failure. The characteristics of our LORD's own ministry were these opposite contradictory phases of triumph and disappointment, of persecution and victory. The whole history of the Church is one chequered record of temporary prosperity and adversity, as far as sight goes, and yet all these things, whether of advance or defeat, working together to one end. So of the Church of England in our own times; if a few short months ago we were bound to warn against the imminent danger of a combined denial of the Church's Catholic character from the Bishops themselves, it may now be our task to chronicle the remarkable and unexpected success which has already attended the first formal and authoritative attempt to secure the Church's freedom.

The principal subjects of very recent political importance-we use the term political in its full sense-to the Church are:-1. The Synod of Exeter. 2. Lord Redesdale's motion on Convocation and Synodical assemblies. 3. The Pew Question, as affected by the new Church Building Bill.

1. As it stands, the Synod of Exeter is an unmitigated gain. Among its other enormous benefits it has saved such a world of talk and argumentation. It has bridged over the great yawning chasm of agitation and controversy by at once simply doing the thing which was wanted. The sternest logic is that of facts. When a thing is done the time is passed for proving that it ought to be done. Such a success cannot stand alone; it is impossible from the nature of things that this "experiment" should either remain an experiment however successful, or should exist as a solitary triumph. And, which is also noticeable, it has shown that the English mind, even in its most exciteable state, is still open to a just claim honestly preferred. The Papal aggression frenzy had not subsided, the Government had strained every constitutional precedent to urge against the illegality of any sort of synod, every local means of agitation and inflammation was plied with unwavering malignancy; that miserable portion of the press which had affected to clamour for the Church's synodical action, was ominously silent when the thing was taken up in a working spirit. The envy of so-called High Churchmen, the hatred of the Gorham party, and the malice of Government, all combined against the Bishop of Exeter and his noble scheme, while some even of the more accredited organs of Churchmen accorded but a cold and hesitating anticipatory assent. Amidst all these elements of opposition and disunion the Synod of Exeter was held, and without a hitch.

To what are we to attribute this success? Under GoD-and never was a case which more palpably revealed the digitus Dei-first to that practical character of the English mind, which sooner or later will recognize a business-like spirit, and purpose, and sense of duty. That the clergy should meet to settle their own church concerns is so obviously a matter of common-sense, that common-sense accords the claim as soon as it is made intelligible.

Next because the Synod proceeded in a practical spirit. Pedetentim was, and with a due regard to Christian prudence, its key-note. It might have been expected in some quarters that more might have been done ex. grat. that Mr. Gorham might have been censured by name.

We do not share in, though we may appreciate, such complaints as to the cautious spirit of the Exeter Synod. All such complaints indeed we do not appreciate; that for example of the Dean of Exeter, who would not attend the Synod for prudential reasons; and now, when it is a pronounced success, affects to regret its language as not going far enough. But we say that the very least which could be attained with safety, was the very utmost at which the first instance of a recorded Synod was bound to aim. It is a fact that the Synod was an experiment; and it was a matter of duty not to offend. And the moderation of the Exeter Synod may profitably be compared with the compromise, even in the way of principle, which seems to have attended the Synod of Thurles.

And yet more: it would have been unnatural for the Synod of Exeter to have done too much. Growth is the condition of perpetuity in moral, as well as in physical, matter: and infancy is a stage of growth. Not that we believe the Church of Exeter has done only a little all that we urge is, that it ought not to have aimed at more. What it did was of a solid, substantial, intelligible, and plainly practical character; just of that character, which was required in and by the present state of public feeling; and public feeling is only another. name for that dispensation under which GOD has placed our personal responsibilities and duties.

