condition of the Papacy, it was only likely that English Churchmen should find their own difficulties of another kind. It was easy to make a triumphant appeal to antiquity; it was more difficult to form a clear ideal of episcopal powers when the Papacy and the Canon Law were removed. It was significant that Parker, careful, cautious, and learned, should draw the outlines of the English system; it was significant that a later prelate, Whitgift, should go further in his appeal to theory and in his practice of power. The recognition of this principle as the foundation of the Elizabethan settlement of religion' makes it easier to understand much that happened. The repeated refusals, as in 1572, 1577 and 1581, to allow ecclesiastical matters to be discussed in the Commons instead of by the bishops or Convocation marked the difference between Elizabeth and her predecessors. The episcopal authority, which had been formerly the means of reconciling local life and Catholic unity, was to be allowed independence, subject always to the Royal Supremacy, which was to be a support against impugners at home and would-be oppressors abroad. As the reign went on, it became clearer than ever that the claims of the Papacy did interfere with national sovereignty and national freedom. ་ It was not only against the Papacy that the freedom of the episcopate as an expression of national religious life had to be asserted. The returned fugitives of Mary's reign were ready to carry to all extremes the 'individualism' which was the original impulse of the Reformation. The Royal Supremacy and episcopal power stood in its way. Thus the crisis came in 1572, with the publication of the Admonition to Parliament' and its command to 'take away the lordship, the loitering, the pomp, the idleness and livings of bishops.' It is certain that there was an attempt to create a Presbyterian machinery which could work underground until it was widespread enough and strong enough to throw off episcopacy and subvert the Church. It is probable, as Mr Usher thinks, that in reality the supporters of this new system were rather loud and ubiquitous than many and influential. They based their plan upon the appeal to Scripture in that narrow sense that Bancroft and Hooker overthrew. But they were right, after all, when they insisted that there was a lack of administration in the Elizabethan system. Its details were, indeed, not worked out; arrangements which might make an excellent 'Interim,' eked out by the royal authority, were of necessity far from complete. But, whether we take the controversies or the events of the reign, the working-out of this conception of a Catholic Church without the Pope is easy to trace. The Puritans agreed that the Pope should be thrown overboard, but they wished that the bishops should follow him. Here again the Elizabethan government was consistent; but it was weaker in its internal system than in its exclusion of foreign influence. The principles separating Pole and Parker were not more vital, but were easier to disentangle, than those separating Cartwright and Hooker; it was therefore easier to separate them in practice. In all this working-out of a system there had to be much that was tentative, something that was revolutionary. The real appeal of any revolution, even of one that bases itself upon an appeal to the past, lies to the future. The Elizabethan settlement sought to make room for the national life to grow; and hence its quarrel with the Papacy. In its reform of doctrine, in its seeking for new light from a learning that was really new, it passed behind the Middle Ages. That it did not throw over the Middle Ages is everything; it preserved the episcopacy, and, while it failed to reform many administrative abuses, it kept that coercive system which the medieval Church had tried to bring to perfection. It might, perhaps, have been possible, even in the days of Elizabeth, to go back to the earlier conception of a spiritual authority, working by persuasion and guidance, instead of by force and punishment. But the Elizabethan mind was still too medieval for that to happen. The coercive machinery of the Church courts was kept; it came to depend more and more upon the strong arm of the State. More and more it roused the growing anger of the individual seeking for freedom of movement and of growth. It was an error, but its harmfulness was small compared to the persecutions abroad. In political matters the Elizabethan model gained success. It was efficient; and it worked in unison with the national feelings. In Church matters much the same can be said. It is true that the Catholic recusant, the Nonconformist, and the Separatist were the creations of the reign; but they were its unavoidable creations. And many who, under other management, might have been numbered with them became children, even if murmuring children, of the National Church. Upon the great principles of Church government mechanical details, often meant merely for a time, were built up; but the whole work of reconstruction was never fully carried out, and much was left to chance or to time. The whole long line of ritual disputes which has descended from the Ornaments Rubric is the result of an attempt to water down regulation by practice; a little more readiness in Elizabeth's time to face the facts and act