AUGUST 29.-BEHEADING OF S. JOHN BAPTIST.-A.D. 31.

"And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought; and he went and beheaded him in the prison, and brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel; and the damsel gave it to her mother."-S. Mark

vi. 27.

Rage, thou hast done thy worst; and where the dead.
Thy victim? greatest born of human seed,

To yon blest shores his mighty spirit fled,
Familiar there in vain thou badst him bleed,
Thou tyrant-slave, a harlot's gaze to feed!
Archangels, while their lyres an instant cease,
Half leaning from their orbs with anthems lead
Their kindred Angel through those worlds of peace,
Where high emparadised he sees God's Church increase;

Hovering surveys her like a new-blest bride,
Wreathed with a zone of everlasting rays,
With sleepless look uplifted; at her side

Her faith's dear symbols; and a sapphire blaze
Of glory round her Cross-crowned altar plays.
Her shadow broods o'er each adoring clime,

Her heralds track all Earth's unmeasured ways,
Her wings stretch far beyond space, tomb, or time,
From her young flock to where her Elders reign sublime.

* History has preserved the Litany sung at the entrance of S. Augustin and his missionaries, when they took possession of Canterbury :-" By Thy mercy, O LORD, we beseech Thee, turn away Thy wrath from this city and Thy holy Temple ; for we are sinners. Hallelujah."

Woe to the foes of this immortal fold!

Woe to thy minions, Herod !-o'er the ground,
Where the Saint's ashes slumber, hearsed and cold,
A breath is gathering into mighty sound

To fill this lower vault; therein are drowned
Both scorn and hate; for upward ever spring
The clear high notes, the low to earth are bound :
So mounts thy dirge to Heaven with easy wing,
Elijah of the Cross, forerunner of our King!

August thy mission to the tear-dimmed earth,
Thy desert dwelling and thine emblem rite,
Thou lone, chaste, star of Faith's immortal birth!
Till He descended in majestic light,

His glory half unveiled to mortal sight,

Ancient of days, embodied Deity,

Mary's true Child, imparting by His might
His very Self in solemn mystery,

Till at Creation's close He comes on yonder sky;

Throned on a cloud He comes: around Him bands
Of such as suffered here, but there at last
Have met in triumph from a thousand strands,
And from ten thousand languages: 'tis past
For them-the votive penitential fast;

But ne'er may pass the rule o'er-mastering all,—
That banner o'er the kneeling nations cast,-
The Church's robe, her LORD's pure, seamless pall,
Wav'd where on high she holds unbroken festival.

Behold her mirrored in the Baptist's life.
(Surpassing Image !) and her grand career,
Till victory gladden her long years of strife!
Behold her zeal, like his, serene and clear,
Resplendent in its pure, meridian sphere!
Behold, like his, her peerless fortitude,
That beams intenser as the end draws near!

Supreme Interpreter, like him, endued

With a prophetic mind from Truth's deep founts imbued.

Sweet balmy drops of patient penitence,
Far in the wilds the dry parch'd soul to fill
With solace thrilling beyond human sense,

And blissful hopes which she can lavishly dispense.

I hear her tread the costly floors of kings,
And there the purpled criminal arrest!
Aye deep-toned there her steady accent rings,
And tyrants shudder at her dread behest;
But to the votaries whom her love hath blessed
How mild her aspect as she counts them o'er !
How strong her untired pinion, there addressed,
Where to her own high music evermore

Her first-born tune their harps, her younger children soar.

Plant, awful Mother, thine undying palm
In every temple: be thy sacrifice

Presented day by day with prayer and psalm
In torrid coasts, and under Arctic skies;
Say to thy Priests, here in the wild baptize :
Sophists that sneer and barbarous hordes that roam,-
Unveil thy trophies to their yearning eyes,

And point their path-way to thy hallowed home,

And make th' adoring globe thine ark and sheltering dome!

Order our choral march, attune our hymn,
To the immortal Baptist's primal lay-

Our radiant lamp when other lamps grow dim,
Saint, Martyr, more than Seer! on this thy day
Into thy prison all our dreams find way,

And watch beside thy pale and headless frame,
Till to thy lonely grave in sad array

They bear thee, wearing yet in JESUS' Name

Thy fetters, token true of His victorious shame.

Mountain and wave have heard the dirge, and now

They kneel to pray upon thy burial sod ;

The moon streams cold through many a drooping bough : Thought lingers where the sad procession trod,

And hears their orisons ascend to GoD,

And shares the midnight chant, their heart's relief ;-
Theirs chiefly, who, where He, th' Unknown, abode,
Flock'd at thy word with homage and belief,
And pledged the awful Bridegroom in His cup of grief.

