number of Nonconformists amongst our untitled gentry, they are very few in comparison with the middle-class supporters of our ecclesiastical system. But as soon as we look at the social grades below the superior middle class, we find the opponents of the National Church become more and more numerous - the prevalence of dissent increasing in proportion as the observer approaches those sections of the community that are commonly called the working classes, in which the influence of the State clergy is noticeably slighter than that of religious ministers who receive no support from the nation. Of course, opinions differ widely as to the degree in which the clergy are powerful or powerless in these humblest of our social grades, and upon a matter so manifestly beyond the reach of all methods of precise measurement it would be ridiculous to speak confidently, and with an air of exact knowledge. It is, however, universally conceded, that the working classes of our cities may be described as living almost entirely outside the pale of the Established Church. Here and there a clergyman of unusual energy, and extraordinarily endowed with the qualities that win the affections of humble people, may be seen to draw a few of their adults to his church, and a considerable number of their children to his schools; but such instances of clerical success amongst the poor of our large towns cannot be produced in disproof of the general assertion, that the humble toilers of our urban populations-the members of what may be termed the artisan class-live, from early manhood to death, without any kind of habitual communion with the national clergy. Whilst working men are either conspicuous by their total absence, or seen only in very small numbers, in the public congregations of the churches of those brighter districts of London which are familiarly termed 'residential quarters,' the churches in those parts of the metropolis where the poor principally reside are either devoid of worshippers, or are so few that, even when they succeed in gathering average congregations, the entire number of their customary attendants is trifling in comparison with the multitudes who, dwelling in the same localities, never enter or think of entering a church. The most popular and attractive services of our London clergy-the 'Special Services' of the Cathedral and Abbey-draw dense throngs of well-dressed and

outwardly prosperous persons, but the slight show made by people of the operative class at those gatherings is significant of the unanimity with which the members of that class have withdrawn themselves from the National Church-significant, that is to say, of the completeness of the severance between our ecclesiastical system and the workpeople of the metropolis. Nor is this state of things peculiar to London; or even more noticeable in London than in our other large centres of commerce and industry. Even of our small cathedral towns, where clerical influence is paramount in all social matters apart from religion, it may be asserted that the majority of their humbler inhabitants are not regular church-people.

To account for this painful fact excellent clergymen have been driven to the still more painful conclusion, that the absence of the poor from the ecclesiastical services of our urban churches is mainly referable to infidelity and irreligion, presumed to be largely prevalent amongst the working classes. That a zealous and exemplary churchman, holding high position in the clerical order, should have ventured to assert publicly his concurrence in this very erroneous view, is a fact strongly illustrative of the severance which he deplored, and also of the speaker's ignorance of the intellectual and moral condition of the persons against whom he inveighed. The real cause of this withdrawal of the working classes from the Establishment is frankly stated by the Journeyman Engineer, in his capital volume of essays on The Great Unwashed;'* where, after repudiating the charges of irreligion and infidelity, he declares roundly that the thoughtful and pious of his class are seldom church-people, because they have very generally come to the opinion, that the Church of England does not respond to the religious requirements of the period; that, whilst professing to be the church of the poor, it is in fact the church of the rich. To charge the very mistaken holders of these sentiments with a spirit of unbelief and a morbid taste for infidel literature is not more the act of injustice than of sheer ignorance; for, whilst the members of our

Prosperous persons who wish to know more about their less fortunate brethren of the working classes, their faults and virtues, their views and desires should peruse this excellent contribution to the literature of Social Science.

working classes are great readers of strictly religious publications, which have not even the faintest savour of sceptical thought, but are, on the contrary, remarkable for dogged adherence to the dogmas of orthodox theology, they take hardly any notice of the writings of free-thinkers. That neology is popular in the higher classes of society the ledgers of our publishers afford conclusive testimony; but the infidel literature, which is supposed by some persons to be the chief intellectual food of our artizans, exists nowhere except in the imaginations of simple people, who are more clever at creating 'bogies' for their own alarm than at discovering facts that are irreconcilable with their favourite misconceptions. Nor is it less unjust and unreasonable to attribute irreligion to the multitudes who throng Roman Catholic churches, swell the growing congregations of Nonconformity, and frequent all places of Christian worship except the temples, which the upholders of church-rates used to designate pathetically the homes of the poor.

