have attended to these interests (not episcopal) which appear to have been so completely overlooked,* and they would have screened the Commission from the charges of injustice and partiality, which are now so generally brought against them. There can be no charm in the name of a bishop: the man who was a curate yesterday, is a bishop to-day. There are many prebendaries, many rectors, many vicars, who would have come to the reform of the Church with as much integrity, wisdom, and vigour, as any bishop on the bench; and, I believe, with a much stronger resolution that all the orders of the Church were not to be sacrificed to the highest; and that to make their work respectable and lasting, it should in all, even its minutest provisions, be grounded upon justice. Why could not one or two such ment have been added to the Commission, and a general impression been created that Government in this momentous change had a parental feeling for all

orders of men whose interests might be affected by it?-A ministry may laugh at this, and think if they cultivate the bishops, that they may treat the other orders of the Church with contempt and neglect. But I say, that to create a general impression of justice, if it be not what common honesty requires from any ministry, is what common sense points out to them. It is strength and duration; it is the only power which is worth having; in the struggle of parties it gives victory, and is remembered, and goes down to other times. A mixture of different orders of the clergy in the Commission, would have at least secured a decent attention to the representations of all ;‡ for of seven communications made to the Commission by cathedrals, and involving very serious representations respecting high interests, six were totally disregarded, and the receipt of the papers not even acknowledged!!"

Having now briefly seen how this Commission is constituted, of whom it consists, who are its nominal, and who are its vigilant and alert members, having also seen that all the clergy of whatsoever rank are excluded from a newly constituted body in the Church, possessing immense powers over them, we will give, from Mr. Benson's words, some idea of the extent of this power, before we proceed to examine how it is likely to be used and if, after perusing this, the creators of this monstrous form do not start, like Frankenstein, at the being which they have endowed with their unhallowed vitality, we shall only conceive them further gone in delusion than we expected.

"The Act not only authorises the commissioners to make an entirely new arrangement of the dioceses according to the proposed boundaries, but to introduce at their discretion such variations in the proposed boundaries as they may think advisable. It gives them power to determine the mode of confirming the acts of certain Bishops who are named. It enables them to apportion fees and make compensation for officers who may be prejudiced by the proposed alterations. It tells them to arrange, alter, apportion, and exchange the Episcopal patronage.It gives them a demand upon the incomes

of the richer sees; a demand, the extent of which the commissioners themselves, within certain limits, are to fix, for the augmentation of the poorer sees. It commands the Bishops to make periodical returns of their revenues, in order that the scale of payments may be revised according to the commissioners' judgment and that judgment is allowed to extend to the transfer of real estates. It empowers them to provide fit residences for certain Bishops, and for that purpose to buy, sell, exchange, or borrow money upon houses or lands belonging to certain sees. They may create archdeaconries,

"There are very few men in either house of Parliament (ministers or any one else) who ever think of the happiness and comfort of the working clergy, or bestow one thought upon guarding them from the increased and increasing power of their encroaching masters. What is called taking care of the Church, is taking care of the bishops.""-S. Smith, p. 46.

+ As the Rev. Mr. Jones, the commissioner appointed to watch over the interests of the Church in the Commutation of Tithes.

Some mistakes made for want of this local knowledge, which acting parish ministers could have given, will be mentioned in our next number.

Surely, a statement advanced with such just indignation, consequent on a sense of the injurious principles on which this Commission is founded and is acting, cannot be neglected or passed over in silence, as the petitions from the Cathedrals were. We sincerely hope, that Mr. Benson's signal of alarm will awaken and arouse the whole body of the Clergy to a strong and general remonstrance. Now let us listen to the results to which the powers bestowed may necessarily lead.

* The Bishop of Rochester is to be removed from his pleasant palace at Bromley, and his agreeable neighbourhood, sorely against his will, to be set down by the Commissioners somewhere in the new paradise they have found for him-in the hundreds of Essex, where he may exclaim-nos dulcia linquimus arva, &c.

to exercise itself, and shown how the newly created institutions may be paid without appealing to the public, which is wisely not willing of itself to pay for such things. They have, in fact, destroyed one of the best securities for the permanency of Ecclesiastical property; the undisturbed antiquity of its title, and the long prescription it has enjoyed. They have placed it, at least the Episcopal possessions, upon a purely Parliamentary production.

