the evening. The office books are, as in the Latin Church, many in number, but the chief are, besides the Liturgies, the Menæa or Breviary containing all the moveable part of the services connected with the commemoration of Saints; the Typicum, a valuable and indeed indispensable supplement to the other books, for it contains all the rubrics for the performance of Divine offices: (our own Church, to judge from the debates of these days, would not be the worse for such an one, but it will be well for her if Parliament does not provide her with something more than her necessities demand:) the Psalter; the Martyrology; and the book of Homilies. Baptism is a very important rite in the Eastern Church, although the font does not hold a very prominent position. There are, however, some very curious and indeed questionable peculiarities in regard to the administration of the Sacrament. The Coptic Church has two fundamental errors,—one as to doctrine, in that Baptism by unconsecrated water is considered invalid; and the other, that an invalid form is employed. "N., I baptize thee in the Name of the FATHER. Amen. N., I baptize thee in the Name of the SON. Amen. N., I baptize thee in the Name of the HOLY GHOST. Amen." But variations from the Western form are common. The whole Patriarchate of Constantinople baptizes in the passive. "N. is baptized in the Name, &c." The Georgian office has "N., receive light in the Name, &c." And the Ethiopians appear almost to have lost the original form altogether, employing as they do most fanciful formulæ. The Exorcism and Renunciation of the Devil exist in all the offices; the consecration of the water is performed⭑ with blessed oil, which is poured into the water in the form of a cross. Immersion is still retained. Immediately after Baptism Confirmation is given, and that by the Priest, not by the Bishop. This fact has led to an idea that was at one time common, that the Eastern Church rejected this Sacrament, but such is an unfounded opinion. Confirmation is as universal as Baptism, the only difference in the practice of the East and West being in the minister. In the West the Bishop is the regular minister of Confirmation; and the Council of Trent declares, "whosoever shall say that the ordinary minister of Holy Confirmation is not the Bishop alone, but any simple Priest, let him be anathema." Still dispensations have been granted to Priests to confirm, which shows that the distinction is one of discipline, not of doctrine. Immediately after Confirmation, the Holy Eucharist is administered to infants as well as to adults. And on this point it will be sufficient to quote Mr. Neale's own words. "I will make one more observation; that the disuse of the primitive custom of communicating infants immediately after Confirmation, can only be looked on in the light of a great abuse. The Council of Trent could not so easily dispose of the matter by its anathema, to those who should assert such Communion necessary. That it was primitive is denied by none, and there is therefore no necessity for me to prove. It has been universally retained in the East to the present day... . . . Those who are for exalting the primitive, in contradistinction to the mediaval, Church, into our pattern and model, are bound to confess the non-communicating of infants a gross corruption. It may not be of the same practical importance, but it is undoubtedly as much an abuse as the Roman denial of the chalice to the laity. It was the universal practice of the Church for more than one thousand years; for five hundred years more, while it remained the practice of the East, it was to a great extent continued in the West; and finally died out about the time of the Reformation. It is therefore a still more modern abuse than the denial of the chalice." Confession is practised very generally in the Eastern Church, and the Catholic doctrine is held in regard to the power of the keys. But, practically, the force of ecclesiastical censures or approval is far greater than in the West. Mr. Neale draws a very striking comparison between the Churches; in this respect, "The foulest blot on the page of Latin Ecclesiastical History is unseen in the Annals of the East. The pride, or ambition, or passion of the Roman Pontiff impelled him too often to employ spiritual censures to enforce his temporal demands; where the sword of war failed, the weapon of excommunication was unsheathed; the allies of Rome contributed men and arms, Rome herself the more tremendous artillery of an interdict; the dying departed without the consolations of religion, because Venice was to be humbled, or Lucca checked; and the result, the most inevitable result, inevitable as far back as Boniface VIII., was, that Church censures were braved, were found innocuous, became ridiculous, recoiled on their forgers,-the Pontifical system fell, and great was the fall of it. "In the East, on the contrary, excommunication is as much