ge and sympathy with the European character and institud then there would be a hope that we might each impart to r that in which we are superior. VII. TOUR IN SCOTLAND. July, 1831. as at Church (at Greenock) twice on Sunday, once at the like the local and particular prayers and addresses which om of their services allows the minister to use. On the d, the people should be protected from the tediousness or of their minister; and that is admirably effected by a and especially by such a Liturgy as ours. As to the repeour Service, they arise chiefly from Laud's folly in joining ices into one; but the repetition of the Lord's Prayer I ly think objectionable; not that I would contend for it, but would I complain of it. Some freedom in the Service the r certainly should have; some power of insertion to suit the lar time and place; some power of explaining on the spot whatever is read from the Scriptures, which may require explantion, or at any rate of stating the context. It does seem to me that the reforms required in our Liturgy and Service are so obvious, and so little effect the system itself, that their long omission is doubly blameable. But more remains behind, and of far greater difficulty: -to make the Church at once popular and dignified,—to give the people their just share in its government, without introducing a democratical spirit,—to give the Clergy a thorough sympathy with their flocks, without altogether lowering their rank and tone. When Wesley said to his minister, that they had no more to do with being gentlemen that with being dancing-masters, τὸ μὲν ὀρθῶς εἶπε, τὸ δὲ page. In Christ's communication with His Apostles there is always a marked dignity and delicacy, a total absence of all that coarseness and vulgarity into which Wesley's doctrine would infallibly lead us. Yet even in Christ, the Lord and Master of His Disciples, there is a sympathy, which is a very different thing from condescension, a 1 Agun in Clasp the Serah minister's semmin struk as allrassed more ai derin hen ad pipalam: and agis than ever I fell the sugen ny for service. I cannot say B.T inly varme and impresare I thought the Lord's Prayer, whet the minister so my surense ty the way used it before the ser Nding & seems to me, an be worse than the introduxıry papa of the Scotch Service, to Julge from what I have hitherto beard: t itemessory prayer after the sermon is år simpler, and there th discreton pren a the ministers is often happily used. But alt gether, taking ther Service as ins and curs as it is, I wald fr rather have car own: how much more, therefore, with the slight improvements which we so easily night introduce if caly-B even to the eleventh boor we will not reform, and therefore we shall be not. I fear. refimed bat miely mangled or overthrown by mes as ignorant in their correction of abases as some of us are in their maintenance of them. Periodical visitations of extreme severity have visited the Church and the world at different times, but to nɔ human being is it given to anticipate which will be the final one of all Only the lesson in all of them is the same. "If the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" And in each of these successive "comings" of our Lord, how little is the faith which He has found even among His professed followers! May He increase this faith in me, and those who are dearest to me, ere it be too late for ever! 1. Twenty and twenty-two years ago I was backwards and forwards at this place, being then a young man with no wife or children, but with a mother whose house was my home, with a brother, aunt, and sisters. Ten, eight, and seven years ago, I used to be also passing often through here; I had then lost my dear brother, and latterly my dearest mother, and I had a wife and children; I had also a sister living here with her husband and children. Now, after anoth er period of seven years, I am here once more; with no mother or aunt, with no remains left of my early home; my sister who did live here has lost her husband, and now lives at Rugby; but I have not only my dearest wife with me, but—a more advanced stage of life-three dear children are with us, and their pens are all busy with their journals like their mother's and mine. So Dover marks very strikingly the several periods of my life, and shows me how large a portion of my space here I have alread gone through. Then for the world at large. When I first came here, it was so soon after Napoleon's downfall, that I remember hearing from one of the passengers in the packet the first tidings of Labedoyere's execution. At my second and third visits, the British army still occupied the north of France. My second period of coming here, from 1825 to 1830, marked the last period of the old Bourbon reign in France, and the old Tory reign in England. When I first landed here, it was in the brief interval between the French and Belgian Revolutions: it was just after the triumphant election of 1830 in England, which overthrew the