country squires, where not truly religious, politicians, prime ministers, professional men of all sorts, princes, aye, and even bishops, in some cases, care naught about the purity of Christian truth. All they care for is, that the Church and the world, hand in hand, should go on comfortably together, that their own peace be not disturbed. So it always has been more or less; so it always will be, in this mixed state of things, till the Lord comes, takes the power into His own hands, and reigns. The goats will not only be mixed with the sheep, but they will be stronger than the sheep.

Our regret is chiefly moved by the sad fact, made too patent to be passed over in silence, that our young Prince of Wales, whose conduct, since his father's death, we cannot too much admire, and around whom all our sympathies and hopes for the future cluster, has come so directly under the religious teaching of such a misguided man as Professor Stanley. We can only hope and trust that, as these sermons, preached before him while in the East, are so very brief, they have made but little impression. Their having been published by the wish of the Queen, we may regard as only a courtly compliment. That the Prince of Wales can really approve of the negative theology of the Broad Church party, if he understands it, we can hardly believe. Still we have our fears. It will be a fearful thing for the Church of England, if she follows in the wake, in this respect, of the Church in Germany. Well is it that we have still our Thirty-nine Articles of Religion as a depository of sound doctrine. So long as these remain in force, though a single generation of her children may go astray, the Church, as a permanent institution, will be held at anchor to the eternal rock of truth.

Dean Stanley had a delicate and difficult task, we admit, in having to prepare sermons hastily for delivery before a youthful prince in the journeyings of a pilgrimage. On this ground we can make large excuse for meagreness and brevity. What we most complain of is, the absence of positive truth, with the presence of much that seems to have been designed to make religion appear easy. Indeed, it would be no unsuitable title to give this volume of sermons, to entitle it "Stanley's short and easy method of religion." We have all heard of "royal roads to heaven." If this be intended to be a royal road, we most sincerely hope that royalty will never be induced to walk in it; for we have the most thorough conviction, that that text applies to it-"There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death."

FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND: QUEEN ELIZABETH AND THE REFORMATION.

History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. By James Anthony Froude, M.A., lute Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. Vols. I. and II. London: Longman, Green, and Co. 1863.

MR. Froude is already well known as one of those who have aspired to write the history of England; and, we must do him the justice to add, one of the most successful. In our numbers for August and September, 1860, we reviewed his two volumes on Edward VI. and Queen Mary. We admitted his just claims, and we pointed out his faults. Of these the greatest was the serious injustice which he did to the Reformation; his apparent incapacity for appreciating the majesty of the work itself, or the greatness of the men by whom it was accomplished. We now enter with him upon the reign of Elizabeth, which he makes the commencement of a second work, while the history is continued without interruption. The reason assigned is sufficient. "The accession of Elizabeth is the beginning of a new epoch in the history of the Reformation. There may be persons who, having gone so far with me, may not care to accompany me further; others may be interested in the later and brighter period, who may not care to encumber themselves with the earlier volumes." That we may not embarrass our review of the History with critical remarks, we shall state at once the impression which this last portion of the work has left upon us.

Two volumes are now published, but they carry us no further than to 1567, less than nine years out of a reign of forty-five. Proceeding at this rate, nearly a generation will pass before our author arrives at the close of his labours, supposing him to go no further than the death of Elizabeth; and this is longer than we can afford to wait. Lord Macaulay has the same fault; and, brilliant as he is, it makes him often tedious. Nor is the mistake-for such we regard it-in anywise redeemed by our author's treatment of his subject. He has given us the personal history of Elizabeth with several episodes, rather than a history of England during her reign. He has had access, he tells us, to new sources of information; and if his aim were to illustrate the private character of the great queen who swayed the destinies of England at the most critical period of our history, we should have said that he had used them well. The courtesy of the Spanish government has given him access to the letters of their ambassadors then in England, which are preserved in admirable order in the castle of Simancas. He

has had free access to the imperial archives at Paris, and, of course, to every document he wished to consult in the English Record Office. He pays a passing tribute, which we have no doubt is well deserved, to the courtesy of the late Mr. Turnbull,. "who, before the unwisdom of the Evangelical Alliance deprived the country of his services, was also employed in the Record Office, on the Calendar of the Elizabethan State Papers." We digress a moment to remark, that the next sentence from Mr. Froude's pen completely justifies the conduct of the Evangelical Alliance. "Mr. Turnbull could have felt no sympathy with the work in which I was engaged, but he spared no pains to be of use to me." The man who could have no sympathy with the writer of English history during the reign of Elizabeth is the last man who ought to have been entrusted with the care of the Elizabethan State Papers. Mr. Turnbull was a recent convert to the Church of Rome, and an avowed hater of the Reformation; he had expressed in print his regret that certain papers connected with the history of the Jesuits, and bearing hard upon the Papists, had not been destroyed; and the man who wishes the gunpowder to explode, is not altogether the sort of person to be entrusted with the keys of the cellar in which the gunpowder is stored away. The appointment reflects no credit on those who made it, nor on Mr. Turnbull who accepted it.

