Anglican hierarchy was the true ancient primitive episcopacy; that the ancient apostolical bishops had their prerogatives and collegiate chapters, and that the laying aside of the Book of Common Prayer was one of the greatest causes of national misfortune.

At the outset, hopes had been cherished that presbyterians and prelatists might be comprehended in the same general settlement. For this purpose a meeting, composed of the leading divines of both persuasions, had been held at Lord Chancellor Clarendon's, in October, 1660. The results of the conference were so satisfactory that the king, a few days after, issued what was termed the Healing Declaration;' addressed to all his loving subjects for the composing of religious differences. Dr. Reynolds, one of the most distinguished presbyterians, forthwith accepted the bishopric of Norwich, and Dr. Manton, another of their notables, on being presented to the living of Covent-Garden, consented to receive episcopal institution. A national synod was announced by royal authority, and in the interim the cross in baptism, bowing at the name of Jesus, canonical subscriptions, and the use of the surplice (except in the royal chapel, cathedrals, or the colleges of the universities) were left indifferent, and none were to be compelled to use them, or to suffer for not doing it.

Conformably with the king's promise the great synod met in the palace of the Savoy in April of the following year. Twelve bishops, assisted by nine clergymen, represented the episcopal church, and an equal number of presbyterians, headed by Calamy and Baxter, appeared on the opposite side. The conference was to be brought to a close within four months. Dr. Sheldon opened the discussion with a short speech, in which he observed that the episcopalian party, being perfectly satisfied with the English church, had nothing to propose, and they waited the objections of their opponents, to whom it was intimated, that any question pertaining to the government of the church was beside the purpose of their commission. Disturbed in their order of battle by this announcement, the presbyterians became divided among themselves as to the most politic course-whether their objections should be propounded in mass or detail-the minor ones being first adduced for acquiescence, then the more weighty ones brought forward; or rather, whether they should not at once offer for acceptance an entire new Liturgy. The last, as the most open and chivalrous proceeding, was at length determined upon. In a fortnight the flying pen of Baxter had finished, in scriptural language, a new Liturgy, which was approved by his brethren, and presented to the bishops for adoption. This was at once rejected, on the

presumption that a work so hastily prepared by one hand could not enter into competition with that which had been received by the church for a century. Next, an episodial and preliminary question was selected for special argument; three champions were named on each side for the discussion, though the chief gladiators were Gunning and Baxter, both renowned for metaphysical subtlety and logical resource. The controversy, it must be remarked, was carried on in the presence of a large audience, and the town was especially diverted by the adroitness of the chief fencers, hotly engaged in a dispute that every one perceived had neither end nor usefulness. At length the prescribed four months had expired; the Savoy wrangle was at end, and nothing concluded or agreed to; affording additional proof that controversy only widens and exasperates theological dissensions.

A more brief and decisive course was next tried. Convocation was sitting, and to them the king referred the Book of Common Prayer for additions and amendments. Within a month the amended service-book was produced, comprising nearly six hundred alterations. Most of them, however, were insignificant-corrections of style or grammar; the rest and more important were the following: -the lessons were directed to be read instead of being sung; some collects were omitted and others substituted; private baptism in urgent cases was not allowed to be performed by midwives, only the lawful clergyman; the order of absolution and the communion to the sick were altered, and burial rites interdicted to suicides and those who died unbaptized. Additions were made of new forms of prayer on the 30th of January and on the 29th of May; of the general thanksgiving, the prayer for all conditions of men, the parliament, and the king, who is styled most religious-a description that excited great merriment. These alterations in the estimate of a majority of the Presbyterians had made the national service more objectionable than before but it was adopted by both houses of parliament, and the Act for Enforcing Uniformity in the Church of England received the royal assent May 19th, 1662. Only three months were allowed for all persons enjoying any benefice or promotion publicly to signify their assent to the new law, and as the Act was so stringent as to preclude evasion, it at once winnowed the church of both presbyterianism and puritanism: two thousand ministers resigning their livings rather than conform to the new requirements. It is the last liturgical reform that has been carried the attempt of 1690 having failed-and forms the existing theological basis of our ecclesiastical establishment.

We have thus exhibited three important epochs in the history

of the Church of England. Its severance from Rome and protestant reformation; its renewed affection for Catholicism, and the effort under Archbishop Laud to approximate nearer to the parent church, in consequence of which it was overthrown by the concurring papal antipathies of the Presbyterians and Independents; and, lastly, its episcopal re-establishment by the Restoration of the Stuarts. In the current agitations of the Church the reader cannot fail to recognize the revival of long bygone scenes, struggles, controversies, and aspirations. Tractarianism is nothing more than an attempt to revive semipopery and Arminianism, which, conjoined with absolutism their inseparable associate, ruined Charles; in the claims of voluntarism and the self-supporting system of the Dissenters the old war is renewed against all national church establishments that was carried on by the Independents under Sir Henry Vane, Fiennes, and Oliver Cromwell; and, finally, such is the identity of the past with the present, that precisely the same symbols of strife, in the non-essentials of forms and ceremonies, and probably, for like disguised and ulterior aims, are used by the Puseyite disputants as were employed by their Laudean predecessors in the middle of the seventeenth century.

In another section we hope to exhibit the existing state of the Anglican Church, with some general conclusions from the Comparative View of Religious Changes.

THE SELECT COMMITTEE OF THE BOARD OF ORDNANCE. Editorial Prologue.

