her life, considered herself lifted above the ordinary risks of humanity, and we find her thankful for having been preserved from self-conceit (p. 544), when we cannot but regard her as the real victim of that delusion. It is time, however, to draw our notice to a conclusion. If in her day she had influence, it may be considered passed, nor can her works, characterised by a trite and common style, ever revive to have real weight. Her system of religious teaching has, we suspect, been found on all hands to be a failure. Her perpetual repetitions of doctrine in the same dull prosy formula, were invariably passed over altogether, or if forced upon her young readers, read with weariness and disgust. Her unreal generalizations on the depravity of human nature were found ineffectual preachers of humility; and even risked deadening the conscience, thus taught to regard sin simply as a condition of our being, and so scarcely to be guarded against, or repented of. Her mystic notions of prophecy and the millennium, so far from producing good, were felt to foster irreverence in childish minds. Her indiscriminate condemnation of many practices in their nature indifferent, and, if not abused, blameless, tended to mystify the instincts of right and wrong; and people found, moreover, that after ever so careful and conscientious a perusal, reading all the didactic parts, and skipping nothing that was dull, what remained longest, and left the most real impressions from her books, was their strong appreciation and exaltation of beauty, wealth, rank, elegance, and all worldly advantages whatever. Thus, years enable men to see the faults and failures of books, characters, and institutions in highest favour in their own day. Reflections of this kind must be suggested to all thoughtful readers by the present work. Only let us recognise the redeeming element of good intention, not wanting in even the most objectionable of Mrs. Sherwood's works, and, remembering the labours, charities, and kindnesses which distinguish her active career, our severest comments and harshest criticisms will not be given in an uncharitable spirit, nor without much genuine admiration and sympathy for the vigorous, cheerful, affectionate spirit which has here been brought before us in its more congenial sphere of life and action. 369 ART. III.-1. A Letter to a Convocation Man, concerning the Rights, Powers and Privileges of that Body. 4to. 1697. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by the Rev. WILLIAM FRASER, B.C.L. J. Masters, London. 1853. 2. The Authority of Christian Princes over their Ecclesiastical Synods asserted, with particular respect to the Convocations of the Clergy of the Realm and Church of England, occasioned by a pamphlet entitled, A Letter to a Convocation Man.' By WILLIAM WAKE, D.D. 8vo. 1697. 3. The Rights, Powers, and Privileges of an English Convocation, stated and vindicated in answer to a book of Dr. Wake's, By FRANCIS ATTERBURY. 8vo. 2d edition. 1701. 4. Ecclesiastical Synods and Parliamentary Convocations of the Church of England, historically stated and justly vindicated from the misrepresentations of Mr. Atterbury. Part I. By WHITE KENNET, D.D. 8vo. 1701. 5. A History of the English Councils and Convocations, and of the Clergy's meeting in Parliament. In which is also comprehended the History of Parliaments. By HUMPHREY HODY, D.D. 8vo. 1701. 6. Synodus Anglicana, or the Constitution and Proceedings of an English Convocation, shown to be agreeable to the principles of an Episcopal Church. 8vo. 1702. Edited by EDWARD CARDWELL, D.D. Principal of S. Alban's Hall. The University Press, Oxford. 1854. 7. The State of the Church and Clergy of England in their Councils, Synods, Convocations, and other public assemblies, Historically deduced from the conversion of the Saxons to the present Times. By WILLIAM WAKE, D.D., occasioned by a book entitled, The Rights, Powers, and Privileges of an English Convocation.' Fol. 1703. Or the books on Convocation, which we have placed at the head of our article, two have been lately edited and reprinted, and the others must shortly be so by what we may call a literary necessity. The revival and reform of Convocation is not one of the least important questions even of this eventful time; but it requires ventilation. Before people can discuss such a subject as it ought to be discussed, they must gain some knowledge of it, and about it. They must have books on it, and must read them. And to examine the question of Convocational Reform, works on Convocational law and history are especially necessary; because every true reformation is a return to first principles; and historical precedents and constitutional facts must, after all, form the only foundation on which a practical reconstruction of our Convocation can be based. That Convocation will now be reformed,' must be considered a settled thing. The sessions of February 1 and July 20 in this present year, have proved to the world that the Synod of the Church of England has now ceased to be a form, and has become a reality. Each of those sessions is an epoch in our church history; and we cannot dwell too earnestly upon what was done in them. The speech of the Bishop of Exeter on February 1st upon the suffrages of Stipendiary Curates, a speech marked by the correctness and the courage which always characterise that Prelate in expressing his opinions; and the polished and convincing rhetoric of the Bishop of Oxford in advocating the cause of Synodal revival, were but minor features in the business of the day, compared with the solemn dignity with which the deliberations of the assembled episcopate all at once, as it were, appeared to be invested, and which seemed to force even upon an unwilling mind the conviction, that the promise left to the Church by the LORD and Chief Bishop' of the Church had not then failed her. The Reports of the Committees on Convocational Reform and Church Extension, which were appointed on the first of these Sessions, were on the second brought before the Convocation. They are temperate, practical, and earnest. But the first especially, seems to call for much sifting and discussion in the Church at large. It has now been 1 On the motion of the Bishop of London, it was resolved, nemine contradicente, 'to appoint a committee of the Upper House, and to desire the Lower House to nominate seven of its members to deliberate with such