But, after all, the correspondence, either French or Spanish, does little to elucidate the dark places of English history. With its general purpose we were sufficiently acquainted. The foreign courts were anxious that Elizabeth should marry, and that she should marry a Frenchman, an Austrian, or a Spaniard. Their aims were basely selfish, and, with the Spaniards at least, insanely bigoted. Each hoped, by manoeuvring a marriage with the queen, to gain England as a province. The Spaniard hoped both to do this, and to win a claim to the favour of heaven, and of its representative the Pope, by the extirpation of heresy in one of its strongholds. Elizabeth, at the age of twenty-seven, was quite capable, had she possessed no such adviser as Cecil, of seeing through the sordid schemes of these polite ambassadors. Mr. Froude thinks unjustly, we believe, that Elizabeth might have been induced, for the sake of an agreeable husband, to abandon the Reformation; but happily for England and for herself, her affections ran, when she thought of marriage, in another channel. She was really attached to the Earl of Leicester, and might possibly have accepted the hand of Lord Robert Dudley. Besides him, she had other suitors, to all of whom she played the part of a Penelope, with more or less of the coquette. Of these, the chief was Philip of Spain, the unfeeling widower of her sister. This proud monarch made her an offer through his ambassador. He was the greatest sove

reign in the world; perhaps the greatest bigot; certainly, even of royal lovers, the most arrogant. In his instructions to his ambassador, he intimates that, if he became her husband, he could spend but little time with her, since his other dominions would require his constant presence; and besides, living in England, he should incur serious expenses. The queen, he said, was not what she ought to be in religion; and to marry with any but a Catholic would reflect upon his reputation. Nevertheless, considering the general interests of Christendom, and in order to maintain the religion " which by God's help, he says, "has been restored"-meaning popery-he had even decided to sacrifice his private inclination to the service of our Lord, and to marry the Queen of England." Two provisions he must insist upon. The first and chief was this: the queen was to assure him; but we must give his own words:"First and chiefly, you will exact an assurance from her, that she will profess the same religion that I profess; that she will persevere in it and maintain it, and keep her subjects true to it; and that she will do everything which, in my opinion, shall be necessary for its augmentation and support." That is, she must hand herself and her subjects over to Philip, the Inquisition, and the Pope. If possible, still more insolent is the second condition:-" She must apply in secret to the Pope for absolution for her past sins, and for the dispensation which will be required for the marriage; and she must engage to accept both these in such a manner, that when I make her my wife she will be a true Catholic, which hitherto she has not been." De Feria, the ambassador, appears to have had all the pride of his country, with none of its reserve. No doubt, he thought the hand of his master, the renowned Philip of Spain, and the greatest monarch in the world, a prize, which Elizabeth would gratefully accept at any cost. With incredible folly, he read the letter to some of the ladies of the court; probably Roman Catholics whom he was anxious to engage in pressing his master's suit. The substance of it, of course, was soon carried to the queen, if not the despatch itself, though the ambassador had been cautioned not to mention the likelihood of Philip's absence, or, indeed, any of the other conditions, until he had discovered that he was likely to be a successful suitor. Thus, when De Feria opened his commission, Elizabeth was prepared; she gave him an answer worthy of herself. She was conscious, she said, of the honour which had been done her; she was aware of the value to the realm of the king of Spain's alliance; but his majesty's friendship was sufficient for her protection, even without his love. She had no desire to marry, and she did not believe in the power of the Pope to allow her to have her sister's husband. It does not appear, from this reply, that she had much reverence for the Pope, or any very anxious desire to restore herself to his communion!

Then, if she turned her thoughts to an English alliance, she was met at once by the jealousy of the English nobility, who would not submit to see one of themselves raised to a partnership with the throne; and her own queenly pride, too, revolted. "If I were to marry," she said, "the inquiry at the gates will be, not for the queen of England, but for his grace's high"She took her final resolution: she would never marry, she would live and die the virgin queen of England. In short, "I will have here, at Windsor," she said, "but one mistress and no master;" and she kept her vow through life. Her foreign suitors were enraged. De Feria, unable to cajole, attempted to terrify her, and was laughed to scorn.

nesses.

He told her that

if she went on thus, she was a lost woman; and she told him in return, he says, that "she would not let her subject's money be carried to the Pope any more, and she called the bishops, in his presence, a set of lazy scamps." He wrote to tell his master that Cecil governed the queen, with the further information, "he is an able man, but a cursed heretic." She was often solicited to marry after this. Even her Parliament made it their formal petition; for they were anxious to see, at her decease, a Tudor, not a Stuart, on the throne. But her answer was always the same, and, we suspect, her motive too. She was married to her people, she would die a virgin queen. In truth, she was resolved that there should be in England, while she lived, but one mistress and no master. She gave way on many points to the wishes of her people; on this she was inexorable.

She was crowned at Westminster, on the 15th of January, 1559. Then, at least, Elizabeth was no papist. Mr. Froude relates how, as she passed out under the gates of the Tower, her emotion overcame her, while she stood still, looked up to heaven, and offered a short sublime thanksgiving. It has been often printed, but we cannot refuse to give it a place here:

:

"Oh, Lord Almighty and everlasting God, I give Thee most humble thanks that Thou hast been so merciful unto me as to spare me to behold this joyful day; and I acknowledge that Thou hast dealt wonderfully and mercifully with me. As Thou didst with Thy servant Daniel the prophet, whom Thou deliveredst out of the den, from the cruelty of the raging lions, even so was I overwhelmed, and only by Thee delivered. To Thee, therefore, only be thanks, honour, and praise for ever. Amen."

The enthusiasm of that joyful day is better known than any single page of English history. There are thousands who could neither tell when the battle of Hastings was fought, nor when king Charles perished on the scaffold, nor who that king William was who saved the Protestant faith for us. But there are few who read at all and have not read of that procession of the virgin queen from the Tower to Westminster,