life from her people: she robs them of the cup in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, thereby, we know not to what extent, invalidating its benefits: therefore, we say, let there be no peevish sentimental prate concerning charity towards a sister Church to forbid our denouncing Rome's iniquities, and calling on her own children to leave her polluted communion. We do not deny that a Papist may be saved; but we fear he is far more likely to be lost and we must act accordingly.

Mr. Bandinel proceeds to celebrate a series of Christian worthies who have borne testimony against Rome's corruptions and tyrannous usurpations-the Saint of Holy Isle, the illustrious and saintly Robert Grostête, Hincmar of Rheims, Wickliff, &c.; and a special eulogy is bestowed on Luther which we shall extract:

"Alone, recluse in convent cell,

Defied the armament of hell,

And single, 'gainst the banded world,
The standard of his God unfurled.

"Great were his faults; for Adam's stain
On all his offspring must remain.
Great were his faults, I grant; but yet,
Until the sun for aye be set,
Nor holier cause, nor higher aim,
Shall dim or shadow LUTHER'S name!
Like the young Bethlehemite of old,
Firm in his God, his heart was bold:
He felt within his breast a flame:
He knew from whence the impulse came;
Himself was weak, his foes were strong,
But his the right and theirs the wrong,
And, in the name of David's God,

He burst that chain-he broke that rod !" (240-241).

66

We must pass by the admirable delineation which follows of the English Church, with the sentiments expressed in which passage we heartily concur, and hasten to the eighth concluding canto, Home," which is replete with tenderness and patriotism. Lack of space forbids us, however, to enlarge upon its beauties. It opens with a noble address to our native land, which is followed by a legal appeal to all the higher sympathies of its gentle and lovely Sovereign. The marriage is very happily pourtrayed, the bearing of the trembling Angelina in particular; and the wedded life of the noble pair is shadowed forth with equal power and grace, as in the passage commencing:

"But we have left the bridegroom and the bride

Landed on day's bright shore by fate's full tide!

And we must leave them, for no throat can sing

The blissful glories of the golden ring" (p. 289).

The constitutional patriotism of our author finds expression in the narration of the career attributed to De Vere, and the mutual duties of the rich and poor are spoken of with a glowing but yet subdued enthusiasm which shows how dear the true "rights of the working classes" must be to the heart of the author. On the whole, the work may be said to be permeated most successfully; and the entire poem stands before us as one of the most important contributions to our poetical Christian literature that we are at all acquainted with. We have not dwelt upon the exceedingly valuable notes, to some of which, however-especially to the first in the second canto and to several of those in the seventh-we would especially call our readers' attention.

We do not think that we have devoted too much time or space to the consideration of this remarkable production. It has not only great merit as simple, unpretending, and yet highly artistical, and frequently very beautiful poetry; but it is a faithful exposition of the creed of our Church, and, at the same time, a valourous and most successful defence of the pure glories of true love. We know that Romanizers, Romanists, and Infidels, will scout such a book as this, and, as there are too many of these gentry engaged upon the press, Mr. Bandinel's poem is certain to be greeted unjustly by many reviewers. As Churchmen, and as admirers of the beautiful, it is the more incumbent upon us therefore to speak out as we have now done in its praise. We know of no work better calculated for a gift-book amongst the young; and, strange to say, we cau recommend it equally to parents and to lovers for that purpose. Whatever may be the outcry raised against this poem by a party, it is certain to pass through many editions and become a standard

work.

ART. VII.-1. The Progress and Prospects of Christianity in the United States of America. By DR. BAIRD. London: Partridge.

2. America and the American Church. By the Rev. HENRY CASWELL, M.A. Second Edition. London: Mozeley.

WHEN, just at the close of the fifteenth century, De Soto, the Spaniard, set sail from Cuba to discover new lands, and to add new territories to the Spanish Crown, it was the turn of a straw

which decided him to steer his course to the west. Had he steered to the east, all that land, now known as the United States, would have had a Spanish instead of an Anglo-Saxon population. Romanism would have been the faith of its people, and the Protestant Church would, there at least, have hitherto had no existence. Happily, however, for Europe-providentially for the reformed Church, which was so soon to break away from the Paganized Christianity of that age-the Cabots, father and son, the latter an Englishman-were the first of the Europeans to tread on its shores in 1497.

