The sacraments, the divine mysteries, | title of the book was in appearance only, had existed in the Church for fifteen cen- or rather it was assumed by the will of turies. For all those ages they had been the King, and in obedience to his orders. supposed to be the rivulets which watered When the doctrines had been determined the earth with the graces of the Spirit. by the bench, he even thought it necessary After so long experience it should have to admonish the composers to observe been at least possible to tell what they their own lessons. were, or how many they were; but the question was suddenly asked, and none could answer it. The bishops were applied to. Interrogatories were sent round among them for opinions, and some said there were three sacraments, some seven, some a hundred. The Archbishop of York insisted on the apostolical succession; the Archbishop of Canterbury believed that priests and bishops might be nominated by the crown, and he that was so appointed needed no consecra tion, for his appointment was sufficient. Transubstantiation remained almost the only doctrine beyond the articles of the three creeds on which a powerful majority was agreed. Something, however, must be done. Another statement must be made of the doctrine of the Church of England-if the Church of England were to pretend to possess a doctrine-more complete than the last. The slander must be put to silence which confounded independence with heresy; the clergy must be provided with some guide to their teaching which it should be penal to neglect. Under orders, therefore, from the crown, the bishops agreed at last upon a body of practical divinity, which was published under the title of "The Bishops' Book" on "the Institution of a Christian Man." It consisted of four commentaries, on the creed, the sacraments, the ten commandments, and the Lord's prayer, and in point of language was beyond question the most beautiful composition which had as yet appeared in English prose. The doctrine was moderate, yet more Catholic, and in the matter of the sacraments, less ambiguous than the articles of `1536. The mystic number seven was restored, and the nature of sacramental grace explained in the old manner. Yet there was a manifest attempt, rather, perhaps, in visible tendency than in positive statement, to unite the two ideas of symbolic and instrumental efficacy, to indicate that the grace conveyed through the mechanical form is the spiritual instruction indicated in the form of the ceremony. The union among the bishops which appeared in the VOL. XLV.-N O. I. "Experience," he wrote to them, "has taught us that it is much better for no laws to be made, than when many be well made none to be kept; and even so it is much better nothing should be written concerning religion, than when many things be well written nothing of them be taught and observed. Our commandment is, therefore, that you agree in your preaching, and that vain praise of crafty wits and worldly estimation be laid aside, and true religion sought for. You serve God in your calling, and not your own glory or vile profit. We will no correcting of things, no glosses that take away the text; being much desirous, notwithstanding that if in any place you have not written so plainly as you might have done, in your sermons to the people you utter all that is in God's Word. We will have no more thwarting-no more contentions whereby the people are much more set against one another than any taketh profit by such indiscreet doctrines. We had much sooner to pray you than command you, and if the first will serve we will leave out the second. Howbeit, we will in any case that all preachers agree; for if any shall dissent, let him that will defend the worser part assure himself that he shall run into our displeasure." "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and we hear the sound thereof, but we can not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit." As easily could Henry bind the winds, and bid them blow at his pleasure, as force the mind of England thenceforward into any single mould. Under conditions and within limits which he did not imagine, some measure of the agreement which he desired would be at last accomplished when the time and season would permit. Meanwhile, though his task was an impossible one, it was better to try and fail, than to sit by and let the storm rage. Nor was Henry a man to submit patiently to failure. He would try and try again; when milder methods were unsuccessful, he would try with bills of six articles, and pains and penalties. He was wrestling against destiny; yet But if Henry erred, his errors might find excuse in the multitude of business which was crowded upon him. Insurrection and controversy, foreign leagues, and Papal censures, did not exhaust the number of his difficulties. All evil things in nature seemed to have combined to thwart him. then, now, and ever it was, and remains | Church. While the courts of Brussels In the few first years after he became king, he had paid particular attention to the navy. He had himself some skill as a naval engineer, and had conducted experiments in the construction of hulls and rigging, and in ship artillery. Other matters had subsequently called off his attention, and especially since the commencement of the Reformation every moment had brought with it its own urgent claims, and the dockyards had fallen into decay. The finances had been straitened by the Irish wars, and from motives of economy the ships which the government possessed had fallen many of them out of commission, and were rotting in harbor. A few small vessels were kept on the coast