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26 be guaranteed by the labourer going to his work with his weapon in his girdle. In the parish and in the provincial Convocation the same grounds of hope exist, and the same necessity of vigilance. The old Church of England enjoys advantages which may not be at first sight evident, but which are most real and powerful, in the manner in which its formularies, its ancient Catholic prayers and canticles, its forcible versions, its baptismal, marriage, and burial services, have sunk into the hearts of the general people, and moulded their tone of thought, even at second hand with those who voluntarily hold off from public communion with the Church. In the long run, its appeal to popular instincts against popular passions would, we believe, be successful; for, with the exception of Mr. Bright and the bigoted backers of the Liberation Society, Englishmen in general acquiesce in the Church of England, along with Queen, Lords, and Commons, and the judges in their scarlet gowns, as an institution of which it is the right thing to be proud. They may not, many of them, be very expert in the doctrines of that Church, but as long as the Church is there with its doctrines under its own keeping, it occupies the vantage ground. With all the discouragements and disappointments which we may have been suffering from of late years, we cannot honestly refuse to say that we have gained enormously. Convocation revived, a Colonial Church well-nigh created, religious institutions of all kinds set up, communions multiplied, occasions of worship infinitely increased, churches and the services in them beautified and rectified, in every district of the land, are some of the most salient items of the acknowledged gain.

Let us live to assure these blessings to our successors. Let us live to do so, not only as Churchmen but as Englishmen. In England, happily, the divorce between the Church feeling and the national feeling, if ever it were likely to have taken place, is now suspended, and will, we hope, by the continuance of quiet, be rendered impossible. At this moment we more particularly feel that we are Englishmen, partaking as we do in that immense grief which radiates from the most exalted of English homes, and penetrates the humblest. That grief will, in a few hours from the moment we are writing, be collected and sanctified in that solemn message of God's mercy which the Church claims as its own. The roof of Windsor Chapel will then resound with the aspiration, most rightly used over one who, among no common temptations, was ever faithful, virtuous, true, and pious, 'earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.' These words have accompanied the highest of our race and our