Consideration must also be given to Lord Monteagle's course of proceeding. You will also recollect that Lord Monteagle has been a decided opponent of the Maintenance of the Sees from the first introduction of the S. Asaph and Bangor Bill. He is a skilful parliamentary tactician, and has doubtless adopted that course which he has thought best for defeating that measure and forwarding his own. You will also recollect that Lord Monteagle was one of those who virtually rescinded the recommendation of the Commissioners in their first Report in respect of the Vicarages in the North Welsh Dioceses, which he now proposes to adopt as the basis of the proposition on which his Bill is founded. What has produced this remarkable change on his part? The Vicarages of North Wales were equally in want of income in 1836 as now. Why does Lord Monteagle now in 1846 propose to place the Dioceses of North Wales in a different state from that which he did in 1836? If Welsh objects were alone sought, why did he not bring forward his measure in the last Session of Parliament? His proposition equally with mine will interfere with the recommendations of the Commissioners, and necessitate the repeal of that portion of the Act which gives the surplus income of the united Dioceses nominally to South Wales, but in reality in aid of the Episcopal Fund. Had it been mooted last Session, Ministers might have objected to the proposition as they did to mine. Lord Monteagle's earnestness for the Welsh Vicarages would have been put to the test, but then he would not have had the advantage of keeping us in ignorance of the course which Ministers may take upon his Bill, and of being enabled to direct our attention to schemes which he, without their aid, has no power to carry out. Allow me to ask you whether our Bishopric is to be sacrificed for such a prospect. Will it not be asked in other Dioceses what right the North Welsh Clergy have to be placed in a different position, as respects Episcopal Income, from that of the Clergy of Dioceses in the North and West of England? Would not an attempt made by me to obtain such a preference for my countrymen have ensured a failure? Would the Church in England have given me that support which they have done, or would our cause have engaged their sympathy as our Diocesan cause has done, had such been my course? The parishes in North Wales are entitled, in common with those of other Dioceses, to augmentation from the General Fund. It is absurd to suppose, that if North Wales possessed a different fund, the Commissioners would give to it in addition its full share of the General Fund; or that one Diocese would be suffered to receive such an undue preference. Let North Wales receive its proper share of this Fund, and let us not be called upon to sacrifice our Bishopric to obtain those augmentations to our smaller livings which other Dioceses obtain without this sacrifice. I admit the talents and parliamentary powers of the noble Lord, but I think that the Clergy of North Wales would not do wisely to seek for more from the Ecclesiastical Fund than is common to other Dioceses, and that we should rest contented with the advantage accruing to our extended Parishes from having realized the engagements made by Sir James Graham in the interview had with him by Lord Clive and myself in 1842, in reference to the Cathedral Churches (Wales) Bill-that Area, as well as Population, should be considered by the Commissioners in their future allotment of disposable Church Income. How then are we to proceed in the Session of 1846? I reply, by adopting every exertion in our power to bring our case under the consideration of our authorities in Church and State. Every thing which has occurred since 1843 has tended to confirm the opinion entertained of the injury done to the Church and the injustice to North Wales. The addresses from the Dioceses of Bangor and S. Asaph in 1844-that in 1845 in respect of which I am now writing to you the numerous meeting of the Clergy here last autumn (1844) upon the Consecration of the new Church in this Parish, partly I believe with the intention of marking their opinion of the course I had taken in this im portant cause-the honour I received from the University of Oxford in 1844 -and also the important indication of public feeling in the circumstance that, at the late election for Windsor, this question was pressed upon the notice of the Candidates as one upon which it was necessary that their sentiments should be understood-combine to make me augur well of the cause and expect a continuance of the good feeling in respect of it. I think it desirable that the opinion of the Clergy of the North Wales Dioceses should be distinctly expressed in respect of Lord Monteagle's and my course of proceeding. Whether Loid Monteagle's plan is intended to be limited to North Wales, or to form a Precedent for further transfers of Ecclesiastical Property, and for hereafter trenching upon and appropriating to other uses the endowments of the English Sees, the Clergy of North Wales will in my opinion act judiciously if they repudiate a scheme which will place them invidiously in a different situation from their brethren in England who are in other respects similarly circumstanced. I need not point out to you the advantage of having a notification to this effect avowed in the appeal to the Clergy of England for co-operation, which is now about to emanate from the Principality. I have only now to add my thanks to you for the valuable assistance with which you have favoured me on the North Wales Diocesan Question, and to request you will convey to those who are associated with you my warmest thanks as well for their kindness to myself personally, as for the zeal and untiring energy with which they have aided my humble endeavours in favour of our Church, which, by the blessing of GOD, I trust to