Him broken-hearted now they seek; and say,
"Thy friend is gone and in the desert place
We have been fain his pale maim'd corse to lay.—
Do Thou, the King of Martyrs, give high grace
The Martyr's life, both dawn, and eve to trace,
Following the favour'd harbinger."-They cry,
And JESUS hears; and each, His Saintly race
Ending in blood, a gem will prove on high
In the bright emerald bow which spans yon upper sky.

:

124

TEXTS FOR THE HOLY DAYS OF THE CHURCH.

(Concluded from Vol. III. p. 174.)

ONE MARTYR.

GEN. iv. 10.—And He said,—What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto Me from the ground.

JOB Xiii. 14.-If a man die, shall he live again?

JOB xvi. 19.-Also, now, behold, my witness is in Heaven, and my record is on high.

2 MACC. vi. 19.-But he, choosing rather to die gloriously than to live stained with such an abomination,-came of his own accord to the torment.

MANY MARTYRS.

JUD. v. 5, &c.—[The whole of Achior's speech.]

Ps. xliv. 22.-Yea, for Thy sake we are killed all the day long we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.

NAH. ii. 3.-The shield of His mighty men is made red: His valiant men are

in scarlet.

ONE CONFESSOR AND DOCTOR.

GEN. xxiv. 20.-And she hasted, and emptied her pitcher into the trough, and ran again unto the well to draw water, and drew for all his camels. EXOD. xxxi. 3. And I have filled him with the Spirit of GoD, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship.

JOB Xxviii. 11.-He bindeth the floods from overflowing: and the thing that is bad bringeth He forth to light.

ECCLUS. xxxix. 9.-Many shall commend his understanding: and so long as the world endureth, it shall not be blotted out; his memorial shall not depart away, and his name shall live from generation to generation.

MANY CONFESSORS.

Ps. lxxxvii. 5.-And of Zion it shall be said, This and that man was born in her and the Highest Himself shall stablish her.

ECCLUS. xliv. 1.-Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.

DAN. xii. 3.—And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament: and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.

ONE VIRGIN AND MARTYR.

CANT. i. 5.-I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.

CANT. iv. 8.-Come with me from Lebanon, my Spouse, with me from Lebanon: look . . . . from the beasts' dens, from the mountains of the leopards.

WISD. iv. 1.-Better is it to have no children, and to have virtue: for the memorial thereof is immortal.

ONE VIRGIN OR MANY VIRGINS.

PROV. xxxi. 29.-Many daughters have done virtuously: but thou excellest them all.

ESTHER ii. 2. Then said the King's servants that ministered unto him: let there be fair young virgins sought for the King.

CANT. iv. 12.-A garden enclosed is My sister, My spouse, a spring shut up: a fountain sealed.

JOB Xxii. 15.-And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job: and their father gave them an inheritance among their brethren.

Ps. xlv. 5.—The Virgins her companions that follow her shall be brought unto Thee.

TRANSLATION OF A SAINT.

2 SAM. xxi. 13.-And he brought up from thence the bones of Saul, and the bones of Jonathan his son.

ZECH. ix. 16. They shall be as the stones of a crown, lifted up as an ensign upon the land.

HEB. xi. 5.-Before his Translation he had this testimony, that he pleased GOD.

REVIEWS AND NOTICES.

An Enquiry into the Difference of Style observable in Ancient Glass Paintings, especially in England: with hints on Glass Painting. By an AMATEUR. 2 vols. 8vo. Oxford: J. H. Parker.

THIS is just one of those works which one is tempted to wish had been either better or worse than it is. Had the writer been freer from prejudice, and possessed a little more discrimination, and given rather a more copious list of examples in the plates of the second volume, he would have succeeded in supplying an acknowledged want. On the other hand, the addition of a little more ignorant dogmatism in matters beyond his province, would have at once repelled the better class of readers. As it is, we read the work, because it contains a large collection of facts, and the cream of several valuable foreign publications, but have half our pleasure, and all our confidence, destroyed by the want of judgment and taste in the writer; and, what is worse, we cannot help fearing that his work is likely to stand in the way of a better. The book is exceedingly well got up, in the best Oxford style; and that is all the commendation we can give it.

A Vindication of the Church of England from charges brought against her in the Christian's Penny Magazine. By the Rev. G. B. SANDFORD, M.A., Curate of Church Minshull, Cheshire. London : Rivingtons; and Parker, Oxford. 1847.

OUR first impulse in reading the title of this little book was, that such a vindication from an obscure dissenting periodical's charges was hardly needed; but we understand the tracts in question have a very large circulation among the poor in some places, and the specimens of their matter and mode of attack given by Mr. Sandford are such as to make his vindication a very useful work. No one who has not read the extracts here given, could have conceived it possible that men could have had the barefaced impudence to print the statements which abound in them; but at the same time the experience of any parochial clerk will testify to the necessity of noticing and refuting them, owing to the gobe-mouche propensities of the uninstructed; especially in our country. We have often thought that the Clergy are not careful enough to give