"High Church and Low Church,' such as the volumes of Bethell, Laurence, and others; a few valuable contributions towards the interpretation of Scripture, as the work of Davison; many laboured attempts to solve the mystery of the Apocalypse; but we have no work by a writer of the English Church which we can recommend to a student as the groundwork of his theological reading. If he takes up Tomline, he meets with assertions which he will find flatly denied in the first Westminster Review he may chance to open. What is he to do? The arguments used are new and striking, are stated with an appearance of candour and of confidence. They claim to be old, and never to have been refuted. What is he to believe? Why is this? and how is this? Is it not partly because our leaders despise their adversaries, (always a dangerous thing to do:) partly because they are ignorant how much these sceptical books are read: but mainly because their time and energy is wholly spent in a work which we believe would be done better by others of less ability? If Bishops Turton and Kaye had been called upon to deliver lectures, as Bishop Ollivant and Dr. Jeremie have been, lectures ad populum, not ad clerum, we should never have had those monuments of calm, clear, convincing reasoning, founded on the products of long study, which, though written for a temporary purpose, have gained a permanent reputation.

We have yet to see whether the lectures delivered under the more recent regulations, will produce such improvement in the character of the Clergy of the country, as will compensate for the serious injury caused by them to the learning of the Church of England. At present we see no signs of it. But the reputation of the Universities in the meantime has fallen. It will not be soon forgotten that Oxford put forth as a work of Origen, a volume which a layman and a courtier demonstrated to have been written by Hippolytus. Of the eight Professors who, at the commencement of this year, held the purely Divinity chairs at Oxford and Cambridge, two only are known out of the Universities by their writings; and these writings, valuable as they are, occupy no more than two or three octavo volumes. In the meantime, there is a party, we will not say of learning, but of activity and energy, which has many adherents amongst the medical men and lawyers of the country, who laugh at University orthodoxy and University ignorance; who under this are quietly gaining possession of the ear of one and another of the middle classes, nabituating them to the thought that S. John did not write S. John's Gospel, nor S. Paul S. Paul's letters; who perplex and silence far more than they convert. But no notice of these efforts have we found amongst the writings of our Divinity Professors. They have been content to leave such subjects

to Dr. Davidson, who is a Dissenter, or Chevalier Bunsen, who is a German!

We have been pleading the cause of Cathedral Colleges, to complete the training for Holy Orders, which the Universities leave incomplete. We have contended that academic lectures give the candidate little education, and senate-house examinations are no sufficient test of his fitness. The majority of our Bishops, unhappily, think differently, and demand the voluntary.' We trust that our endeavour to investigate this question will meet with attention amongst those on whom will ultimately depend the success of any effort at improving the tone and preparation of the Clergy; but, in doing this, we feel that we have been pleading the cause of theology and religion itself. On behalf of the candidate we have asked for a better training than the Universities can give. For the officers of our older Colleges we have begged for employment which will elevate and sanctify them; on behalf of another class of men, who are daily rising into greater importance, we have petitioned for a better and more wholesome education than they can have at present; on behalf of the Professors, we have entreated for work congenial to their calling; on behalf of the truth of God, we have prayed that its lustre may not be dimmed by our neglect, nor its lamps quiver and expire for want of the hand to trim. And so we leave the case, entreating our readers not to think that in this matter there can be any real opposition between cathedral-city, and old University, beyond that ever useful rivalry, the provoking to love and to good works. We leave it, humbly praying God that He will bless these and all other means of promoting His kingdom, and spreading His truth, until the time come when labour shall end in rest, and imperfection be lost in glory.

P.S.-Since our remarks have gone to press, the University of Cambridge has adopted the recommendations of a Syndicate appointed to suggest improvements in the theological studies of the University. Henceforth there will be two examinations in each year-at Easter and Michaelmas-the subjects being the following, The Historical Books of the Old Testament, the "Greek Testament, the Articles of Religion and Liturgy of the Church of England, the Ecclesiastical History of the First Three Centuries, and the History of the Reformation in England.' At first sight this list appears tolerably extensive: the subjects may branch out in different directions, and introduce much reading. It will be observed, however, that no knowledge is required of the Septuagint, or Hebrew, and none of the Psalms or Prophets, even in English.

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Moreover, the Syndicate recommended, and the University

decreed, that once in each year there should be an examination for honours in Theology;' and 'the candidates for honours shall 'be further examined in the Greek Testament, in assigned por'tions of the early Fathers, and of the Septuagint version of the "Old Testament, and assigned works or parts of works of standard Theological writers.'

To this we know many of our friends object; for our own part we welcomed the announcement, in the hope that it might be the means of introducing many students to some great works, which would lie beyond the range of a Bishop's examination; we shrugged our shoulders at noticing what a favourable opportunity was lost for promoting the study of Hebrew-but, in its stead, we expected reference to the Apostolical Fathers; some treatises say of S. Basil or S. Augustine, amongst the ancients; or, of Bull and Waterland amongst the moderns. Of course, the knowledge of the whole of the Old Testament in the English version, of Butler, Pearson, and Hooker.

The list was published about Dec. 21. It contains

'Septuagint: Book of Genesis.'

"The assigned portions of the early Fathers' is (we beg pardon for our English)

The First Epistle of Clemens Romanus.

The assigned works, or parts of works of standard Theological writers,' are

'Butler's Analogy. Part I.

Pearson on Creed. Art. II.

Paley's Hore Paulinæ. Introductory Chapter, and Chapter on the
Epistle to the Romans.'