see brought to a result which shall preserve existing institutions and promote His service, for the maintenance of which they were established. I have the honour to remain, dear Mr. Dean, Powis Castle, Jan. 12, 1846. REVIEWS AND NOTICES. POWIS. A Manual of Councils of the Holy Catholic Church, comprising the substance of the most remarkable and important Canons, alphabetically arranged. By the Rev. ED. H. LANDON, M.A., late of C.C.C., Cambridge, 8vo. MR. LANDON's manual is a most useful and welcome addition to the works of reference, which every private library should possess. It is compiled with much research and judgment, and from authentic sources. Thus, the cumbrous sixteen folios of the indefatigable Labbe and Copart, supply, for the most part, the Canons of Councils of the Western Church, especially those of the medieval period; and for those of our own branch of it, Wilkins and Johnson have been collated. In like manner, where other authorities exist, such as Manse and Raynal, their testimony has been duly considered. Indeed it is manifest that the compiler has not been contented to take the old "mumpsimus" of any authority for granted,-a caution doubly valuable, from its being so much neglected by recent compilers of works of reference. But perhaps the most valuable portion of this volume is the information it conveys on the Councils of the Eastern Church, and the provincial synods of Scotland and America. For the former, Mr. Neale's MS. of his forthcoming history of the Oriental Church, (together with Mouraneff) has been, by his permission, consulted for the latter, he has gone to original documents of the time. In short, we have here a mass of information which is not to be found collected together in any other place. And we trust that it may not be without effect in enlarging the sympathies of English Churchmen, towards distant branches of the One Body, whose welfare all ought earnestly to desire and labour to promote. The manual concludes with some most valuable appendices. The first two give lists of the modern and Latin names, situation, and Ecclesiastical position of the places in which councils have been held: the third gives a sketch of the forms observed in the celebration of councils: the fourth, a most interesting extract from a report of the state of the Church in the United States of America, presented in Convocation at Philadelphia, in 1844: the fifth is a list of the twenty-two Canons of the first Council of Arles. There is also a useful but not complete index to Councils, with their dates. It is moreover no mean praise of this Manual, that, while it gives the substance of the chief Canons of the whole Church, it is comprised within the limits of a moderate small 8vo. volume, and at a price which will probably give it that wide circulation, which its intrinsic merits so well deserve. "The Calendars of All-Hallowen, Brystowe." An attempt to elucidate some portions of the History of the Priory or Fraternitie of Calendars, whose Library once stood over the North, or Jesus Aisle of All Saints' Church, Bristol, by the Rev. HENRY ROGERS, M.A., Vicar of that Church.-Bristol and London, 1846. SUCH is the title of a small volume recently put forth, we believe, under the auspices of the Bristol and West of England Architectural and Archæological Society. Mr. Rogers commences with a chapter on the obscurity and importance of the subject of his inquiry. He does not leave the general question of the name and origin of such fraternities of Calendars without some interesting hints. He inclines to the old theory of their name being expressive of their custom, in common with other Priests of the early British times, of calling monthly the moon's age as borrowed from the Pontifex of heathen Rome, who "dicebat pluries каλŵ кaλŵ, quasi, voco vos, venite et audite ætatem lunæ. But the charm of this little volume is the kindly spirit with which the author enters into the feelings and suggests the occupation of this particular fraternity, and dwells on their beneficence, their devotions, fastings, watchings, and visitations of the sick and needy. He has perhaps rather gone out of his way in some of his illustrations, but on the whole the work is well done, and will afford matter of interest to a large and increasing class of readers. It is surprising that Mr. Rogers should have fallen into the very vulgar error of supposing the word "wealth" in the Litany to mean riches. Professor Hussey has brought out an Edition in one vol. 8vo., (Oxford University Press) of Ven. Bede's Five Books of Ecclesiastical History; his Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow; his Letter to Ecgbert, and that of Boniface to Cudberth. The text of Smith has been followed for the two former works. For the Letter to Ecgbert, Professor Hussey has consulted the MS. in Merton College Library, from which Smith took his text and for the Epistle of Boniface, the text of Seraines, collated with other editions and with Spelman's emendations, has been used. The present edition, however, is a vast improvement, both on Smith's, which is greatly overdone with notes, and on the cumbrous folios with King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version : and now that the studies of so many are being directed to the sources of mediæval history, it is really no slight boon to have the guidance of the present volume, in selecting from the writings of an author so famous, but so copious as Ven. Bede. At the same time, we do not think that it will interfere with Dr. Giles' edition of the entire works of the same writer, which is rather calculated for the library than the lecture room, being voluminous, and encumbered with translations. Professor Hussey's own notes, particularly the chronological ones, and those of Smith's, which he has retained, will be found of real assistance to the student. The opuscula chosen to accompany the history, are severally most valuable and interesting: indeed, the epistle of Boniface is, perhaps, the most important single document,-whether as regards its contents or its effects on the English Church,—of any which have been preserved to us, from that period to which it belongs. 