ment to be derived from this skeleton of ecclesiastical history. It is, in truth, a compilation of dry but interesting facts; useful for him who reads the annals of the ancient Scottish Church, and altogether indispensable to him who would attempt to write concerning them. The original work stops at the Revolution, when Episcopacy was compelled to give place to the Presbyterian establishment; from which period to the present day, the history of the Episcopal Communion in Scotland, and the lives of the Bishops, have been furnished by the editor, a clergyman of that Church.

As we have elsewhere given an abridgement of the history now referred to, we shall not make any remarks upon either its merits or its contents, except to observe, that it has made us acquainted with many circumstances connected with our brethren in the North, which have not hitherto made that impression upon the public mind, which their interest would have led us to expect. Were a Church which had suffered so much, and exhibited such a degree of self-denial and constancy, to be found on the shores of Africa, or on the margin of the Great Pacific, the zeal and wealth of England would be called forth to proclaim their praise, and to reward their stedfastness. Even the patrons of missionary activity, who occupy the high places of our aristocracy and government, would bow down their ears, and listen to the claims of a Communion, which is, in fact, a part of their own Church, derived from it by Episcopal consecration, holding the same faith; having the same worship, ordinances and usages; the same sacerdotal vestments, and, in short, displaying as far as their poverty will allow, the strictest conformity with our apostolical establishment. But the Scottish Episcopalians are at home, and therefore they are overlooked: they want the advantage of distance to give them interest in the eyes of the religious world; and their case, moreover, presents a degree of practicability which is not, in these days, always found to recommend a scheme of pious liberality. They are, besides, a quiet and orderly people; great lovers of loyalty, and much given to inculcate the duties of obedience and subordination towards the civil authority; it is therefore unnecessary for our rulers to bribe them into good principles; or to allay their murmurs by a seasonable grant from the national purse. Virtue, we are told by maxim-mongers, is its own reward: and we find, in fact, that she is not unfrequently left to her private resources, to find a remuneration for those who labour and endure the most in her cause.

But to return to the Historical Catalogue, we have to ob serve that the present edition, besides the account of the post

Revolution Church and Bishops, contains a Life of the Author, and a number of notes and illustrations, which were found. necessary to correct, as well as to elucidate, some of the original statements. These, we need hardly say, are chiefly valuable to the antiquary and historian; and as they were procured at the expence of great research, not only by the editor himself, but by several learned persons to whom he acknowledges his obligations, we have no doubt that they will be suitably prized in the proper quarters. The correction of a date, even though it should only amount to the space of a month, and at the distance, too, of thirty centuries, is, we know, to a real antiquary, a gratification far more exquis te than the invention of a new sauce is to the most devoted gastronome; and should he discover, at the same time, a different spelling for a disputed name, his triumph is so complete as to admit of no addition. But as we are not of the initiated, Dr. Russel will excuse our coldness in regard to some of his greatest achievements in that way. We enjoy his success much more cordially in the controversy which he maintains with Dr. Jamieson, the author of the Scottish Dictionary, on the subject of the ancient Culdees of Iona; of which we shall now proceed to give some account.

It is known to most persons who are at all conversant in the history of religious opinion, that, about the end of the seventeenth century, there was a keen controversy waged in this part of the kingdom, on the subject of Church government; in the course of which great stress was laid by Selden, Baxter, and others, on the supposed fact, that, in Scotland, within two hundred years after Christ, there was a regular ecclesiastical establishment formed without Bishops; and which continued to be governed by Presbyters till a recent period, when it was finally oppressed and superseded by the power of Rome. The same train of reasoning was afterwards adopted by the Scots themselves, who warmly espoused the cause which they had inherited from the English non-conformists: and the conclusions, to which they arrived, were expressed by one of their authors in the following words:

"That the Scots of old differed exceedingly from the Roman Church, both in doctrine, discipline, and Church government; that before the middle of the tenth century they had no Bishops, but that their Church was governed by Presbyters, and religious monks, called Culdees, who were no friends to Bishops, and kept themselves pure from all innovations and corruptions of the Church of Rome: that it appears by writings still extant, that there were colleges or convents of these Culdees at St. Andrews, Abernethy, Dunkeld, Dumblane, Brechin, Lochleven, Monymusk, and elsewhere throughout the kingdom, who were

at perpetual variance with the Roman clergy; and therefore the churchmen presently established amongst us, are the only right and lawful successors of these ancient Culdees, and thus have the sole right to possess all churches, church lands, and benefices, because they were the restorers of the Christian Religion, as anciently professed in this kingdom; for that Bishops among us were only innovators, schismatics, and intruders; on which account they were justly pillaged and set aside at the time of the Reformation, deposed at the beginning of the grand rebellion, and abolished, as far as acts of parliament can go at the Revolution."

These are sweeping inferences, it must be owned; and if it could be shewn that the facts here assumed, had any foundation in history, the advocates for the Presbyterian polity would unquestionably derive from ancient times, a degree of countenance which they have never yet enjoyed. But it is made perfectly clear by Bishop Lloyd, that the idea of a Scottish Church, in the second century, is a mere monkish dream, destitute alike of probability and of historical truth. No writer, therefore, of any credit, even among the Presbyterians, is any longer found to believe in this primitive model of ecclesiastical rule. Many of them, however, retain their faith in the Culdees, as exhibiting the first specimen of that pure anti-prelatical spirit, which has been so ardently fostered in more modern times. Sir James Dalrymple, for instance, in his Historical Collections, has dilated on this topic at great length; proving, to his own satisfaction at least, that Episcopacy was hardly ever known in Scotland; that it was always reluctantly received and almost constantly opposed; and, moreover, that the corruptions of the Romish Church had scarcely begun to pollute the land, when the vigilance of the reformers was excited, and their zeal employed, to purify their borders, and to sanctify the lines of their inheritance.