We would now ask Dr. Heurtley, who are they that are lowering the tone of Theology? who that are endeavouring to raise it?

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NOTICES.

THE form in which the well-known Irish ecclesiastical historian, Mr. Robert King, Diocesan Curate, Armagh, has published his Memoir introductory to the Early History of the Primacy of Armagh,' (Armagh: John Thompson, 1854,) is curiously illustrative of the amount of encouragement which, with all the national pretensions, is given in Ireland to undertakings of real research. Despairing of being able to produce the work in an independent form, Mr. King had recourse to the columns of a friendly local newspaper, which not only published it by divisions, but worked off a small folio sheet week by week, without which assistance the treatise could not have appeared. We must add, that the tone of the dedication points to further efficacious aid afforded by the present munificent occupant of the primatial see. The results which Mr. King considers he has arrived at are,' that while no other form of ordination except the episcopal was known or heard of in Ireland in the early ages, (from the first preaching, in fact, of Christianity in the island to the period of the British 'Reformation,) yet no diocesan episcopacy was settled in this country, or employed for the government of the Irish Church, until introduced by the Church of Rome in the twelfth century;' and that accordingly, on the one hand, there were administrators of Church government in the persons of the abbots of certain monasteries, deriving their importance as, and entitled, successors of early saints, founders of those Churches; and, on the other, there were bishops, ordainers of the clergy, who might or who might not be these abbots, but who as bishops had no territorial jurisdiction, or settled limits of episcopal action. Every tyro in Church history is aware that Venerable Bede mentions this anomaly as characteristic of the Culdee monastery of Iona, founded by S. Columba, and that Presbyterian controversialists have not scrupled to distort it in favour of their system. Mr. King contends that the anomaly in question was not confined to Iona only, but was the practice of all the Irish Churches till the time of Maolmogue O'Morgan, better known as St. Malveley. Accordingly, he states that the prelates of Armagh up to this date were not properly archbishops at all, but abbots, who as 'loarbs,' or successors of S. Patrick, held the first place in the Irish Church, but who were very far from universally being invested with the episcopal order. S. Bernard, it is well known, complains bitterly of the usurpation of the see of Armagh by monied and unordained persons. It would follow from Mr. King's theory, that the latter portion of the complaint, with which all must sympathise, was not so much a corruption introduced into the see of Armagh, as a state of normal imperfection pervading the entire community. It must be noted that celibacy does not seem to contribute an essential qualification for an early Irish abbot. We commend this very curious portion of ecclesiastical history to the attentive examination of studious theologians. Mr. Petrie has shown how rich a field of ecclesiological research exists in the præ-Roman ecclesiastical buildings of Ireland. A parallel line of study offers itself in the documentary annals of early Irish Church polity.

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Heartsease; or, the Brother's Wife.' (J. W. Parker.) A new work from the pen of the authoress of the Heir of Redclyffe' is certain of a reception almost too cordial for its best interests. Its predecessor secures it a warm welcome, at the expense of a high reputation to keep up, and raised expectations to satisfy. How far the admirers of the pure chastened tone of romance in the Heir of Redclyffe,' with its chivalrous hero and superlative heroine-evidently darling conceptions of the writer-will find their anticipations met by the more ordinary group of characters, whose fortunes are the subject of the present story, may be doubted. But 'Heartsease' deserves to be judged on its own merits. It is a tale full of interest, with scenes as vivid, though not so highly wrought, as the last. The story is new in its plan, and well sustained; the characters for the most part natural, and acting well upon one another; the dialogue, as always with this writer, animated and clever. The interest perhaps too much centres in the heroine; but she is a very real and sweet person, and her attractions so genuine, that we see nothing improbable in the extent of good which her modest gifts and graces achieve, while whatever is painful in her position may be regarded as necessary to the moral of a marriage like hers, with which the story opens. Theodora, the sister-in-law, in whose delineation great pains and almost too much space are bestowed, we cannot think so successful. In the necessity of inventing trials for the heroine, she is made too faulty either for nature or any share in the reader's sympathy, who cannot see sufficient reason for her vagaries in her jealousy of the affection of a very common-place brother. She is, however, a favourite with the writer, and the occasion of many striking scenes. The sketch of Theresa Marstone is so good, that we were disappointed not to see more of her. There is in our authoress a rectitude and clear-sightedness in matters of right and wrong, which qualify her to unmask pretension, and to expose the fallacies by which some high religious professors seem to hold themselves exempt from the common rules of honesty and conscience. One word of criticism we are tempted to offer, which applies indiscriminately to all stories by this writer: we mean the undue prominence of physical suffering. Casualties, accidents, sudden deaths, lingering sicknesses, all forms of pain and bodily weakness, are used too much as engines to excite sympathy, and for the sake of incident. Probably the invention will fasten on these obvious stimulants to interest and excitement; but it is not the less a fault to be guarded against. Not that the present tale is at all an extreme case, only a general delicacy of constitution pervades the dramatis persone, and Violet suffers from an habitual languor, bordering upon hysteria. We doubt, by the way, if it is fair to husbands to represent wives as a sort of fragile ware, which will break and slip through their fingers unless constantly nursed and guarded. A man may be a good husband, we plead, and yet so indifferent a nurse, that he must trust his wife to the management of her own health: but we speak under correction. Perhaps the direct religious tendency of this story is not so prominent as in the Heir of Redclyffe;' but there is enough to show how habitually the writer is directed by the highest rules of action, and to lead the reader's thoughts on to the true source and example of all excellence.