into one harmony, and nothing remains to offend the ear. Throughout the bright night was the air filled with the howling of wolves and the singing of nightingales, and the two were pleasant together. The woody mountain side was alive with nightingales, and they sang incessantly and loud. I was at rest in a Greek convent on the south-western verge of the Marathonian plain, kept wakeful by this rough and tender serenade, which overpowered the low voice of the shrunken brook. There was enough novelty in my position to make me feel no want of sleep. About midnight the stranger appeared. I was the first to accost him. "What!" said I, "in a Greek convent?" "Not a word of that," replied he. "Come forth into the starlight." "Is there no fear of the wolves?" said I. "No," he answered, "they are too far up the hill; and they fear the village watch-dogs." "But," said I, "is there no fear of the dogs? For those mongrel descendants of Eretrian, Molossian, Argive, Locrian and Arcadian ancestors made my attaining the convent from the plain this afternoon a feat not far inferior to the battle of Marathon itself." "No," he answered, "there is no fear on the hill beside the chapel. I come to remind you of Latin thoughts and things. I will not trust a western amid the bewildering glories of pagan Greece, or the novelties of the oriental ritual, without an occasional admonition."

"Have you," continued he, "thought of what I said to you at Ancona?" "Yes," replied I, "the

present state of my own Church, and the doubt and distressing perplexity which now beset the path of an English churchman, compelled me to think more deeply of it than perhaps I otherwise should have done." "And have you," he asked, "come to any conclusion?" "I believe I have,” replied I; "I fear it is not altogether what you would wish. I appreciate the magnificence of the idea of the papacy, and am not slow to admit the many blessings of which it has been the cause. But I think the experience of the Church has shown that it was too venturesome a wisdom and however separable it may be in a scholastic point of view from a mutilated doctrinal system, yet there is a mutual sympathy between the papacy and popery, in the English sense of that word, which interpenetrates both. They are as inseparable as body and soul. However much of divine sanction there was in it, and that there was such a sanction I by no means deny, it has yet been, as in the case of the Hebrew kingdom, insufficient to preserve the Latin Church from degeneracy, from captivity to secular principles, and from the galling yoke of rude and irreligious Asmonean princes. The papacy certainly is a captivating idea in these days, for it seems a shorter road to the recovery of unity than any other. It is an engine ready to the hand. Whereas to human eyes primitive episcopacy is so little realized and apparently so little adapted to the organization of modern Europe, that it appears to lead towards unity only by a circuit of many generations. Yet perhaps what ap

Besides which the word, a failure. It even that it might less than primitive It did not stop the

pears to human eyes the most unlikely instrument whereby to retrieve unity, may be in the divine dispensations the most likely. papacy has been, to use my old did much, but it did not do all have done, and moreover it did episcopacy had done before it. fearful issue of sin within the Church. It was the physician on whom the Church expended all her substance for her healing, and was none the better, but rather the worse. It hindered her from pressing through the crowd to touch His hem, which could alone from its indwelling virtue close the issue. I think it were better for us all to repent deeply, and revive the withered blossoms of episcopacy, and put trust in them. Unity is far off. We must not hurry towards it. If we do we shall fail in our own work, and perchance frustrate the will of God. We shall be like undisciplined penitents striving to shorten our penance. I acknowledge therefore the magnificence of the papacy, and reverence Rome and Rome's primacy because of that reverential instinct which I find in the writers of antiquity. But they do not amount to making it a duty to adhere to the chair of St. Peter; and if they did, my conscience, in submission to the authoritative tradition of the Church, compels me to admit the prior duty of keeping pure the deposit of sound doctrine, and I am so unfortunate as to think a jealousy for the old deposit inconsistent with a subscription of even the written system of Roman theology. God for some mys

"I

terious purpose permitted the early Church and even the Apostles to believe that the end of the world was very nigh, and yet it is deferred. In like manner He may have permitted this sort of reverence towards Rome to exist in the primitive Church for some purpose, which it does not appear has been hitherto realized." "You think, therefore," said he, "that it is safer to adhere to the model of primitive episcopacy which exists in your own Church?" might," I replied, "say yes to such a question; but it is better to say that it is no matter of thought at all to me: it is a plain duty, wherein, whatever I had thought, I must have submitted. My submission to my Church were worth little if it did not restrain and control my private opinions." "But," he answered, "may not your episcopacy be considered Erastian rather than primitive?" "No," said I, "I do not think so, if the matter be candidly considered. The Church in England has not debased episcopacy, but she is under a civil pressure, which she cannot break, but hopes to break, and yearly begins Lent by a heart-broken expression of that hope. But let us defer this subject for the present. I have said that an English churchman's path just now lies through dim and tangled places; and I dare not talk to you with an unprepared mind." "You do not know," said he, "where you will emerge." "I am," I replied, "a catholic Christian, and shall not lack guidance."

While I was speaking I could see by the light

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that the expression of his countenance changed very much, and when I ceased, he glided into the little chapel which was open, and left me leaning on the low parapet of the wall in front. The howling of the beasts had ceased, and there was an interval in the sweet nocturns of the musical brotherhood upon the mountain side. Below, glittering here and there in unwoody places, the little brook was flowing down to the plain with a pleasant murmur. A thin haze covered the battle field, and beyond, an indistinct brightness marked the sea, whose soft murmur was just audible where I stood. I thought of home and the difficulties and perplexities there. The future seemed cold and shadowy; and nothing came to cheer me but a cowardly comfort, that I was too far removed from holiness to take up the sword of zeal and do great acts among the foremost. It was a base thing to be comforted by a thought like that; and so I breathed a good wish for the holy men whom God shall call to do His work in difficult places, and on eminences at which all arrows will be aimed. Oh! how soothing is the invisible character of our spiritual warfare. And yet, while principles are battling and moral elements meeting in dire and stormy contest, and multitudes are disquieted, and changes being engendered, and Saints have difficulty in making good against the enemy the sanctuary and stronghold of a peaceful conscience, how strange it is the earth should have so little sympathy with her children! Above, below, around, what beautiful