is of great significance. We must all be conscious of the vast superiority that the lessons give to our Evensong over the Gregorian; and yet we cannot but feel the much greater unity of the latter, owing to there being but one evangelical canticle, and one short lesson; whilst our Magnificat seems stranded in hopeless isolation, and instead of the alternation of psalmody and lessons leading up to a climax in the Song of Redemption before we use the privilege of access to the Father in prayer conferred by that redemption, the great climax comes when no one is (so to speak) expecting it; we sing the Gospel-song of thanksgiving after hearing the Old Testament, and before the Gospel has been proclaimed to us; and then the psalmody and lessons trail off to an anticlimax in the Nunc Dimittis. How much better would it be to follow the ancient precedent of these grand Ambrosian Vespers, and place our Magnificat after the New Testament lesson, placing an Old Testament canticle (which should be considered as

equivalent to a psalm, and not to an evangelical canticle) between the lessons.

We must now conclude, asking the reader's kind indulgence for any slight errors that may have been inadvertently committed. We have done our best to be accurate, but we write in exile from our country, and without many books, which are as indispensable as they are rare, and as delightful as they are impracticable in a portmanteau.

ART. V.-CHURCH WORK IN RURAL PARISHES.

1. A Priest to the Temple, or the Country Parson's Character. By GEORGE HERBERT. (London, 1652.)

2. My Return to Arcady. By the Rev. Dr. JESSOPP, The Nineteenth Century, August. (London, 1881.)

3. The Arcady of our Grandfathers. By the Rev. Dr. JESSOPP,. The Nineteenth Century, May. (London, 1882.) 4. Superstition in Arcady. By the Rev. Dr. JESSOPP, The Nineteenth Century, November. (London, 1882.) 5. Peasants' Homes in Arcady. By the Rev. Dr. JESSOPP, The Nineteenth Century, March. (London, 1884.) 6. The Church and the Villages.

What Hope? By the Rev. Dr. JESSOPP, The Nineteenth Century, April. (London, 1886.)

7. The Established Church in the Village. By W. H. CROWHURST, The Contemporary Review, November. (London, 1885.)

8. Memoir of the Rev. John Stevens Henslow, late Rector of Hitcham and Professor of Botany in the University of Cambridge. By the Rev. L. JENYNS. (London, 1862.) 9. Our Working Men: an Attempt to Reach Them. By EMILY C. ORR. (London, 1886.)

THE books and articles we have now before us are all connected with the same subject, viz. The Work of the Church in Country Parishes. But they are related to it in very different ways. Their authors approach it in very different frames of mind, and treat it each for his own purpose. We shall have occasion in the course of our article to make more or less of reference to them, and therefore we think it well at the outset

to place before our readers a brief account of some of them. Miss Orr's book shall come first-place aux dames.

We have here, then, the account of a lady who has made it her work and found it her happiness to win to a higher religious life the rough men and boys of a country village. She had noticed their remoteness from the life which she and others like herself lived. Their shy endeavours to keep apart grieved her. Their monosyllabic answers to her questions and remarks when she found them at home on her visits to their wives, and their early escape to the back kitchen, showed a want of friendliness which, though not confined to Cheriton as it was, we are happy to know is by no means universal in country places. The men themselves, their characters, their temptations, their joys, their sorrows, remained as much unknown as if they had been separated from her by a continent or an ocean. So Miss Orr attempted to form a class. But to a class the village men would not come. So she tried to converse and 'make friends' with them, and narrates with some kindly humour her endeavours, her discouragements, and finally her success in gathering together for a weekly religious meeting a body of men whose attendance for the last three years has been about thirty on an average. We give the description of the first of these meetings:

'We talked together for a little while round the fire that we might become better acquainted with each other, and as no one else joined us I determined to begin.

'We first sang two hymns, in which all present joined heartily, then we knelt down, and I prayed for a blessing on our undertaking, and upon the hearts and lives of all who were gathered together for the first time. Then I read a few verses from the Bible and spoke earnestly to them on the love of God and His mercy towards all sinners who truly repented, illustrating it with a short story, to all of which they listened attentively. When this was ended we sang another hymn, and after a short prayer, followed by the Lord's Prayer, the meeting concluded.' (P. 43.)

There follows the history of Miss Orr's experience through three winters. How a drunkard was reclaimed and induced after taking the pledge to remain steady and true for a year, only to fall back in time of temptation into his old ways; how boys and men of the lowest, roughest type became softened and refined by contact with a lady's sympathy, and in many cases were reclaimed from evil lives by her loving, earnest teaching; how she met with disappointments when she had looked for success, and with success where she had not dared to hope for it. In the course of her narrative she introduces a

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considerable number of 'cases' which to some persons will be the most interesting part of the book, though not perhaps the most useful, and towards the end she presents her readers with a series of fragmentary thoughts given as they have been expressed to the authoress by members of her class, probably in most cases an unconscious reflex of her own teaching. We shall have hereafter to notice what seems to us a serious defect in her work, though possibly it is only an incompleteness in the sketch of it. Meanwhile we cordially wish her a blessing on the effort she is making, and express a hope that the narrative of it, which the venerable Society has published, may be an incentive to others to enter upon similar work upon the lines and traditions of our Church.

We turn from Miss Orr to Dr. Jessopp. Here we have no longer a description of Church work, but of the people among whom it is being done. In his articles on 'Arcadia' and its life, the rural population of some parts of our eastern counties is described with all the charm with which scholarly grace, freshness of feeling, and a keen, though kindly, insight can endow the writer. But Dr. Jessopp's Arcadia is in reality the Boeotia of England. It is not a fair sample of the rural life of our agricultural and pastoral counties. This point is made clear by a return of ' illiterate' voters at the election of 1885, moved for in March last by Mr. Stanley Leighton. This return places the northern division of Norfolk in the forefront of 'illiterature.' And the whole county of Norfolk and its neighbour Suffolk are far below the rest of England in education. In the whole of England and Wales the proportion of illiterate voters is one in forty-seven. In north Norfolk it is more than one in seven, and rather less than one in eleven for the whole county. Dr. Jessopp's pictures are matchless, not only in the artistic skill of the delineation, but happily also in the subject to which they relate. For ignorance is the parent of superstition and a great hindrance of Church work. In July 1830 Mrs. Hare writes: 'There is scarcely a grown-up person [in Alton] who can read, and I was not aware before how much the want of this simple knowledge leads to a general dulness of intellect, and how greatly it adds to the difficulty of giving anything of religious instruction.' 2 So long as Arcadia is illiterate, so long, we fear, will religious life there be more feeble than in the rest of England.

1 Yet in this very district a country clergyman, without private income and with a living of 180l. a year, devoted for many years from 257. to 30%. to meet the annual deficit on his parish schools. He also, single-handed, kept a night school afoot every winter till his death a few years ago.

Memorials of a Quiet Life, i. 353.