In the country circumstances are far more conducive to clerical influence than in the towns. What may be called the parson-power of an average agricultural parish is so much stronger than the clerical force of a city parish, that all the residents of the former locality can be, and usually are, known individually by their ministers of the established religion; whereas the incumbent and curates of an ordinary city living, however zealous they may be, are seldom able to establish personal relations with a twentieth of the individuals nominally committed to their care. Knowing his humbler parishioners by sight and name, acquainted also with their pursuits and domestic interests, the country parson is a parochial magnate, whose favourable opinion is an affair of special concern to those who may need his good word or pecuniary aid under the continually recurring exigencies of sickness and poverty. As the distributor of some portion of his wealthier parishioners' bounties to the poor, as the official trustee of funds for the relief of local indigence, as a comparatively affluent person, both able and willing to alleviate distress by his private means, he possesses sources of influence that seldom pertain to non-conforming ministers. His recommendation is continually found of sufficient power to secure

eligible employment for the children of humble attendants at his church. Usually he is keeper of the squire's conscience, and directs at pleasure the streams of munificence that flow from the Hall to the cottages of a patient peasantry. His means for making himself beloved are scarcely greater than his opportunities of making himself feared by the most dependent class of his flock. And yet, notwithstanding all these facts, the Church is seldom able to do more than 'barely hold its own' against the conventicle in a rural parish. Village artizans, ready enough to cap the parson and fawn to the squire, for a weekly loaf or a Christmas shilling, show signs of independence and manly spirit when they are reproved for attending a dissenters' meeting-house; and, even amongst those of them who appear punctually at the squire's church, and exhibit every external sign of religious conformity, not a few are regular attendants of the prayer-meetings of Baptist teachers. A rector may pass five-and-twenty years of his life in a Suffolk parish, working sedulously in his schools, and exhibiting all the qualities of a model parish-priest, and yet, after all his toil, and charity, and sympathetic benevolence, he will know less of its farmlabourers than the Wesleyan minister who has come to the district only the other day, and will move from it in three years. The gulf between humble folk and gentry is so deep and wide that, though a gentle and opulent clergy may throw a bridge over it, they can never fill it up.

HAVING

CHAPTER X.

THE BEGGAR PRIESTS.

AVING their origin in one of those religious agitationswhich, common in every age of the Church, have in these later times acquired the name of revivals-the mendicant orders arose in the last years of the twelfth, and the opening decades of the thirteenth, century, to renew the enthusiasm of believers; to protest against the luxury and pride largely prevalent amongst ordained persons; to combat the heresies which had sprung from the growing discontent with ecclesiastical authority; and to recall mankind to the ascetic ways and hardy virtues of the early Christians. Composed of enthusiasts, burning with indignation at sacerdotal corruptions, and ardent, with a passionate desire, to bring the usages of priestly men into harmony with their professions, these orders made poverty the first rule of their existence. Neither the individuals of their class, nor the brotherhoods into which they gathered themselves, should be capable of possessing any property, beyond the barest sufficiency of bodily clothing, and the few articles necessary for the pursuit of the apostle's vocation and the discharge of the priest's functions. Like their Divine Master, and His immediate servants, they would be no less conspicuous for penury than holiness. As paupers they would go forth to the world-to the castles of the rich and the cabins of the poor; to cities bright with splendour and villages built by the rudest art for the accommodation of despised rusticsand from those who accepted their ministrations they would take no material payment, save a bed of straw, a draught of water, and a meal of coarse bread.

It speaks pathetically of the goodness and devotion, which must have qualified the selfishness and cruelty of medieval