because it is usual and is thought respectable. Or again, after staying some years as Fellow, it becomes apparent that no permanent place is open for him as a layman: whereas, if he is ordained, he has access to the college livings, and has in prospect a provision on which he might prudently marry. Even on a layman, who has no connection with the foundation of a college, the genius and hereditary instinct of the place imposes numerous disqualifications. It is seldom to him that a nobleman is recommended, who is seeking for a tutor to his son; or if a lay-tutor be possibly accepted in some case of rare literary merit, the patron finds no established method of expressing his permanent gratitude, such as the ecclesiastical patronage of the crown furnishes to those who have political influence. Or to come down to commoner cases :-next to the academical colleges, no places offer so natural a field of service to those who have acquired skill and interest in the university studies, as the numerous Public Schools and Grammar Schools of the country. But it is seldom that a candidate for the head-mastership of one of these can have the remotest chance of success, unless he be an ordained priest. Even for the inferior masterships of the public schools an immense premium is attached to the clerical name. Almost all head-masters prefer clergymen as their assistants, and we doubt whether even Dr. Arnold would have dared to introduce into his school one lay assistant out of five. Thus the clergy in England have been allowed and assisted to monopolize education, and all sorts of bribes are held out to tempt well-meaning men to despise their Ordination-vows. While many such inducements operate with more or less consciousness in those subjected to them, an equally strong and silent agent is at work,-custom and the public opinion of the universities, to draw as much as possible into the clerical current. And after all, what training for the holy profession is received by those who are expected to enter it? Is it any practical experience in the trials and supports of a religious life, or in the inferior departments of religious teaching? The question would make an academician smile, if it did not make him angry. But then, has not the clerical candidate at least much intellectual attainment of a properly religious character? No. He is often an accomplished man, and capable of afterwards acquiring much, if leisure sufficient be afforded: but his previous studies have been classical, (or mathematical,) not theological. He may have read history; but Greek or Roman, not Jewish or Ecclesiastical. He may have read philosophers, but not Fathers. He may have studied Homer and Eschylus in their native tongue, but not David and Isaiah. He may be familiar with every river and mountain of Greece,

but probably knows less of Judæan than of Egyptian geography. He is acquainted, it may be, with the whole controversy concerning the authorship of the Epistles to Phalaris: he can judge whether the Rhesus and the Iphigenia savour of the style of Euripides: but he is unprepared to discuss the question, whether the Epistle to the Hebrews bears the marks of Paul's composition, or whether the Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel come from the same hand. He may be able to give a lucid account of the doctrines and genius of Aristotle, Zeno and Epicurus; but to the discriminating peculiarities of Paul, James and John, it would be unfair to expect him to be alive.

Now we know that some who are, on the whole, advocates of the church as it is, would, like Dr. Arnold, take the bull by the horns, and avow that Plato and Aristotle are far more improving books than Athanasius and Augustine: and some may in their heart add, that technical divinity is of little or no use. In their view, we presume that to secularize the clergy (that is, in their honourable interpretation, to turn them into a religious laity), is the best thing that can be done for them. Hating, as we do hate, clerical professionalism, and emphatically condemning that separation of laity and clergy which has always been the child and fruitful parent of superstition; we of course cannot totally oppose ourselves to this rather eccentric defence; which cannot be urged, except by those who are willing to pull down the church-system in many of its most essential points. At present, unfortunately, their desirable object of converting the clergy into a religious laity is anything but accomplished; and the steps so tortuously made in that direction win the little good at the expense of prodigious eviluntruth, hypocrisy, and a thousand bad consciences. Abolish the ordination-service, and good university-men will become a mere religious laity; but while that service is submitted to, they feel that they have no right to be such.

Universally it is certain, that the examination for orders cannot be made so strict as to exclude (on intellectual grounds) more than a small fraction of those young men, whose wealthy relatives design to present them to some family living. It is a part of the system to enable the patrons so to employ their rights; and every attempt to thwart them directly will inevitably fail while the system itself stands. Hence even the intellectual qualifications appropriate to a clergy cannot be secured by the clerical examination. This is quite consistent with the fact to which we are not blind, that in so large a body of men, who have enjoyed a long and refined, though seldom a profound mental culture, rare individuals exist, and must exist, who to their other accomplishments superadd a discipline and study properly theological.

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From the universities we pass to the cathedral towns. hold there a demure, shovel-hatted, sleek-faced, well-fed body, whose rather haughty demeanour shows that they consider themselves the aristocracy of the place. That they are often kind and friendly neighbours may be gladly admitted; that they know how to do the honours of the festive board, and can make themselves very agreeable over a bottle of wine, we believe on valid testimony. Towards friends who rejoice in the honour paid to them, English natures are seldom morose. But our question is, What effect on religion and on the church has the maintenance of these self-important and pompous personages? Their use must be primarily sought, by asking what they were intended for? and the reply is, that they are of use for keeping up daily chanting to the walls of some more or less magnificent cathedral. This is a part of popery; and whatever defence of it be made by the lovers of music and architecture, no philosophic theory will get over the inherent repugnance there is between such services and the reformed religion. If any recital of prayers be vain repetition,' the daily double performance of the same weary service is such; nor will it ever be permanently endurable to any, except to those in whose minds many other important principles of popery have deep root. On the clergy themselves we hesitate not to say that the effect is most deadening. The proof of this is found in the college chapels, where the chaplains almost universally acquire a rapidity of utterance and flippancy of manner, which is most offensive to strangers, though ordinarily not perceived by residents. In the cathedrals the chanting and the monotony of the voice conceals from the hearer the heart of the reciter; but the sameness of human nature justifies the inference, that a Prebendary or Precentor offers up prayers with the same sort of habitual devotion as that with which a Tartar churns his prayer-mill.