boldly would have saved later generations much strife. But behind and beyond these deficiencies of detail the great principles remained. What were the alternatives to the Elizabethan scheme? There was, on the one hand, the papal obedience. Its acceptance would have meant a sharp separation between religion and many parts of the national life, a separation even greater than that seen elsewhere. It would have meant for England, as it has meant for other countries, a sacrifice of freedom in thought, in worship, and in church life, badly compensated by a gain of symmetry and uniformity under papal despotism. There would have been gain, of course, but there would have been heavier losses; and chief among them would have been that of the English episcopate with its growing ideal which promises so much to-day and for the future. There would have been meted to it the same measure which was dealt to the secular priests of Wisbeach, and to some national episcopates to-day. The Papacy could call to its help from the England of Elizabeth an enthusiasm which rose through heroism to martyrdom, the highest gifts of men in character and power; for we cannot rate too highly some of those who toiled in silence and died in shame. But by its maxims and its management it reduced this material to a dwindling sect, passing out of touch with the national vigour and the national hopes. Some part of this result was due to their persecution by the Government, but more was due to the deliberate choice of their papal leaders. Again we say that the revolution which the Elizabethans wrought has been justified by its result. The result was a Church strong nough to weather the storm of the Civil Wars and the blight of the Hanoverian lethargy, to keep alive even to those evil days a spirit of religion in the nation at large. But there was another alternative which was pressed for Elizabeth's acceptance-'the model of the best reformed churches abroad.' Here again there might have been some gain, but there would have been greater loss. The continuity of tradition, of history, of faith itself, means even more for religious bodies than it means for a man by himself; and these would have been lost. The religious anarchy of the Commonwealth, the narrow tyranny of Puritanism, the multiplied forces of Separatism, would have been upon us some fifty years earlier than they came; and there would have been no Church to combat them, and even after defeat to rise against them. If the Elizabethan leaders erred in one direction more than in another, it was in tenderness towards Puritanism; political interest, religious sympathies, sometimes pressed them to compromise. Had they gone further in that direction, their own problems would have been easier, but their children would have suffered. It was a sound instinct which led the leaders to see that a more elaborate and efficient administration, a code of law, was needed; but it was an equally sound instinct that led the bulk of Churchmen to reject the 'Reformatio Legum.' In their main outlines they built truly and well; and, if every detail was not attended to, none the less their building has stood. Each later generation that has had to repair and enlarge the walls seems to have entered more and more into the spirit of its Elizabethan forefathers. It is the reward of men who love the past and boldly face the present to shape the future and its growth. J. P. WHITNEY. Art. 5.-MUSIC AND DRAMA. 1. My Life. By Richard Wagner. English Translation. Two vols. London: Constable, 1911. 2. Musiciens d'Aujourd'hui: Musiciens d'Autrefois. By Romain Rolland. Paris: Hachette, 1908. 3. Pelléas et Mélisande. By Claude Debussy. Durand, 1902. Paris: 4. Salome: Elektra. By Richard Strauss. Berlin: Fürstner, 1905, 1908. 5. Some Forerunners of Italian Opera. By W. J. Henderson. London: Murray, 1911. And other works. 6 A PHILOSOPHER who is seeking for an illustration of the One in the Many will find it ready to his hand in the history of artistic criticism. The problems of art are innumerable; they press round us in such multitude that they often obscure our view of the artist; and yet, when all is said, they are only the transitory versions of one eternal problem-the relation of form and content, of expression and design. Is the main function of art to interpret reality and paint man man, whatever the issue,' or to create its own reality by presenting, through a chosen medium, some vision of ideal beauty? or may we believe that each of these is but a half truth, and that the highest achievement is to maintain them both in a due balance and equipoise which shall reconcile their conflicting claims without sacrifice and without concession? The extreme arguments on either side are familiar enough. The artist who fixes his attention on pure design stands in some danger of formalism, and even of conventionality; his work at the best may be coldly perfect, at the worst artificial and unmeaning. The insistence on expression and interpretation may be carried to a point at which beauty itself disappears. Dædalus, as the story goes, carved the legs of his statue with such fidelity to nature that it ran away in the night. It is probable that in no field of art has the battle been more urgently or persistently fought than in that of the musical drama. At the end of the sixteenth century it |