DURING the discussions on Captain Warner's recent invention, frequent references were made to the Select Committee at Woolwich ; but, probably, few persons have any conception of the composition of this powerful and venerable assemblage of philosophers-this imperium in imperio. The farce about to be laid before our readers by one of the chief dramatis persona requires the usual theatrical accompaniment of a prologue.

Inventions for military purposes are often laid before the Government, and these are, in the arrangement of the public business, referred to the Master-General of the Ordnance, as head of the scientific branch of the military establishment of the country. To enable him to report upon any given invention or proposition there is a committee of engineer and artillery officers nominated as a permanent board, to whose investigation the invention is submitted. This board, under the name of the Select Committee,' is chiefly formed of the heads of certain sub-departments in the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich and in the garrison, with power to obtain the aid of other official persons in such cases as they may deem necessary. Of this Committee Colonel Chalmer is the secretary.

Most inventors who have been before' this Committee have complained of the mode in which the investigations are conducted, and many have remarked even on the discourtesy with which they have been treated by some of its learned members. The latter complaint is probably not well founded, as the stiff formality of army etiquette might easily put on the appearance of social discourtesy to a civilian who holds but little intercourse with a martinet officer. The charge of deliberate injustice, also, made by any man with respect to the Committee, cannot be tolerated for one moment; but on the other hand, that it does in all cases, or even in the majority of cases, as a body, duly deliberate upon any proposed invention, or investigate its principles with due precision, it is too much to affirm. They enter upon their inquiry relative to any military invention made by a civilian with a general conviction that the invention must prove to be all fudge;' and with this foregone conclusion, consider him only in the light of a troublesome fellow, whom they must get rid of as cavalierly as they can without committing an absolute and challengeable rudeness. The consequence of this is that little obstacles are thrown in his way which are sure to disgust him; and he is denied the means of trial which he conceives will be the best adapted to test the efficiency of his discovery.

These officers are, generally, incapable of any scientific investigations, properly so called, which may be involved in any discovery-their original training having been in the Royal Military Academy, and their subsequent pursuits not being of a kind to remedy the defects of their early education. Their standing in the army, and their personal interest with the Master-General of the Ordnance, form their only recommendations to those official appointments which constitute them members of this Select Committee;' and having some glimmering of the fact that they are not quite so well informed on the philosophy of even their own subjects as is desirable, they wisely decline to give any ostensible reasons for their Report' to the Board of Ordnance. They also probably feel that even to ask a question might betray their scanty amount of science and render them ridiculous; and hence the information which they ought to possess, to understand the first principles of an invention, is dispensed with. Yet even in matters of this kind, human prudence sometimes sleeps, and some curious instances of the blunders of this * scientific Committee' have occasionally come to our knowledge.

We would seriously suggest the questions-whether the interests of the public service would not be better maintained by a different composition of this Committee? Whether there should not be amongst them men of at least moderate scientific acquirements, and at all events free from the prejudices of professional caste? Whether the Committee should not be held responsible for the Report which it gives-bound to furnish the evidence upon which the Report is founded-and hold itself open to all the evidence that can be fairly offered in favour of an invention? This would, at any rate, inspire public confidence in the justice of such Reports; and even the reputation thus obtained for the Committee's' science' would, we should think, be a sufficient reward for

the extra duty' of acquiring such easy and elementary knowledge. We leave it to the country-the payers of costs-to decide these questions. Of the value of the invention which was laid before the Committee which is so graphically described in this paper, it does not become us to give an opinion on this occasion. We have reason to believe in the strict accuracy of the narrative itself; and in many of the conclusions of the author we concur. Our only motives for printing it are to call attention to the unsatisfactory composition of such a Committee, and to enforce the conclusion, that whether an invention be valuable or not, the decision upon it is framed in almost perfect ignorance of any reason on one side or the other, beyond the inventor being a soldier or civilian! Inventors will at least know what to expect-they will know how far their inventions are likely to be investigated by such a Committee-they will save themselves much chagrin, trouble, and expense-and they will save the Committee from the annoyance consequent upon the delicate and somewhat perilous position in which such references place these moustachioed philosophers of the nineteenth century.

THE FARCE.-Act I.

'London is a strange place.' You enter a shop in a public thoroughfare and see an elderly man behind the counter, or at the books; he may be a jeweller, a fruiterer, an optician, or any thing else. Quiet and civil, you little suspect that he is a practised marksman, a fatal rifleman who has for years been accustomed to look frequently down the sights of a brown barrel. He and his friends are the survivors of the old volunteers. Does he fancy any improvement can be made in his lock? His friends, the locksmith, the watchmaker, and the gunsmith, consult together. Are his sights imperfect? The optician close by, who puts sights to theodolites, can give him a hint. Is he curious in the purity of the lead he fires? The chemist will assay it, and tell him how much zinc and silver it contains. No men possess more knowledge of the rifle than these quiet and grave citizens.

On entering such a shop in the spring of 1843 a person, whom we will call Mr. H., was greeted with the question, Well, have you written to the Master-General about your new shot?' I copied and signed a letter to him which was drawn up by a gentleman who knew him.' And they have referred you as usual to the Select Committee at Woolwich; do you know any thing of that Committee?'

Very little. Men of science say that no name of the first rank in science ever arose among the pupils of the Royal Military Academy, and the members of that Committee were all educated in that Academy. What character do they bear in London?' 'Why, men who have been before them usually come away