:

We think enough has been now said, to prove the very unconstitutional nature of this self-existing, never-ending, and all-powerful Commission, and the most injurious alterations it has already produced in the nature and tenure of Ecclesiastical property. It has made the Bishops stipendiaries, like the police magistrates and a docket will be issued from the treasury for the future salary of William Howley, commonly called Archbishop of Canterbury it has altered their spiritual and temporal estates; and following the French revolutionary system, changed the old Provinces into new departments, without any benefit that we can see, or any desire expressed by the public for such changes. It has also new modelled, and with two or three exceptions, and these to a very trifling amount, it has increased the income of the Bishops, and augmented the poorer sees from what was deemed the superfluity of the rich. Now this look very may well in figures, and appear most satisfactory on paper; but we think a more unfortunate or unwise arrangement was never made, nor one which could be more generally unpopular. It was perfectly well known to the Commissioners that the dioceses of those wealthier bishoprics abounded with livings that could hardly remunerate the humblest curate with dilapidated vicarages, houseless, homeless, glebeless rectories, and with means insufficient to supply spiritual instruction to the people. We know too, that people do not like to see their money go away to a distance from them; but are vastly more contented, or rather, the unpleasing act of paying is more alleviated and softened by the belief that what is taken from them is spent near home, and may return to them in a more immediate circulation. At any rate, they do not like to see it carried beyond the limits and boundaries to which they belong.-Would it not, therefore, have in every respect been more wise, and an act more popular, and would it not have met the more urgent necessities first, to have appropriated this Episcopal superfluity to the relief of the miserable and destitute clergy, to the purchase of houses and glebes, and to the instruction of the poor in their own diocese, than to spread it over distant channels, and appropriate it to purposes rather of convenience than of necessity. It would have been better to have strengthened and widened the basis of the Ecclesiastical structure, than to have built up new pinnacles, or given the old irregular Gothic structures a more compact and regular formation. The most popular landlord is he who lives among his tenants, and spends his rents in the neighbourhood of his estate and we cannot imagine that this new destination of the Episcopal revenues will pass without much discontent, or opposition; but putting that objection aside, supposing that the Bishop of Exeter may receive a draft on the Durham bank for two thousand pounds, which without inconvenience may be cashed at the Dock, still the greater good is sacrificed to the lesser.-What did the country wish for when they raised the cry of Church Reform ?—we mean

that part which consisted of religious people, and attached to the Church. What was their complaint? and what part of the Church did they wish to see improved and made more useful?

Did the people care one farthing for the shape of the Bishops' dioceses, or the site of their palaces? did they mean by reform an increased Episcopal income, or two palaces instead of one? Assuredly not-not one iota of such thoughts ever crossed their minds. Some, indeed, considered the Bishops too wealthy ;-some thought there was too great a disproportion between them and the clergy: some thought that this disproportion led naturally to the distance between the Bishops and the clergy, and the degree of reserve or repulsiveness with which they were treated,* and which is never seen in any profession but the Church. They thought, and justly, that there could not be a true friendly and Christian community of feeling between a nobleman, with a palace and ten thousand a-year, with chaplains, and his coach and four, and his liveried menials; and a poor Norfolk vicar with six dirty children, an old Concordance, a breeding wife, and not sixpence in his pocket. The thing is contra naturam: it could not exist. In one thing they all agreed, that one part of Church reform was a larger appropriation of income to the working and parochial clergy; and a better provision for the smaller livings. They grieved to see the clergy of a Church established and recognised as part of the constitution of the wealthiest kingdom in Europe, paid far less than the Dissenters pay their ministers, and far less than will afford even the most frugal and decent maintenance: in many cases, less than would be the interest of the money spent in their education. Now, this they expected, as far as was possible, to see rectified: they considered this as one of the evils most importunately crying out for removal; and this, both for the sake of the clergy and the people. Now this Commission has sat for some time; it has been very busy, and made several reports,-it has enriched the Bishops, new modelled the dioceses, and made other innovations which we shall reserve for our consideration next month, having entirely confined ourselves now with the Commission as applying to the Episcopal bench, but has it done one single thing for the relief of the distressed and poorer clergy? or has it in any way satisfied the nation with its first steps in the reform which it undertook to model and execute? We believe, on the other hand, that there is a wide-spread feeling of disappointment and dissatisfaction: a feeling strong, not only in the laity, but among the clergy, extending from the Bishops downwards to the curate. It has meddled and interfered with matters beyond all fair and reasonable jurisdiction; it has made alterations and innovations more violent than were at all required; it has demanded and acquired power which cannot be constitutionally granted to it. It has concentrated that power in a manner that may be, as we shall hereafter show, most dangerous to the Church and prejudicial to individuals. It has bestowed on the higher orders what should have been given to the lower. It has made regulations so severe and unjust against the body of the clergy, that they could not be allowed to pass into law. † It has made the most violent innovations