the object of dread now, as in the days of S. Chrysostom or S. Germanus ; the weapon has not been misused, and still graces the armoury of the Church: the power of the Keys is most simply and earnestly believed, and the belief is carried out into action; the censure of a poor country Papas outweighs, in present effect, that of a Western Bishop." In Russia an annual confession is enjoined by the civil law, and the credit of a witness or of a prisoner is very much affected by his answer to the usual interrogation as to the time of his last confession. The heretical communions are also orthodox upon this subject, but in practice the Nestorians are very remiss. The Armenians, on the other hand, rigorously enact it. The penitential system is of course obsolete, as in the West, and this has led to the diminution and even removal of the narthex in some Churches, Extreme unction is also practised, though with several important variations from the same Sacrament in the West; e.g., we have incorrectly termed it extreme unction, as the anointing is administered to persons in slight illness, and not only to those in extremity. Still it is fundamentally the same mystery, and Protestants in vain appeal to the East in their controversy with Rome to justify their abolishing a primitive custom. Mr. Neale closes his labours with dissertations on the controversial teaching of the Holy Eastern Church. We regret that our limits will not allow us to enter upon the questions which are thus brought before the notice of the reader. But they are questions on which every theological student ought to acquaint himself. The doctrine of the Double Procession is especially well treated, but we hope we shall do Mr. Neale no wrong if we express our apprehension that his leaning is too much towards the Eastern side. The following language is rather strong, "With one remark only I will conclude. English Churchmen will hardly deny that, let the dogma of the Double Procession be never so true, its insertion in the inviolable Creed was an act utterly unjustifiable, and throws on the Roman Church the chief guilt in the horrible schism of 1054. It was done in the teeth of the veto passed in the sixth session of the Council of Ephesus, in the fifth of Chalcedon, in the sixth collation of the second of Constantinople, and in the seventeenth of the third of Constantinople. It was done against the express command of a most holy Pope, himself a believer in the Double Procession, who is now with GOD. No true union-experience has shown it-can take place between the Churches, till the Filioque be omitted from the Creed, even if a truly Ecumenical Synod should afterwards proclaim the truth of the doctrine." We cannot help feeling our own communion involved in any guilt attaching to the Romish Church, on all matters in which we have followed her authority. The words Filioque occur in our own creed and therefore we shrink from words like these. But here we take leave of Mr. Neale. Though on some few secondary points we may differ from his conclusions, and though we may discover something of undutifulness towards Western Christendom, something of partiality in his defence of the East, yet we feel he has done very much for the illustration of controverted questions of theology, and we heartily recommend this book to the perusal of our readers. This is only the Introduction. The histories of the several patriarchates are to follow (one, Alexandria, has already appeared). May we venture to express a hope that as Mr. Neale proceeds in his great work, he may avoid that extreme to which he seems tending, of exalting the chairs of S. Mark, S. James, and S. Andrew, to the disparagement of a see, which, since the Church was founded, has always enjoyed the primacy if not of authority at least of honour. It is a great sin to ignore any portion of the Catholic Church. But Mr. Neale in his recoil from this error has approached nearly to its opposite. Granted the Catholicity and vitality of Russia and Constantinople, be it never forgotten that Rome is the patriarchate to which England was once subjected. The writer of this article wishes to make an acknowledgment which was omitted on a former occasion when he had occasion to treat of the Burial Office. At that time Mr. Neale rendered him much valuable assistance in regard to several points of Eastern practice and doctrine. CONSIDERATIONS ON THE STATE OF THE CHILDREN OF THE WORKING CLASSES. Des Crèches, ou Moyen de diminuer la Misère en augmentant la Manuel de la Crèche S. Louis D'Autin. Par MADAME LA TRE- The Nursery. Brighton: H. S. King; London: J. H. Parker. THE Condition of the infant population of England is now beginning to excite attention. Already has a meeting been held at Manchester, and an institution commenced in London; while "Household Words" and the "Labourer's Friend" have interested themselves in those helpless beings, who from their weakness invite our aid, and by their