Elizabeth's council discouraged it. So much wine was an idle luxury. Cecil appeals to the wealthy families, if it was not a fact that they drank four times as much in their grandfathers' days. He does not charge them with intemperance. But why could they not be content with ale and other liquors, as in the olden times? In truth, the quantity imported was enormous. The value of the wine imported at the port of London alone, in the year 1559, was £64,000, and the retail price was only sevenpence a gallon; these, however, were chiefly the cheap wines of France. Another curious result was, that the English fisheries, neglected by ourselves, fell at once into the hands of foreigners, who swept our English shores with their nets, and even ventured into the bays, lochs, and rivers in Ireland. Those who maintained that the Reformation had been ruinous to our commerce certainly had a plausible case for a few years after Elizabeth was queen of England. But the stagnation did not last; the discovery of the New World roused the energies which the Reformation had set free, and England was soon compensated for the loss of her fisheries and coasting trade by a share of the vast ocean commerce which Spain had hitherto monopolized. Our quarrel with the Pope had, as Mr. Froude candidly admits, called into existence the English navy. Our forefathers had been satisfied, whenever a naval expedition was on foot, to impress sea-going ships, or rather barges, from the Cinque Ports, and to hire a few vessels in London, Bristol, and other sea-ports. Henry VIII. felt that when he had broken with the Papacy it was time to look to the defences of his kingdom. His "Great Harry," a four-masted ship, rigged after the modern fashion, excited as much wonder as the huge iron monster of our own times; and he left behind him the proudest fleet which had yet floated in English waters. Our national love of enterprise found employment in the African trade, hitherto quite unknown to Europe; as, indeed, with the exception of the Mediterranean coasts, was Africa herself. So early as 1530, Hawkins had sailed for the coast of Guinea, and brought home gold dust and ivory. In 1552, Captain Windham followed him, and died of fever, where so many precious lives have since been sacrificed, in the Bight of Benin. We must not go on to relate how, with the auspicious reign of Elizabeth, our mercantile navy burst into a new life; how soon our ships were found in India, in Russia, and the Arctic Circle, in Brazil, the West Indies, and continental America; nor how, as in ancient Tyre, our traffickers were the princes of the earth: these, too, were the fruits of the Reformation. The promises of the Most High are given to nations as well as to individuals: "Them that honour Me, I will honour." We had not cast off the spell of Popery thirty years, when, with one exception, we had the finest navy and the greatest commerce in the world.

France had a powerful navy, and perhaps the Dutch and Flemish commerce may have been equally extensive; but it belonged to many cities, held together by little more than a nominal bond of union.

But one dark spot blemishes the bright picture. Captain Lok was tempted to the shores of Africa by the ivory and gold dust, in 1556; "and he, first of Englishmen, discovering that the negroes 'were a people of beastly living, without God, law, religion, or commonwealth,' gave some of them the opportunity of a lift in creation, and carried off five as slaves." Spaniards and Portuguese had already ventured on the nefarious traffic, pleading at first, and probably with truth, that they purchased none but criminals whose lives were forfeited. But they had done enough to create alarm along all the coasts of Guinea. This small adventure of Lok in human flesh brought him within the same distrust. The theft of the five men led the negro tribes to fear that the new comers were no better than the rest; the alarm was spread all along the coast, and Tourson, a London merchant, found his voyage the next year made unprofitable through their unwillingness to trade. The injury was so considerable, and the value of the slaves so trifling, that they were sent back; and the captain who took them home was touched at the passionate joy with which the poor creatures were welcomed. But the plague had begun; the gain was found to be immoderate when they were sold beyond the Atlantic. The princely heart of Elizabeth was shocked when she heard that her subjects were engaged in trade as men-stealers, and she was only led to permit of its continuance when imposed upon by the hypocritical plea that they were stolen in order to be converted. The lust of gold soon overmatched every sentiment of humanity; and a traffic sprang up which has blistered the conscience and hardened the hearts of all who have been engaged in it, filled millions of our fellowmen with unutterable anguish, and brought down God's curse at last in that civil war which now rages in the land of slaves; a war which threatens, before it closes, if it should ever close, to become the most cruel, the most bloody, and the least justifiable, which the Almighty ever suffered to rage even amongst the most barbarous nations upon earth.

BISHOP DANIEL WILSON'S JOURNAL LETTERS.

Bishop Wilson's Journal Letters, addressed to his family during the first nine years of his Indian Episcopate. Edited by his Son, Daniel Wilson, M.A., Vicar of Islington, and Rural Dean. London: James Nisbet and Co. 1863.

THOSE Who knew Bishop Wilson will receive this volume with the deepest interest; and those now in the midst of life, who have grown up since he quitted England two-and-thirty years since, will read with admiration from his own pen these sketches of the life and labours of one of the most eminent of Christian bishops. Both parties are probably well acquainted with his Life, written by his chaplain and son-in-law, Mr. Bateman. It was reviewed in the Christian Observer, in 1860, by his old and intimate friend, Mr. John Wm. Cunningham, of Harrow, who has since joined him in the world above. We shall therefore make no attempt to display his character; nor is it necessary, for it is now placed, by general consent, amongst the highest of those who, in these later times, or probably in any former age, have been honoured with distinguished posts in the Lord's vineyard. We will make a few extracts from his letters, almost indiscriminately, only endeavouring to select those which throw light either upon different features in himself, or upon different subjects of importance which have interested us at home.

