Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 126.djvu/415

Rh  than in its natural sense. The reign of Elizabeth bisects the period between Magna Charta and ourselves. But very little progress had been made in her times towards improving the material order of society; and, from religious convulsion, they were in truth semi-revolutionary times. Acceding to the throne, she had to struggle with an intense dualism of feeling, which it was her arduous task to mould into an unity. The clergy, except a handful, sympathized largely with the old order, and continued very much in the old groove throughout the rural and less-advanced districts. To facilitate her operations on this side, she wisely brought in the Rubric of Ornaments. But there had also sprung up in the kingdom, after the sad experience of Mary's reign, a determined Puritanism, lodged principally at the main centres of population, and sustained by the credit of the returning exiles (several of them bishops), and by the natural sympathies of the Continental Reformation. Where this spirit was dominant, the work of destruction did not wait for authority, and far outran it. In truth, the powers of the queen and the law were narrowly hedged in, on this side as well as on the other. What could be more congenial to her mind and to her necessities, than that, for all this second section of her people, she should wink hard at neglect in a sore point like that of vestments, and that in proceeding to the Advertisements of 1564, though obliged to apply a stronger hand, she should confine herself to expressing what she thought absolute decency required, namely, the surplice, and leave the rubric and the older forms to be held or modified according to the progressive action of opinion? Considering the violent divergences with which she had to deal, would it not have been the ruin of her work if she had endeavoured to push to the extremes now sometimes supposed the idea of a present and immediate uniformity throughout the land? This I admit is speculation, on a subject not yet fully elucidated; but it is speculation which is not in conflict with the facts thus far known, and which requires no strain to be put upon the language of the law.

"England expects every man to do his duty;" and this is an attempt at doing mine, not without a full measure of respect for those, who are charged with a task now more than ever arduous in the declaration and enforcement of the law. To lessen the chances of misapprehension I sum up, in the following propositions, a paper which, though lengthened, must, I know, be dependent to a large extent upon liberal interpretation.

I. The Church of this great nation is worth preserving; and for that end much may well be borne.

II. In the existing state of minds, and of circumstances, preserved it cannot be if we shift its balance of doctrinal expression, be it by an alteration of the Prayer-Book (either way) in contested points, or be it by treating rubrical interpretations of the matters heretofore most sharply contested on the basis of "doctrinal significance."

III. The more we trust to moral forces, and the less to penal proceedings (which are to a considerable extent exclusive one of the other), the better for the establishment, and even for the Church.

IV. If litigation is to be continued, and to remain within the bounds of safety, it is highly requisite that it should be confined to the repression of such proceedings as really imply unfaithfulness to the national religion.

V. In order that judicial decisions on ceremonial may habitually enjoy the large measure of authority, finality, and respect, which attaches in general to the sentences of our courts, it is requisite that they should have uniform regard to the rules and results of full historical investigation, and should, if possible, allow to stand over for the future matters insufficiently cleared, rather than decide them upon partial and fragmentary evidence.

 

 From Blackwood's Magazine. {{c|THE DILEMMA.

{{smaller block|CHAPTER XIV.

{continued.)}}}}   was Olivia launched upon her new life, of the personages moving around which she had as yet had only two slight glimpses. Some eight years before. Colonel Falkland, returning to England to recover from a wound, had paid a visit to Florence to see his god-daughter, then just entering on girlhood. He stayed there for some weeks, living at an hotel in the neighbourhood of Mr. Mailland's apartments, and passing the greater part of each day with his friends; and visitors in those days to the picture-galleries in that city could not but 