helplessness plead for our succour. The idea of these institutions is not English, although there can be no doubt that they originated first from Infant Schools; institutions so essentially English in their tone, that the only difference between the Salle d'Asyle and the Infant School is that of language, and perhaps a greater degree of order and cleanliness in the English Infant School than in the French Salle d'Asyle. But we need not be jealous of our continental neighbours: a visit to some of the streets inhabited by the working classes, or such a visit that described by Mons. Marbeau himself to Chaillot, will explain why France has taken the lead in forming nurseries for the labouring poor; she greatly needed them; and if France needed them greatly, so does England in a less degree. In a speech of Dr. Bell, as quoted by the Labourer's Friend, he is reported to have said: "It was calculated that for seventeen children of the gentry class which died out of every hundred, fifty-five per cent died among the poorer classes; so that thirty-eight per cent of the children of the poorer classes died who ought not to die if properly tended. And terrible as this mortality appears, it is painful to think how slowly the child of the poor man is poisoned." The author of Public Nurseries quoting from the correspondence of the Morning Chronicle, speaking of the various drugs given to children, as Godfrey's Cordial, Mother's Quietness, Soothing Syrup, says: "In Ashton, fifteen druggists sold on an average six gallons per week of these preparations. In Preston, twenty-one druggists sold in one week sixty-eight pounds of narcotics, of which a very small quantity is stated to have been for the use of adults. A calculation of the quantity of Godfrey sold in Preston, gave an allowance of half an ounce weekly to each family, supposing that 1600 families were in the habit of using it." The consequences of drugging children are thus described by Mr. Harrison, one of the factory medical inspectors: "It produces," he says, "suffusion of the brain and an extensive train of mesenteric and glandular diseases. The child works into a low torpid state, wastes away to a skeleton except the stomach, producing what is known as pot belly. If the children survive this treatment they are often weakly and stunted for life. To this drugging system- and to defective nursing, its certain concomitant-and not to any fatal effect inherent in factory labour, the great infant mortality of cotton towns must be ascribed." We have followed this writer thus far, and now proceed to the remedy proposed, the establishment of Public Nurseries, taking exception however to the statement that the requisites for a Crèche with the comforts and conveniences described in M. Marbeau's work would be too luxurious for such an establishment in England. If any disappointment should arise from a visit to the Nassau Street Nursery, we trace it to this opinion, which to our eye pervaded the arrangements of that institution. It has not begun upon the principle of educating the child. We are reluctant to find fault with what has been evidently designed for good, but we should be sorry that any one could suppose the two rooms in Nassau Street convey even the idea of a French nursery, or the spirit in which they were founded. The appearance of the rooms and their position is not desirable, and the odour of the passage was very offensive at the time of our visit; besides this, the colour of the curtains was too dark, and the whole appearance did not convey to our minds the institutions we had seen in the Rue S. Lazare, where a more than ordinary cheerfulness is preserved. Nor are the balconies of the Rue S. Lazare or S. Honoré luxuries, they are really necessaries. In them the children enjoy fresh air, and while they are absent the rooms are ventilated; if these institutions are to prosper they must begin upon the best principles, and be content to take no middle ground. This is evidently the view of the writer of The Nursery, who has arranged the rules of the Crèche S. Louis D'Autin to suit our English habits, adding also a short preface. He would have a house bright-looking and cheerful, a garden with a few flowers, and a singing bird or two to enliven or amuse the children. As other writers dwell chiefly on the physical, so does the writer of The Nursery dwell on the moral benefits to be derived from beginning the education of the child from the cradle, accustoming it to hear sweet sounds, to control its little temper, and to behave kindly and forbearingly to its little companions; the child is a great copyist, and we can hardly estimate the extent to which it is influenced by the cradle instruction, and if it is of importance to prevent the child's body from being corrupted by drugs, so is it equally important that the temper should not be roused by being committed to a nurse who has only a money interest in its existence, and has been |