A University student during that winter session should, by his summer exertions and some assistance from his friends, be able to maintain himself at our Universities for twenty-five pounds. Two students would, therefore, cost fifty pounds per annum, and the preparatory student would be greatly encouraged by ten pounds a-year, in all £110.

It is to be hoped that, from the greater encouragement now offered, more young men may be induced to enter our Church. But the choice of Gaelic speakers is limited. The smaller Highland native proprietors are all but extinct. Few of the larger tenants are of our Church. We must, therefore, at present only expect to receive our students from a class not able to pay the whole expenses of their education. However, we doubt not, that better times are coming, and that when matters are arranged, students will be found to contribute a part, at least, of the expenses of their education.

Considering the few advantages our young men possess, we are most desirous their full time at the University should be exclusively devoted to study that they should be placed under the superintending care of our clergy while at College, and some means should be found to maintain and increase their command of their native language.

The Highlanders have a taste, to give it no higher term, for preaching, so that they will travel miles to hear any one famed for his powers. The native language is terse, energetic, expressive, and idiomatic, and, as a labouring man expresses it, "There is nothing goes to the Heilandman's heart like Gaelic."

ECCLESIASTICAL INTELLIGENCE.

DIOCESE OF MORAY, ROSS, AND
CAITHNESS.

ST. JOHN'S, INVERNESS.-The Rev. Allan Swinburn, B.A., having some time ago resigned the incumbency of St. John's, the Rev. Selby Ord Ash, B.A., Jesus' College, Cambridge, was licensed by the Primus to officiate.

DIOCESE OF ST. ANDREWS, DUNKELD,

AND DUNBLANE.

PROPOSED NEW CHURCH IN PERTH. -I cannot but feel that the time is come when my Episcopal duty requires me to endeavour to raise subscriptions for the erection of a new Church in Perth-the town

which has a much larger population than any other in the Diocese, and for which, as residing in the immediate neighbourhood, I naturally cherish a closer interest, and incur a more direct responsibility. The provision made in this town by our two Churches which already exist has gradually become quite insufficient. At St. John's, especially, the small proportion of sittings which are not let at a high rent precludes the regular attendance of a great number of the poorer class, who have attached themselves to that congregation.

It is proposed to erect the new church in a part of the town remotest

COLONIAL CHURCHES.

THE following are the recent remarks of the Bishop of Gibraltar on the condition of the Italian chapels, and the importance of the present crisis of religious opinion in the Peninsula :

1. He was thankful for the kind welcome with which he was everywhere received, and the generally satisfactory state of the settled English congregations in Italy.

2. He would express his earnest desire that the committees of management of the several chapels may increasingly remember that, for their own sake, as well as for the comfort of the clergyman, and in

comformity also to the principles of the Church of England, it is most important that the position of the clergyman should be thoroughly independent; and that, while the committee rightly undertakes the management of financial and secular affairs, they should not attempt to control the clergyman in such functions (spiritual and ecclesiastical) as are exercised at his own discretion by an English rector. There is, of course, always an appeal or reference to the Diocesan in disputed cases. The bishop's experience as a Scottish Diocesan has shown him how apt committees of laymen are to overstep this line; and he has certainly, during his visitation, seen instances which reminded him of what he alludes to in the North; and even of the question put to a Dissenting minister, and his reply :-" Sir, are you the Independent minister of so and so ?" 66 Oh, no" (was the answer); "I am the minister of the Independent congregation." For instance, he has found cases in which the Holy Communion is not administered on the great festival of Christmas, an occasion on which (even if there were not a proper preface for that day) the mere duty of commemorating the Saviour's great humility," and feeding by faith with thanksgiving on the bread of God, as at that time given to the world, would lead every devout Christian to desire that the Lord's Supper might be administered. He is quite sure that the omission has arisen from a desire to meet some mistaken notions, or some expression of opinion, on the part of the congregation.

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3. It is a matter of thankfulness that the British travellers on the Continent, for the most part, show a very gratifying desire to attend the services of their Church on the Lord's Day. Too, often, however they forget that the Church appoints a service for the afternoon or evening, as well as morning; and too often, also, they forget that it is their bounden duty to contribute freely towards the expense of supporting the chapel, which is often, e. g. at Milan and Turin, mainly kept up for their benefit. This arises, no doubt, in part from the habit at home of attending endowed Churches, and not recollecting the different condition of the Continental chapels. But too often it arises from not having included the contributions to the maintenance of services which they really value in the calculation of their regular travelling expenses. If they benefit by these ordinances, they should certainly consider it a bounden duty to contribute to such an amount as shows their value. The subscriptions are generally lamentably small; and, in too many instances, the bishop has really felt shame for his countrymen, at hearing that bad money (or coins which have remained in the traveller's purse from some distant State, and cannot be passed without loss) are put into the offerings of God. This is, surely, to offer of the blemished and the possessions which it costs us nothing to give. It is

grievous to think that any one's conscience should permit him to give (or seem to give) after such a fashion as this; and yet the bishop was again and again informed that the case is by no means a rare one.

4. It is impossible to say too much of the importance of building suitable chapels, instead of the old system of conducting service in hired rooms; and this first for the sake of the English themselves, who flock in such vast multitudes to Italy. It is true that, where it is really impossible to build a suitable chapel, we may remember, for our comfort, that the very highest and most mysterious service in which human beings have ever taken part, was held in an upper room in an undistinguished street at Jerusalem. But it is vain to deny that our feelings are much affected by the associations connected with external objects; and in these days, when there has been such a reaction towards what is seemly and reverent in the external conduct of Christian worship, it is surely dangerous that our young countrymen and countrywomen, in passing from city to city, should unfavourably contrast the meanness and baldness of the room in which their own service is conducted, with the stately cathedrals and impressive ceremonies of the Roman Catholic Church. They are very generally in a state of mind which renders it peculiarly important that what they see and hear when they attend the English services should carry their thoughts to their own favoured country, and revive all the reverent and happy associations of an English Sunday.

And, then, for the sake of the Italians, at this crisis of their religious history, how very important is it that the English Church should be exhibited to them as she really is, and that the mean and cheap manner in which the service is conducted should not tend to confirm them in their notions that the Church of England is merely one of the numerous Protestant sects. Unmoored from their ancient fastenings, they are in no little danger of drifting to the shoals and quicksands of Rationalism and Scepticism. And many who see the errors of Popery, but see also the peril of launching forth on the sea of religious speculation without rudder or compass, would peculiarly value the visible proof afforded by a thoroughly well-appointed English Church of the possibility of uniting reverence and order with simplicity and scriptural doctrine in the worship of God; and that, as it is not necessary, in embracing evangelical truths, to throw aside the guidance of primitive antiquity, so neither is it necessary (with respect to the buildings which we dedicate to the glory and worship of God) to discard what commends itself to our natural feelings of reverence and our instinctive love of order and beauty. The bishop is informed that already the Neapolitans have been most favourably impressed by the proof which