committee, when summoned, to consider and report to the houses, with a view to addressing her Majesty thereon, whether any, and if so, what reforms in the constitution of Convocation were expedient, to enable it to treat with the full confidence of the Church, of such matters as her Majesty might be pleased to submit to its deliberations.' The resolution, so adopted, was submitted to the Lower House, and carried by a large majority. A second resolution was carried in the Upper House, on the motion of the Bishop of Llandaff, with only one dissentient, to appoint a committee of this house, and to direct the Lower House to name seven of its members to consult with it, when summoned, to consider and report to this house whether the great increase and present condition of the population does not make some, and what adaptation of the Church's rule, needful, to meet the Church's needs.' This resolution was also carried in the Lower House. The joint committees were appointed, and the result of their deliberations have been laid before the Convocation, and also before the House of Lords. brought before the public mind, and appears almost incumbent upon a churchman to acquire so much knowledge of the subject as to be able to judge fairly of the extent, the tendency, and the possible results of the Reforms which have been proposed. We will suppose then that our reader feels desirous of forming some of his own opinions on the probable efficiency of Convocation in its present state, or in a reformed one; and that in order to do so he has recourse naturally to some of the ConVocational writers of the period when it was in full activity. He will find it a work of controversy as a thing of course; and the enquiry will involve the perusal of some other writer on the other side of the question, probably more voluminous. Here again he will meet with unsatisfactory references to other books, some folios, some pamphlets, which he will find next to impossible to obtain: however interested in the question he at first has been, he will lose the clue to the feelings and objects of the writers, and become confused and bewildered among the chaos of theories and counter-theories, isolated facts and undeveloped principles, forms which are taken for granted as familiar to him, and practices which have for some time been obsolete; until in weariness and impatience he relinquishes the task, and is driven in mere despair to take his notions on Convocation from the common-places of the orators of the platform. In order then to save readers on Convocation some amount, even if it be but a small one, of such labour and perplexity, we propose now to lay before them some brief critical and historical notices of our principal writers on Convocation; and while going over their works to throw what light we are able upon that rude and undigested, but yet very valuable, mass of controversial writing, which, during the reigns of William III. and Anne, formed itself round them by successive accretions, which has a style and unity of its own, and which we may therefore reasonably enough distinguish as 'Our Convocation Literature.' Now if the muse had ever smiled on us, and if we had been ever touched with the fire of creative genius, we might paint the fortunes of this Synodal controversy in hues of poetic brilliancy; we might celebrate its wordy warfare in the glowing life and language of another Iliad; we might describe its combatants skirmishing at a distance or closing hand to hand, one while hitting a foe with the heavy spear of an Examination,' at another extending over a fellow-partisan the sevenfold shield of a 'Defence;' on this side, a flight of 'Letters' might be seen hurtling through the darkened air, and on that a warrior crushing his opponent with a 'Reply' in the form of a folio, which to lift only would take two men, such as men now are. Hector and Achilles might find apt parallels in Gibson and in Atterbury, and the Homeric element of occasionally prosy speeches would assuredly not be wanting. Or if our fancy were in a more sombre mood, we might imagine ourselves as guiding our reader's steps, as Virgil guided the exile of Florence, aiding his feet to find out the zigzag path through that intricate and obscure controversy. 'Noi salevam per una pietra fessa, Purgatorio, canto x. And all the while there have been flitting before us the forms of sarcasms, whose life has gone, innuendos now unintelligible, and animosities which have been long since dead; and before us lay crowded in ghostly confusion, forgotten arguments, shadowy principles and theories which have mouldered into dust; and a region opened to our view, dark indeed, and unknown in its extent, yet not without something which allured us to advance in its very vastness and obscurity-The Purgatory of Pamphlets. The popularity which William of Holland enjoyed at the beginning of his reign had been gradually diminishing, until, after the 'death of Mary II., it was superseded by an almost general feeling of distrust and opposition. Many causes led to its decline; among the most obvious were the expenses of the wars in which he was engaged, his own unenglish manners, the attempts which his advisers made to revive the policy of the Stuarts and adapt it to the altered circumstances of the times, and not least perhaps, the suspicions which were entertained of the hostility of the king and his ministers to the Established Church. It was of course the object of the Tory party to foment this unpopularity by any means within their reach; and the demand of justice for the Church was one of the most obvious as well as the most specious. To many an earnest churchman this was a real motive for exertion; but to others it was only a cry, and was never intended for anything else. If we bear this in mind, it will serve as a key to many of the anomalies of policy which astonish us in the history of the Convocations of that time, where we find both the opponents and the friends of Convocational action complaining again and again, that no advantage resulted from the sessions of that assembly, either to the Church or to religion itself. It was intended that it should be so. The leading men of the day, while they were out of office, supported the claims of the Church, for the purpose of exciting a feeling against the government; and when they obtained office themselves, though they rewarded the men who had been their in |