For very many years subsequently, the English did little more than visit and revisit the land; and it was not until 1607-two years before the settlement of Canada by the French, seven years before the founding of New York by the Dutch, and thirteen years before the landing of the Puritans in New England-that a small band of colonists arrived at what is now known as James Town, on the James river, in the present State of Virginia. The colony was composed of friends of the Stuarts, the then reigning dynasty of England. They took with them the prevalent habits of the higher orders of English society; and, although adventurers, they had not forgotten their duty to God. Religious considerations had been combined with the motives which led to their voluntary expatriation. As members of the Church of England, they had been required by their Sovereign to provide for the preaching of the Gospel among themselves and the neighbouring Indians, and had been taught to regard their undertaking as a work which, by the providence of God, might tend to the glory of his divine majesty, and the propagating of the Christian religion. A wise and pious clergyman, Robert Hunt by name, had acccompanied them on their perilous voyage, and a humble building was soon erected as a place of worship according to the usage of the Church of England. On the 14th of May, the day after their first landing, the colonists partook of the Lord's Supper at the hand of their pastor, and North America commenced its career of civilization with the celebration of the most holy mystery of the Catholic Church. Upon a peninsula projecting from the northern shore of James Town may still be seen the ruins of the more substantial edifice afterwards erected; and this, with its surrounding burial ground, remains almost the sole memorial of James Town.

Hitherto, and for a few years afterwards, the Church of England was the only form of Christianity existing in the northern part of that continent: it is, therefore, fairly entitled to whatever rights may attach to actual precedence in point of

VOL. XXXI.-D D

occupation. The Church, thus early and happily established, was subsequently considerably augmented by the emigration of cavaliers during the ascendancy of Oliver Cromwell, and for nearly a century maintained its preponderance in that province. Meanwhile, the Church in the colonies was utterly neglected and unnoticed by the mother country; or, if noticed by any of the fleeting Ministries of the day, noticed only to be despised, or insulted, or wronged. Nor were sectarians slow to establish themselves and their schisms around her. In 1614, New York was colonized by the Dutch, who took with them their own confession of faith and their Presbyterian form of government. In 1620, the Puritans established themselves in Massachusetts, where their numbers were recruited by the enforcement of the Act of Uniformity in England; and very soon did they begin to persecute and to fine heavily all those among them who worshipped God according to the Prayer Book. They enacted severe laws against the observance of any such days as Christmas and the like, and proceeded to establish an Inquisition in substance, which, for violence and wrong, was not much inferior to that of Dominic in Spain or to that of Calvin in Geneva. In 1627, the Swedes and Finns introduced Lutheranism into Delaware and New Jersey. In 1664, Maryland was settled by Roman Catholics, and in 1681 Pennsylvania by Quakers.

Notwithstanding, however, the fierce hostility of all these parties to English Episcopalians, the Church gradually established itself among them. The Dutch having in 1667 surrendered New York to the English, an English church was presently erected in that town. Another was erected in Philadelphia, and congregations of Protestant Episcopalians were collected together in Maryland. Even among the intolerant Puritans of New England, a few Episcopalian congregations, under multiplied difficulties, established themselves and at length firmly entrenched themselves. The Established Church of the mother country, it must be observed, was never made the Established Church of America by any acts of the Imperial Parliament at home: on the contrary-acting on the principle which all Whig Ministries in all their generations seem invariably to do, that Protestantism is Negatism-that it matters nothing to them or to the nation whether it dies out or lives on -that it merits no legislation nor protection-that the Church of England is not worth establishing in the colonies-all the administrations of this country discountenanced to the utmost every effort made by the colonists themselves to give efficiency and strength to the doctrines and discipline of the English Church; and whatever aid in temporal matters the Church

received was by laws einanating from the provincial legislatures themselves.

The colonial government of New York, for example, generally intended to give a preference to ministers of the English Establishment. In South Carolina it was declared that the religion of the Church of England, being the only true and orthodox religion, was also that of Carolina. In Virginia, in 1619, it was provided that the clergy should have, in each borough, a glebe of one hundred acres, and should receive a standing revenue of two hundred pounds. In Maryland, it was enacted, in 1696, that the Church within that province should enjoy all the rights and privileges of the Church in England itself, and that every congregation of the Church of England in Maryland was to be deemed a part of the Established Church, and every clergyman appointed by the governor was to receive forty pounds of tobacco per poll. In the northern provinces but little favour was shown to the members of the English Church, and their few congregations were confined to some of the larger towns; but at length, when it became a notorious fact that the English Ministry had made it a rule of their policy to make no provision whatever for the Church in America-to allow of no bishops to be appointed-no hierarchy to be established-no colleges to be founded-no native clergy to be educated and ordained-a few zealous friends of the Church in England, who saw but too clearly in what all this state neglect would end, established and incorporated, in 1701, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts; and this, although not exclusively, yet mainly in reference to the colonies in America.

This Society, which owed its existence in a great measure to Dr. Bray, the commissary of Maryland for the Bishop of London, soon began to make its influence powerfully felt in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, the greater part of whose clergy it maintained and where their congregations rapidly increased. A most liberal grant of land was made to this Society on behalf of the Church out of the territory of Vermont, which, when first surveyed, was divided into townships containing thirty-six square miles each. In each of these, Governor Wentworth, of New Hampshire, reserved one right of land, containing about 330 acres, for the first minister who might settle there; a second right as a glebe for the Church of England; and a third as an endowment for the Gospel Propagation Society. But the surveyors of the land, being Puritans, took care to render the grant as useless as they possibly could, reserving only for the glebes and for the society