In the Preface to the original edition of Keith's Catalogue, there is inserted an able reply to Sir James's Treatise, written by Mr. Goodall, the author of a Defence of Queen Mary, and some other learned works: and this reply has been pronounced by Pinkerton, no mean authority in such matters, as the best account that has been any where given of the Culdees. The controversy had dropped for many years as if by mutual consent: all sensible people being perfectly satisfied that much too little was known of the opinions and usages of those Columban monks, to found upon them a conclusive argument for any particular form of Church government. About ten or twelve years ago, however, Dr. Jamieson chose to revive it, in a large work on the "Culdees of Iona;" undertaking, of course, to shew that they were not only decided Presbyterians, but that, not

very consistently, one would think, they were in the practice of ordaining Bishops, and of exercising a rigid authority over the whole Episcopal order, at home and abroad.

As Dr. Jamieson's book was to be held in some degree as an answer to Goodall's Dissertation, prefixed, as has already been said, to the Catalogue of Scottish Bishops, Dr. Russel, in preparing a new edition of the latter work, felt it incumbent upon him to reconsider the several arguments which had been adduced on both sides, and to examine the accuracy of the conclusions to which those arguments had led. He was thus induced, though with evident reluctance, to enter the lists with Dr Jamieson; where, availing himself of the powerful weapons supplied by Lloyd, Gillan, and Goodall, he has, we think, gained a complete and indisputable victory. He has proved that, in point of belief and religious usage, the Culdees were in no respect different from the men of their age; that they were Episcopalians, both in principle and practice; and that the supremacy which they are said to have maintained over Bishops, was confined to the monastic authority lodged in the Abbot, as the head of their house, to which every Bishop would naturally submit, so long as he lived within its walls. The argument does not admit of abridgment, we will not, therefore, attempt any analysis of it. Suffice it to observe, that those who wish to have a condensed view of the main positions in this celebrated controversy, will find their curiosity amply gratified by perusing the Preliminary Dissertation on the Culdees, with the Supplement, contributed by the present editor of Keith's laborious work.

Most readers who have spent any portion of their time on the subject of Ecclesiastical Polity, will, we are sure, admit the justness of the following remarks by Dr. Russel.

"It cannot have escaped observation, that Presbyterian writers on Church government have usually satisfied themselves with an attempt to make out, not that their own system has the sanction of divine authority or even of primitive usage; but merely that the proof in favour of Diocesan Episcopacy is not entire, and that the scheme of discipline by Bishops and Archbishops cannot be traced to the very age of the Apostles. It is not pretended by these authors that the flock of Christ was at any time, prior to the Reformation, governed by Presbyteries, Synods, and Assemblies, held by the second order of ministers: their arguments in general do not aim at a higher object than to perplex the reasoning of their adversaries in support of a different polity; and to wrest from the Episcopalian a reluctant acknowledgment that his pattern of ecclesiastical rule originated in views of human expediency, and not in the direct institution of the Divine Head of the Church. Dr.

Campbell, for example, was not displeased to find that the result of his learned inquiry into the history of our Holy Religion, afforded a great degree of countenance to a body of Christians, who have less system and fewer pretensions to established form than almost any other; and that the practice of the first worshippers of Christ is decidedly in favour of the scheme adopted by the Independents. Dr. Jamieson, again, in his eagerness to weaken the cause of Episcopacy, has entirely overlooked the interests of Presbyterianism: all his labour, his erudition, his ingenuity, and his historical knowledge, having been sedulously employed, throughout almost every page of a large quarto volume, to establish the singular position, that the purest period of Scottish antiquity is to be identified with a system of ecclesiastical government, exercised by a fraternity of monks under the direction of a tonsured Abbot!"

There is an interesting division of Keith's volume which we have not yet mentioned; namely, an Account of all the Religious Houses which were in Scotland at the time of the Reformation. This is, indeed, a distinct treatise and written by a different author, Mr. Spottiswoode; a relative, we believe, of the celebrated Archbishop and Church historian. It embraces nearly the same objects with the Anglia Sacra and Monasticon Anglicum, works well known to every antiquary; and it is, of consequence, a very useful appendix to the Historical Catalogue of the Scottish Bishops. Take it, all in all, therefore, this publication will be found to contain a great deal of valuable information, which would in vain be sought for in any other book with which we are acquainted.

Narrative of an Excursion to the Mountains of Piemont, and Researches among the Vaudois or Waldenses, Protestant Inhabitants of the Cottian Alps. By the REV. WILLIAM STEPHEN GILLY, M.A. 4to. 504pp. 21. 2s. Rivingtons. 1824.

THE title under which this volume is sent into the literary world, and the character which it bears upon first inspection, would lead the reader to suppose that its principal object is to amuse him with some of those picturesque descriptions, personal adventures, and occasional chit-chat, which are so adapted to the public taste at the present period. The author commences like a sanguine enthusiast, delighted with the scenes he has visited, in raptures with the mountaineers among whom he has been thrown, and in expectation of rendering others as ardent in the cause he espouses as himself.

The opening pages, prepared us for nothing more than an