253 JOHN MILTON. Ir is neither a gracious nor an agreeable occupation to pick holes in the characters of those who are generally esteemed great and good men, and whose memories are enshrined in the deep core of a nation's heart. And yet to many of our readers this will appear our thankless, and it may be thought by some, presumptuous office in this article. For those who only know Milton from his traditional reputation, as "the hallowed Milton,"* as a poet whose "genius had angelic songs and fed on manna," or as a great spirit living 66 In regions mild, of calm and serene air, or at least, 'travelling in life's common way in cheerful godliness," to those, we repeat, who have long been accustomed to consider these descriptions as illustrative of the character of Milton, it will be a matter of surprise, not to add disappointment, to find how opposite is the conclusion to which they will be drawn. But though our occupation is a thankless one, it will not, we trust, be unprofitable. For however on such a subject we may almost prefer to be left in ignorance, than argued into a conviction, opposed to our previous notions; yet when we consider that error, however we may be blinded to it, is error still; and that man's heart is of itself prone to imbibe error: and further, that no error is more dangerous, because none is more insidious, than the errors of a favourite author whose name is considered a sufficient guarantee for the soundness of any sentiment he may express; it surely is most desirable that the danger which we are thus in of being deluded by error, should be pointed out, in order that we may set ourselves against it. John Milton was born in London, December 9th, A.D. 1608. His father having been disinherited for renouncing the Roman Communion, was following the humble trade of a scrivener at his son's birth. He was a highly educated man, having graduated at Oxford; and he also possessed a refined taste in music, as several of his compositions yet extant are said to prove. His father, Milton himself tells us, was further distinguished by the undeviating integrity of his life; and his mother, by the estimation in which she was held, and the alms which she bestowed." ་་ "My father," to continue his grateful son's own words, " destined me when I was yet a child, to the study of elegant literature, and so eagerly did I seize on it, that from my twelfth year I seldom quitted my studies for bed till the middle of the night. This proved the first cause of the ruin of my eyes, in addition to the natural weakness of which organs, I was afflicted with frequent pains in my head. When these maladies could * Mason. No. V.-MAY, 1846. + Cowper. Wordsworth. S not restrain my rage for learning, my father provided that I should be daily instructed in some school abroad, or by domestic tutors at home." The first of these tutors appears to have been a Puritan divine of the name of Young, whose lax religious principles rendering his residence in England unsafe, he fled to Hamburgh, where he became a kind of chaplain to the British Merchants, A.D. 1623. Being thus deprived of his domestic tutor, the young student was sent to a public school, (S. Paul's,) of which Mr. Gill was master; whence at the age of sixteen he entered Christ's College, Cambridge, where from the feminine gracefulness of his person, he was designated the "Lady of Christ's." The College tutor was Dr. William Chappell, who eventually became, at the instance of the Archbishop Ussher, Bishop of Cork in Ireland; and to whose reputation of learning and virtue, the following passing notice in a postcript to one of Dr. Hammond's letters, is no mean testimony. "I must not omit to add," writes the excellent Confessor in a letter from Westwood, "my true reverence to the memory of that excellent divine, the Bishop of Cork, whom GOD fatherly removed from the evils then more impendent on these nations." (He died in the early years of the Rebellion.) "Methinks it is not unreasonable for me to enquire, whether there be not some body of orthodox divinity, or decision of some important questions on it, left behind him, for sober posterity to profit by." Notwithstanding the influence for good which such a tutor might be expected to have over a youth like Milton, it has been conjectured from a passage in one of his early Latin poems-for he wrote both Latin and English poems of considerable length and excellence in his boyhood,that he fell under the displeasure of the authorities in his College, and was obliged to retire for some time to his father's house at Horton near Colnbrook, in Buckinghamshire, where he gave himself up to the cultivation of the Muses. It is in one of his elegaic poems written to an old schoolfellow, Carlodeati, that the passage occurs which has given rise to the suspicion of his compulsory absence from Cambridge. Jam nec arundiferum mihi cura revisere Camum Nuda nec arva placent, umbrasque negantia molles, Si sit hoc exilium patrios adiisse penates Non ego vel profugi nomen sortemve recuso Whatever else may be inferred from this passage, it certainly betrays a very undutiful spirit towards the writer's alma mater, and we may trace in it the germ of that unruly spirit which broke forth so fearfully in after life. Milton's absence from Cambridge was only temporary, as he returned and took his degrees in Arts, A.D. 1632, after which he again resided with his father, who had now retired from business, and was living upon a small estate of his own in Buckinghamshire. His parents had intended their son for Holy Orders, as he himself |