of Ireland; but in the year 1536 there was scarcely in all the Channel a single royal cruiser carrying the English flag. Materials to man a fleet existed amply in the fishermen who went year after year in vast numbers to Iceland and to Ireland-hardy sailors, who, taught by necessity, went always armed, and had learnt to fight as well as to work; but, from a neglect not the less injurious, because intelligible, the English authority in their own waters had sunk to a shadow. Pirates swarmed along the coasts-entering fearlessly into the harbors, and lying there in careless security. The war breaking out between Charles and Franois, the French and Flemish ships of war captured prizes or fought battles in the mouths of English rivers, or under the windows of English towns; and though preying upon each other as enemies in the ordinary sense, both occasionally made prey of heretic English as enemies of the And Pirates were enemies to which the people were accustomed, and they could in some measure cope with them; but commissioned vessels of war had now condescended to pirates' practices. Sandwich boatmen were pillaged by a Flemish cruiser in the Downs in the autumn of 1536. A smack belonging to Deal was twice boarded and robbed by a Flemish officer of high rank, the admiral of the Sluys. The king had for several years been away in the darkness, and came no more engaged in making a harbor of refuge at into English waters. Dudley had been Dover. The workmen saw English even more fortunate. "As he was lying traders off the coast, and even the very between the Needles and the Cowe," vessels which brought the iron and tim- there came a letter to him from the ber for the harbor-piers, plundered by Mayor of Rye, "that the Flemings had French and Flemings under their eyes; boarded a merchant-ship belonging to and the London merchants declared that, that port, and had taken goods out of although the country was nominally at her valued at three hundred pounds." peace, their ships could not venture out"That hearing," he said, in his dispatch of port unless the government would to Henry, "I, with another of your undertake their convoy. The remonstrances which were made, of course in loud terms, at Paris and Brussels, were received with verbal apologies, and the queen regent gave orders that her cruisers should cease their outrages; but either their commanders believed that their conduct would be secretly winked at, or they could not be convinced that heretics were not lawful game; or perhaps the zealous subjects of the Catholic powers desired to precipitate the sluggish action of their governments. At any rate, the same insolences continued, and no redress could be obtained. Henry could not afford to declare war. The exchequer was ill-furnished. The rebellion had consumed the subsidy, and the abbey lands had as yet returned little profit either by their rentals or by sale. The country, however, had not yet sunk so low as to be unable to defend its own coasts and its own traders. Sufficient money was found for the immediate purpose, and a small but admirably equipped fleet was fitted out silently at Portsmouth. Sir Thomas Seymour, the queen's brother, Sir George Carew, Sir John Dudley, and Christopher Coo, a rough English sailor, were appointed to the command; and, when the ships were ready, they swept out into the Channel. Secresy had been observed as far as possible, in the hope of taking the offenders by surprise. The greater number of them had, unhappily, been warned, and had escaped to their own harbors; but Coo shortly brought two pirate prizes into Rye. The people of Penzance, one August afternoon, heard the thunder of distant cannon. Carew and Seymour, searching the western coast, had come on the traces of four French ships of war, which had been plundering. They came up with them in Mounts Bay, and, closing against heavy odds, they fought them there till night. At daybreak, one of the four lay on the water, a sinking wreck. The others had crawled Grace's ships, made all the diligence that shore off the Holland flats, the records | places was defended by adequate and are silent. Pirates, however, and over-trained garrisons; and the musters were zealous privateers, in these and other en- kept in training within twenty miles of the counters, were taught their lesson; and coast, and were held in readiness to asit did not, for some time, require to be semble on any point at any moment. repeated: "Your subjects," Dudley and Seymour told the king in a joint letter, "shall not only pass and repass without danger of taking, but your Majesty shall be known to be lord of these seas." They kept their word. In this one summer the Channel was cleared, and the nucleus was formed of the fleet which, eight years after, held in check and baffled the most powerful armament which had left the French shores against England since the Norman William crossed to Hastings. Money was the chief difficulty. The change in the character of war created unforeseen expenses of many kinds. The cost of regular military and naval establishments, a new feature in the national system, was thrown suddenly on the crown; and the revenue was unequal to so large a demand upon it. A fresh political arrangement was displacing the old; and the finances were necessarily long disordered before the country understood its condition, and had devised methods to meet its necessities. But Henry did not rest upon his success. The impulse had been given, and At this conjuncture the abbey lands the work of national defense went for- were a fortunate resource. They were ward. The animus of foreign powers was disposed of rapidly-of