This clerical aristocracy of the cathedral towns is not likely to concern itself much with the work of the prophet, when so fully occupied with that of the priest; but as three months' residence is often enough, some of them reside for the other nine months on a parochial benefice, and get some relief from the round of ceremonies. On the whole we may say, that the holders of these cathedral stalls are taken either from aristocratical families, or according to aristocratical interests; and by their close political connexion with the surrounding countrygentlemen they give valuable help in retaining the town under subserviency to Tory domination. For eighty years, indeed, their aid went to the Whig party: but it seems to be destined that they should always be, in one form or other, a support to the power which permanently rules at court; and like so many

other parts of the State-Church, they in fact serve no end so prominent as their political one. The action and reaction of the system perpetuates the secularity of this body of clergy, among whom it is barely possible that a Puseyite enthusiasm may rise, but from whom it is morally certain that no vital spiritual power will ever go forth. In proof of this we may appeal to those places where the cathedral influence is most predominant, as Canterbury, Durham, Oxford, Salisbury. If in all England religion were as apathetic, intellect as dull, and the bearing of the middle classes as unmanly, as in that portion of these cities which is subjected to priestly power, a very black futurity would lie before us.

In the parishes of England, however, lie the appropriate duties of the clergyman; and it is on these that the advocate of the church, as by law established, would be wise to rest his chief argument. If the parson had no existence as the member of an order; if he had his present relation to his flock, but no relation at all to any without the parish; then, in the cases where pastor and flock tolerably agreed, a large balance of good would seem to be gained by his position among them. The presumptuous and hostile attitude which he assumes towards dissenters is chiefly (though not solely) due to his connection with his own order; and would soon be greatly modified, if he could be regarded as a parochial minister and nothing more. And some of them in their hearts long so to be. Such endure episcopal visitations, but would rather be without them, and feel their parish to be their real charge, and its welfare their sufficient reward. No one, we think, can read what the Rev. Thomas Spencer, of Hinton Charterhouse, near Bath, has done for the place of which he is perpetual curate, without seeing what a blessing a parochial clergy might be. These, in fact, are precisely the men who are dangerous to dissent. Those who vex Christian people by puffing off the virtues of the church, force others to canvas the merits of the system; but those who try to make that part of the church over which they have controul, as efficient, as spiritual, as popular, as courteous, as they are able; and say as little as possible about the church as a whole; these men lead hundreds to forget their objections to the system. In spite of its glaring and indefensible faults, its very antiquity gives it an immense hold over common minds; hence a parish minister has great power to do either good or evil. Where no higher or better truth is offered to the flock, it is but a cheap concession to allow that any sincere teacher is of value. But, unhappily, the relation of the clergy to one another, to their bishop, to the universities, to the state, secures that in every new developement of truth the majority of them shall take the worse side. The secular influences

also, of which we have complained, follow them into the parish. If a clergyman becomes a magistrate, he is expected to uphold and severely enforce the cruel game laws, or he will lose caste with all the squires around. In every election his help is counted on by the same parties. In return, he looks for handsome subscriptions to his various parochial objects, (if he is above caring for access to their dinner tables,) and by their aid and influence hopes to keep all the petty schools of the place under his own controul. At his request, the squire refuses land for a dissenting chapel or schoolroom to be built on; nay, we have known clauses inserted in the lease of every cottage in a parish, by which the lease is forfeited, if on a single occasion a meeting of dissenters should be held in any of them. The temptation of squire and parson to play thus into one another's hands, is in country parishes generally too strong to be resisted; and in this part of the establishment also, the truth is clearly enough exhibited, that what is called 'The Church of England' is, at bottom, a machine of the aristocracy for class purposes.

In the very large towns, where dissenters are perhaps strong, but population stronger, and vice stronger still, severe criticism on a parochial clergy that has any small portion of earnest desire to do good, would be thrown away;-and we shall therefore decline to criticize them. But if there is anything finally adequate to condemn the established church-system, it is its utter inapplicability to the state of these towns. It assigns to clergymen a territorial domain, called a parish; and although the rapid rise of a trade should double the population in five years, no division of the parish ensues. A Brighton, an Islington, or a Manchester, preposterously remains 'a parish' long and long after it is physically impossible for the minister to perform more than a fraction of the duties theoretically assigned to him. And why? simply because the whole increase of income to the rector, contingent on the increase of population and wealth, is looked upon as his personal right; a vested interest, which must not be interfered with. In the same spirit, the secular interests are always made more important than the religious ones. A new bishopric is supposed to be wanted; but it must not be made, because there are no means of securing for the bishop above £1000 a year: or because the king's ministers will not consent to his having a seat in the House of Peers, and the Church is too proud to accept anything lower than a Lord Bishop. Take care of the temporals, and the spirituals will take care of themselves;' is throughout the reigning maxim.

And to return to the populous towns; the system of territorial assignment, more than any other single cause, has led to