"I have seen clergymen," said Mr. S. Smith, "treated by Bishops with a violence and contempt, that the lowest servants in the Bishop's establishment would not have endured for a single moment."

We allude to the proposition of trying a clergyman by a jury of other clergymen selected by the Bishop.

The commissioners say, that to give increased efficacy to the Established Church,

on the constitution of the Ecclesiastical body, without ever admitting them into their councils, or applying for their advice. We shall next enable our readers to judge in what manner the Commission has acted towards the cathedrals, and the dignified clergy in the grade just below them, and we shall see the wisdom and knowledge they have displayed in some miscellaneous circumstances of no little importance to themselves and the public.

(To be continued.)

JOHNSONIANA. Murray, 1836. 8vo.

Οὐκ ἐν τῷ μεγαλῳ τὸ ἐν, ἄλλα ἐν τῷ ἐν το μέγα.—(Sylvani Urbani Dictum.) WE were agreeably interrupted in our review of Boswell's Life of Johnson, by a present of the volume mentioned above, to which we shall give our present attention. It is illustrated by many portraits of persons and views of places connected with Johnson's history, and is opened by a view of the great Philosopher himself, striding along with one arm elevated, and the other grasping his oaken sceptre, evidently spouting as he goes—

'Let observation with extensive view,' &c.

His dress is most congenial to his person,

The grizzle grace

Of bushy peruke shadow'd o'er his face,
In large wide boots, whose ponderous weight
Would sink each other wight of modern date,
He strides, well pleas'd-so large a pair
Not Garagantua's self might wear;

Nor he of nature fierce and cruel,
Who, if we trust to ancient ballad,
Devoured three pilgrims in a sallad,

Nor he of fame germane, hight Pantagruel, &c.

Mrs. Piozzi's portrait is very pleasing, her eyes showing her talent, and her mouth her temper. Flora Macdonald looks like a heroine, with no lath and plaster about her, as in Kitty Clive's house at Twickenham. But who is that Bum-bailiff, or sheriff's officer, standing at the steps of Bolt-court in pantaloons, unknown in Johnson's days? And why are two jack asses drawn opposite to G. Steevens's house at Hampstead? Was he one of the "ordo asinorum" described by Cyprian Apol. Reform. cap. vii., or did he belong to that noble Italian family of the Asinelli? We miss very much the portraits of the publisher and editor of this volume, while we have Boswell's vultus porcinus' iterated to satiety.

P. 71. " Nothing more certainly offended Mr. Johnson than the idea of a man's faculties (mental ones, I mean) decaying by time. It is not true, Sir, would he say,'" &c. We have several books (as that by Baillet, and one that was Jer. Markland's,-Jo. Klefekeri Bibliotheca Eruditorum Præcocium, 1717) which give account of Intellect precociously displayed, as

they should attempt the accomplishment of two objects indispensable to the attainment of that end.--One is, to improve the condition of those benefices whose population is of considerable amount, but which are so scantily endowed as not to yield a competent maintenance for a clergyman.-Good. How have they advanced in this object? and how does the new Church-rate Bill promote this desirable measure? or how came the new scale of Bishops' incomes to be arranged and passed into law, before a fund was secured for the working clergy; which fund has now dwindled to a metaphysical possibility,—a kind of volatile essence too subtile to retain.