2. A commanding and instructive commentary on the wisdom which planned, and the good feeling which conducted, the Exeter deliberations, was presented in the very week after the Synod, by the proceedings in the House of Lords on Lord Redesdale's motion. This debate will gain, we conceive, an historical importance. We are spared the offensive duty of remarking upon the Primate's objections, by the more satisfactory task of recording the preponderance of argument evinced by Lord Redesdale, and by the Bishops of London and Oxford. It has been well said, that it was only morally right that the revival of an institution which had been strangled by the Archbishop of that day, should be opposed by the Archbishop of this. It was only an ugly consistency, which the mere agitation of the case must have produced. What we are really thankful for is, that from the Archbishop's speech we know all that can be said against the Church's case. And what its value is may be judged from those organs which lead public opinion, just as the echo does, by repeating it. The Times now accepts the Exeter Synod as a fact as a legality-as an accomplished fact as a thing not to be gainsaid; and affects to feel some complacency that the organs of sacerdotal claims" have cleared their apprehensions as to their own desires. Now all this is very well-very well for us, that is; for none know better than the Times and its conductors how extremely precise and keen were the views of those who had of late been the most forward in pleading for the deliberative assemblies of the Church. The Times knows, as well as we know, that the resuscitation of the Georgian Convocation never was intended, or appealed for, by the Bishop of Exeter, or those of our contemporaries who are most in affinity with ourselves, whatever the English Review, or the Metropolitan Church⚫ Union, if either of those entities exist, might have said on the matter.

Indeed, with respect to this last matter, it is quite curious to see how the professional trading agitators for Convocation, as such, have been ousted from their pet project. It was very long before the Christian Remembrancer, for example, could be compelled to entertain the question of reviving Synods at all: it did so only on the pressure of the Gorham case, and then with a marked and significant separation of the case of Synods from that of Convocation. In this view the body of High Churchmen concurred; and the mere sticklers for an antiquarian Convocation found themselves distanced in activity, because in principle, by the zeal of the latest converts. So now that the Synod of Exeter has been held, and has succeeded, it attracts little or no sympathy from the editor of the John Bull newspaper, who has for years had but one cry,-that of Convocation and church liberty. We must say that, while for ourselves the present aspect of affairs is most encouraging, the condition of the " Anti-Tractarian High Churchmen" presents a most humiliating spectacle in morals. In fact, the most preg. nant testimony to the success of the Exeter Synod is that silence of its foes which affects to be contemptuous; "that aposiopesis which," as Scriblerus acutely remarks, "is an excellent figure for the ignorant; as 'What shall I say?' when one has nothing to say: or I can no more,' when one really can no more."

3. We must advert to a matter which very prominently falls in with our more ordinary range of discussion,-the iniquitous proposal in the New Church Building Acts Consolidation Bill, to permit free seats in new churches to be turned into pew-rented stalls. If there is any large and permanent triumph which is to be connected with our labours, it is the successful agitation which we commenced against pews; but against pews in their moral and religious, as well as æsthetic, bearings, as a question of Christian duty, as well as of propriety and taste. In this opposition, the accident of rent and property held a very prominent part. After all our success, which our bitterest opponents admit, we may be pardoned if we express ourselves strongly. It is very hard that, after all the world-all religionists and politicians-have gone with us on this matter for years, that Her Majesty's Commissioners and the House of Lords, and those who affect to feel the most lively interest in the poor, should now turn round, and have the face to propose to rob GoD and GoD's poor in this way. There are hundreds of churches built and endowed within the last ten years, on the solemn pledge and understanding that they should be free and untaxed for ever; and now the Bishops and Commissioners propose that they should have the power of letting a certain number of these sittings at a certain, or uncertain, rent and tax.

We trust that the palpable dishonesty, the plain violation of integrity and decency which this monstrous proposition involves, is so obvious that it will defeat itself. One thought suggests itself. The sin of Ananias and Sapphira consisted in this: not that they were not liberal people in their way, for they were; not that they were unwilling to make sacrifices for the Church, for they did this and largely; but 'that having done something, they desired that their something should appear larger than it really was. "Did ye sell it for so much? And

For

she said, Yea, for so much." Now this is exactly what our right reverend fathers propose to do. They build a church, at so much cost, to be free to the poor and to the children of the poor for ever. this noble purpose they ask alms, beg subscriptions, publish reports, write inscriptions on foundation stones in brass and stone. But they "keep back part of the price"; they pass an ex post facto law, permitting them to let for hire what they had pretended to give whole and entire for the love of GoD and of Christian souls. We know not what this dainty device may be called in a trading community; we care not for what excellent purposes part of the gift may be "kept back;" we seek not to be told that it is to pay the parson or the curate; it seems to us, under the circumstances under which the offering was ་་ laid at the Apostles' feet," to look exceedingly like that conduct which holy Scripture says is "to lie to the HOLY GHOST."