We will take for our first extract Bishop Wilson's description of his own feelings when he had been a year in India. He arrived in November, 1832; the extract is dated March 26th, 1834:

"Two years have elapsed, this very week, since my nomination to this awful and responsible diocese. The effects of climate are more depressing and visible than at first. The novelty and surprise and distraction are gone. Things no longer proceed as with strangers under an extra excitement. The clergy in all the presidencies gradually find me out. I am vastly behind-hand with my ecclesiastical correspondence. The question of Caste is very embarrassing. The hour of temptation and darkness and penetrating sorrow is coming on like a tide. Now will be the faith and patience of the saints.' Having had a year of peace and introduction and forbearance, the Lord is now gathering the clouds for the storm. Our souls are cast down within us; difficulties threaten; human helps fail; every branch of our duties is beset with thorns. Jesus, Master, have mercy upon us! Rise and save, we pray Thee! All this is far from discouraging me for the result, because it is the Lord's usual method to humble and empty before He raises and fills, in order that He may have all the glory."

It is succeeded by another, May 15th, 1834:

Dis

"The new scene of trial which I intimated as coming on quickens its pace, and lowers as it approaches; but it is good for us. traction, publicity, noise, intercourse with mankind, secularities, station, novel circumstances, authority, are all poison to the soul, and have been distilling their venom secretly ever since we arrived. Now come the compensating and humbling dispensations." (p. 10.)

The difficulty to which Bishop Wilson refers proved to be quite as serious as he anticipated; it was the abolition of Caste among the Christian converts, and would have discouraged any but the stoutest heart. But he felt that the work must be done; and if so, that it must be done at once. His natural infirmity, confessed a hundred times in his letters and journal, was to act too much upon the impulse of the moment. But here he was upon his guard; this weakness was chastised by the grace of God, and he entered upon the difficult task under an affecting sense of his own weakness, and of his liability to err even in doing what he justly considered to be a great work for the Church of Christ. In his first visitation, in 1835, he paused at Tanjore, where there were ten thousand native Christians under the venerable Kohloff, who had been ordained by Swartz, in 1787. He found Christianity at a low ebb, and missionaries much wanted.

"For thirty-five years the flocks have been without many true shepherds. Heathen customs have, during this time, prevailed. Caste has gained ground; gross immoralities have spread. The Christians are more than half heathen in ignorance and morals. To raise the prostrate Church is my earnest desire. Caste in itself is nothing; it is as the inlet to heathenism that I oppose it. God give the blessing."

Mr. Bateman, who accompaned the Bishop, has enlarged so fully on the difficulties which he encountered, and the gross insults which he received from the Caste-loving Christians, even catechists and missionaries, that we need not give any quotations bearing upon the subject. Seventeen hundred Christians separated from the Church, in consequence, says the Bishop, of his letters about Caste, for he had written to them from Calcutta upon the subject:

"Tanjore, Saturday, Jan. 10, 1835. "After six hours' march we have just arrived. I am now writing in the bungalow allotted me at the Presidency by Colonel Maclaine,a charming one, indeed, it is. As we entered the suburbs of Tanjore, the venerable Kohloff, ordained by Swartz in 1787, at which time the elder Kohloff celebrated the jubilee of his own mission, and retired from active duty, came to meet me, with hundreds of his native priests, catechists, and school children. They chanted a sweet hymn in Tamul, crowds of heathen surrounding us. I was almost overcome, though a sleepless, tossing journey of six hours had already suffi

ciently exhausted my spirits. Here we shall remain for ten days. The most difficult duty awaits me that ever I had to perform. Seventeen hundred Christians have separated from the Church in consequence of my letters about caste. They are headed by two men of proud, artful, and violent character-Diotrephes like. They have much to say, because they have never been instructed in the sinfulness of caste; because they cannot, and will not, distinguish between gradations in civil society and caste; because they have no conception of spiritual and vital Christianity; because they are almost all living in the vices of impurity and drunkenness; because the uncivilized mind clings to any petty distinctions with tenacious grasp." (pp. 36, 37.)

But he persevered and triumphed. Kohloff approved; the missionaries, he said, had always been groaning under the miseries of caste, but had not power to put it down. Mr. Jeniké, his colleague, said "it was the grand battery of Satan.' "He rejoiced that I had come and vanquished the formidable enemy. Nothing could be so affecting the old man's heart was full of joy.'

But how would this strong measure be received at home? The East India Company still existed, still possessed vast power; and they were always jealous of interference with the customs of the natives, however bad. The heads of the Church at home might disapprove, and the work might be all suffered to decay, if not to be undone. But the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Howley, though generally supposed to be of a timid nature, acted a noble and decided part. We happened to be present, soon after the news arrived, at a public meeting at Croydon, at which he presided. His Grace took the opportunity of saying, that the Bishop of Calcutta had informed him of the step he had taken, "and that he considered it nothing less than the laying anew of the foundations of the Church of Christ in India." After this no adverse comments were heard. So the work went on and prospered :

"I received on Monday a most delightful letter from dear Corrie, Bishop of Madras. The caste is nearly abolished at Tanjore and Trichinopoly. Of 10,000 people, there are not more than 200 who resist my regulations, and these are persons who never thought of coming to church till the question of caste was to be fought about. The success, therefore, of this step has been more general, and quite as speedy, as I could have expected. The Syrian Christians in the neighbourhood of Cochin, to the number of about 300, have renounced their superstitions, and invited the labours of Mr. R our Church Missionary. At Cotyam, also, things are moving on." (p. 135.)

The Times has lately entertained itself with a disquisition upon missions. The upshot is, that they would be well supported, if the missionaries could "show the people of England anything for their money;" but as they cannot prove they are