course on easy evidently as bad as possible. Subjects terms to the purchasers. The insurrecshared the feelings of their rulers. The tion, as we saw, had taught the necessity Pope might succeed, and most likely would of filling the place of the monks with resucceed at last, in reconciling France and sident owners, who would maintain hospiSpain; and experience proved that Eng-tality liberally, and on a scale to contrast land lay formidably open to attack. It favorably with the careless waste of their was no longer safe to trust wholly to the predecessors. Obligations to this effect extemporized militia.. The introduction were made a condition of the sales, and of artillery was converting war into a lowered naturally the market value of the science; and the recent proofs of the un- properties. Considerable sums, however, protected condition of the harbors should were realized, adequate for immediate obnot be allowed to pass without leaving jects, though falling short of the ultimate their lesson. Commissions were issued for cost of the defenses of the country. At a survey of the whole eastern and south- the same time the government works ern coasts. The most efficient gentlemen found labor for the able-bodied beggars, residing in the counties which touched the those sturdy vagrants whose living had sea were requested to send up reports of been gathered hitherto at the doors of the the points where invading armies could religious houses, varied only with intervals be most easily landed, with such plans as of the stocks and the cart's-tail. occurred to them for the best means of throwing up defenses. The plans were submitted to engineers in London; and in two years every exposed spot upon the coast was guarded by an earthwork, or a fort or blockhouse. Batteries were erect ed to protect the harbors at St. Michael's Mount, Falmouth, Fowey, Plymouth, Dartmouth, Torbay, Portland, Calshot, Cowes, and Portsmouth. Castles (some of them remain to the present day) were built at Dover, Deal, Sandwich, and along both shores of the Thames. The walls and embankments at Guisnes and Calais were repaired and enlarged; and Hull, Scarborough, Newcastle, and Berwickupon-Tweed were made impregnable against ordinary attack. Each of these Thus the spoils of the Church furnished. the arms by which the Pope and the Pope's friends could be held at bay; and by degrees in the healthier portion of the nation an English enthusiasm took the place of a superstitious panic. Loyalty towards England went along with the Reformation, when the Reformation was menaced by foreign enemies; and the wide disaffection which in 1536 had threatened a revolution, became concentrated in a vindictive minority, to whom the Papacy was dearer than their country, and whose persevering conspiracies taught England at no distant time to acquiesce with its whole heart in the wisdom which chained them down by penal laws as traitors and enemies to the commonwealth. From the National Review. CHARLATAN POETRY: MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER. * MR. MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER'S Pro- part of the public imposed on, and proba verbial Philosophy is the most popular bly implies a less conscious charlatanerie book of verses of its day. It began its on the part of the successful empiric. We career not long after the issue of Tenny- feel little doubt that Mr. Tupper is a proson's earliest poems, and has reached its found believer in the sterling character of thirty-third edition, exclusive of library his own fame, which in one of his minor and illustrated editions, while the poet- productions he solemnly bequeaths to his laureate's principal volume is still in its son; we feel sure that the readers who eleventh. Nay, Mr. Tupper's work has trust in him have a genuine sense that to even overtaken and passed in the race of peruse him is comfortable to their interior popularity that wonderful production mind-that they have thrown somewhich we may consider as belonging to thing grateful "into the system," when the previous generation - Mr. Robert they have followed him through one of Montgomery's Omnipresence of the Dei- his feebly fluent meditations. Whatever ty; a work which had already reached puffing may do for other departments of its eleventh edition in 1830, when Lord life, it is tolerably powerless to make men Macaulay endeavored to open the eyes of read what is not suited to their taste and the public to its true value-endeavored, character; and on that very account the indeed, and with good-will, but small ef phenomena of literary quackery are of fect-for, in spite of the great Edinburgh much greater interest than those of trade reviewer, it has since passed from its quackery.. Verse-reading is, after all, a eleventh to its twenty-fifth edition. In work of supererogation. There is no the present paper, therefore, taking warn- article of luxury with regard to which the ing by the failure of a greater critic, we" consumer's" judgment is so likely to be shall not attempt to stem the tremendous really unprejudiced as books. The avercurrent of Mr. Tupper's popularity. In-age man knows that he must buy clothing deed, Lord Macaulay was mistaken, we think, in attributing to mere puffing Mr. Robert Montgomery's vast reputation, and therefore also in imagining that the great weight of his critical authority could be sufficient to destroy the marvelous momentum of his career. There is this great distinction between literary quackery and quackery of any other kind, that its success clearly involves much more free and spontaneous liking on the and furniture, if not cheap and of good |