THE DESIGN OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE.

We have naturally felt anxious ourselves, and we have been requested by some of our readers, to express an opinion on the merits of Mr. Paxton's design for the Crystal Palace, considered as an architectural work, and in its probable effects upon architecture by the introduction of glass and iron as materials more extensively available for constructional purposes, than even wood and stone. The task is encumbered with difficulties of various kinds, but we propose to make a few brief remarks on the subject; and after our own observations, we shall give, as a communication, some thoughtful extracts from the letter of a valued professional correspondent, with most of which we can concur.

It is, of course, quite impossible, in the first place, not to admire the adaptation of the huge building in Hyde Park to the ends for which it was designed. So vast an area to be covered: so short a time for the accomplishment of the work: the necessity of the edifice being easily moved, without excessive damage to the materials employed; the conditions under which the Crystal Palace was undertaken could not, by any possibility, we imagine, have been fulfilled in any other way so well as by the execution of Mr. Paxton's admirable design. And we freely admit, that we are lost in admiration at the unprecedented internal effects of such a structure :—an effect of space, and indeed an actual space hitherto unattained; a perspective so extended, that the atmospheric effect of the extreme distance is quite novel and peculiar; a general lightness and fairy-like brilliancy never before dreamt of; and, above all,-to our minds one of the most satisfactory of attributes-an apparent truthfulness and reality of construction beyond all praise. Still, the conviction has grown upon us, that it is not

1

If it be true, as seems acknowledged by Mr. Paxton himself, that some of the girders are of wood, for appearance' sake, some abatement must be made from this commendation.

:

architecture it is engineering-of the highest merit and excellencebut not architecture. Form is wholly wanting: and the idea of stability, or solidity, is wanting. The poet would never have said of this building :

"They dreamed not of a perishable home, who thus could build."

And while we should be very sorry, in common with the popular voice, to see the building levelled so soon as the Exhibition is closed, yet we cannot but feel that the design ought to have been very different in the first instance, had it been intended for permanency.

Again the infinite multiplication of the same component parts-a necessity in such a structure-appears to us to be destructive of its claim to high architectural merit. The original rudimental idea is by no means an imposing one, as may be easily tested. One can imagine the existing proportions multiplied by any figure, and the result would be so many times more astonishing as to the scale of the edifice, and as to the degree of determination, and skill, and power displayed in the actual execution of the design, but no more. But so also in the reverse way, the proportions might be diminished, and the result would be a very insignificant greenhouse. But it is wholly otherwise in true architecture, in which every noble work is a complete "poem," an organic whole, so to say, and not the result of the multiplication of certain proportions, or of the endless repetition of a normal form. We need not repeat that, in saying this, we are not meaning to detract from the high excellence of the Palace as an engineering work, and as the exact fulfilment of the conditions it was designed to satisfy.

As to what results upon future architectural developement may be expected from this gigantic and beautiful application of glass and iron, we can scarcely form an opinion. As accessory to real architecture, we think Mr. Paxton's experiment of roofing almost unlimited areas, may be very useful. But, to confess the truth, we incline to the opinion that we need not expect an architecture of these new materials; and some dreams of our own as to the possibility of building churches, or at least clerestories, of glass and iron, have been discouraged by this actual instance of a Crystal Palace. But into this question it is premature to enter. We feel moreover that nothing but the experience of a few winters will solve the doubts that can hardly fail to be felt as to the real fitness of such a structure as that in Hyde Park for permanency in such a climate as that of England.

It is a satisfaction to us to remark, that Mr. Ruskin, in an appendix to his "Stones of Venice" (noticed elsewhere in our present number), comes to a conclusion on Mr. Paxton's design, almost identical with

our own.

We now append the remarks of our correspondent, who will forgive us, we are sure, for omitting some passages of his paper, which less commanded our assent than the extracts we shall proceed to give.