ministry of the Duke of Wellington, and led to the Reform Bill. And now we seem to be witnessing the revival of Toryism in England, perhaps of the old Bourbon principles in part of France. The tide is turned, and will advance no higher till the next flood; let us only hope that its ebb will not be violent; and in the meanwhile our neighbours have got rid of the white flag, and we have got rid of the rotten boroughs of Schedule A. This is a clear gain; it is a question whether the positive good which either of us have gained, is equal to the positive evil which we have destroyed; but still in the course of this world, Seeva the destroyer is ever needed, and in our imperfect state, the very deliverance from evil is a gratification and a good. On Saturday last we were at our delicious Westmoreland home, gele poi vine dife with are so linked with a thousand recles tons: Beaulting the sea which is the highway from all the lie. England to the Hef Enge, and beyond there stretches the dim line of darker shadow which we know to be the very li France. And besides, in this last week. I have been at an Election: of those great socasions of good or evil which are so largely min stered to Englishmen; an opportunity for so much energy, firs mach rising beyond the mere selfishness of domestic interests, and the narrowness of mere individual or local pursuits; but an opportunity also for every base and bad passion; for corruption, for fear. for tyranny, for malignity. Such is an election, and such is a human life; and those who rail against these double-handed appointments of God, because they have an evil handle as well as a goi". may desire the life of the Seven Sleepers, for then only can cppertunities of evil be taken from us, when we lose also all opportunity of dring or of becoming good. However, even as an occasion of evil, there is no doubt that our elections are like an inoculating for a disorder, and so mitigating: the party spirit and the feuds which now spend themselves in bloodless contests, would, if these were "The Epicureans," he said, “did not meddle with politics, that they might be as quiet as possible from the strife of tongues. There are good people who do this now, remaining in willing ignorance of what is going on. But the mischief is, they cannet set their passions to sleep as they can their understanding; and when they do corne to interfere, they are violent and prejudiced in proportion to their ignorance. Such men, to be consistent, should live like Simon Stylites." away, find a far more deadly vent; they solve that great problem how to excite a safe and regulated political activity. We also in the course of the week have been travelling on the great railway from Manchester to Birmingham. The distance is ninety-five miles, which we accomplished in five hours. Nothing can be more delightful, as well as more convenient. It was very beautiful too, to be taken, as it were, into the deepest retirement of the country, surprising lone farm-houses and outlying copses with the rapid darting by of a hundred passengers, yet leaving their quiet unbroken; for no houses have as yet gathered on the line of the railway, and no miscellaneous passers at all times of the day and night serve to keep it ever in public. Only at intervals, four or five times a day, there rushes by the long train of carriages, and then all is as quiet as before. We also passed through London, with which I was once so familiar; and which now I almost gaze at with the wonder of a stranger. That enormous city, grand beyond all other earthly grandeur, sublime with the sublimity of the sea or of mountains, is yet a place that I should be most sorry to call my home. In fact its greatness repels the notion of home; it may be a palace, but it cannot be a home. How different from the mingled greatness and sweetness of our mountain valleys; and yet he who were strong in body and mind, ought to desire rather, if he must do one, to spend all his life in London, than all his life in Westmoreland. For not yet can energy and rest be united in one, and this is not our time and place for rest, but for energy. 2. Chartres, August, 1837. Chartres was a very fine termination of our tour. We stopped at the Hotel du Grand Monarque, on an open space just at the outside of the town, and from thence immediately made our way to the Cathedral. The high tower, so celebrated all over France, is indeed remarkably beautiful; but the whole church far surpassed my expectations. The portails of both transepts are rich in figures as large as life, like the great portail at Rheims; the rosewindows over them are very rich, and the windows all over the church are most rich in painted glass. The size is great-a very essential element, I think, in the merits of a cathedral-and all the back of the choir was adorned with groups of figures in very high relief, which had an extremely fine effect. These are all the proper and perpetual beauties of Chartres Cathedral; but we happened to |