carelessly and "skimpily" got up goods. It is different with the Tennyson illustrations. We rather think that in those old days Mr. Millais cared for the poetry he was illustrating, and felt enough with Tennyson to be able to interpret him as a true painter may comment on a true poet. Besides those which we have mentioned, the "Sleeping Palace" pictures are, we are quite sure, fully equal to any praise we can give them. "The Revival" in particular gives some ideals of old English faces, which are very beautiful in their expression of careless power, and in subtle contrast between their straight, delicate features and their square jaws, bull throats, and broad shoulders. This volume also contains the well-known "Unjust Judge," "Pharaoh's Daughter," "Byron and Miss Chaworth," and the "Plague of Elliant." It is well worth having, and both first thoughts and partial studies for real painting may be found in it. But a little more time and trouble would have greatly increased its value, and it is hardly for "the workman's honour" to give all his slightest sketches to the public at the time when they require above all things to be educated, and made to understand finished art-works as far as possible.

R. ST. J. TYRWHITT.

CATHEDRAL LIFE AND CATHEDRAL REFORM.

GE

Revue des deux Mondes. Dec. 15, 1865. "L'Angleterre et la Vie anglaise.
No. xxviii. La Vie religieuse dans les Villes. La Cité épiscopale,"
&c. Par ALPHONSE ESQUIROS. Paris: Plon.

The Church and the World: Essays on Questions of the Day. By various
Writers. Edited by the Rev. ORBY SHIPLEY, M.A. "Essay IV.
Cathedral Reform." By the Rev. MACKENZIE E. C. WALCOTT, B.D.,
F.R.S.L., Precentor and Prebendary of Chichester Cathedral.
don: Masters.

Lon

ENTLEMEN," said a once celebrated tutor of Trinity, breaking in on a boisterous supper party in the small hours, "I wish you would come out into the court and hear what a noise you are making." The nearest approach to this observation of ourselves. by ourselves is presented by the criticisms of foreigners on our land and manners. There is a peculiar charm in projecting oneself in fancy into the stranger's point of view, and imagining how our familiar objects and customs would strike him, observing them for the first time. Getting into the train at Dover, the thought occurs to us how many there must be among our fellow-passengers who are eagerly looking out for English scenes and English life; and the venerable castle and the opposite casemated heights, and the roadside churches and villas, and the platforms and their habitants, and the very trees and cornfields that flit by the windows, put on a new charm in our fancy. We appear to have achieved the Trinity tutor's challenge, to be standing in the court, and hearing our own voices in the uproarious refrain; we seem at last to have stolen that view of ourselves which one in story vainly endeavoured to catch by rapidly opening his eyes before his mirror.

And there is also another side to the interest which we take in sketches of ourselves by foreigners. If we are a study to the stranger, he is also a study to us. The peculiar freshness and naïveté

of his criticism is given by his own national temperament. His pages are perhaps sown thick with mistakes, but those very mistakes are instructive by being characteristic. What a Frenchman thinks of England not only interests us by a direct process, but also by reflex lights shows us, sometimes better than any direct process of description could do, what an Englishman should think of France.

M. Esquiros is perhaps the best known, as he certainly deserves to be, among those Frenchmen who in our time have undertaken to depict England and the English. His descriptions are characterized by never-tiring research, utilized by a spirit both favourably disposed to the country which he is describing, and at the same time thoroughly loyal to his own national idiosyncracy. His style has the charm of simplicity, and yet is antithetical and rhetorical enough to print its dicta on the memory. His very mistakes, when they occur, which we are bound to say is but seldom, if he be compared with others, derive, from the felicity of his diction, a certain comic power; while, at the same time, the total absence of anything like asperity, or national odium, prevents their giving any offence to the reader. Some of M. Esquiros' descriptions have a solid value, as being the best which we possess. As an example we may quote the chapters on lifeboats, in his little volume on Cornwall, which we believe to be by far the best extant account of one of the most remarkable philanthropic movements in our time.

make a double use of our We shall first have somethe thing described; and

We are about, in the present article, to writer's section on "La Cité épiscopale." thing to say on the description itself, and then we shall take the liberty of making the thoughts which will thus occur, a test for a further treatment of the subject, Cathedral Life in England.

I. It was perhaps natural that M. Esquiros, in his search for "La Cité épiscopale," should perform a pilgrimage to Canterbury. Its past associations, and its present metropolitical dignity, pointed it out as the flower and crown of English cathedral cities. Yet, as far as any connection with the episcopal system is concerned, he could hardly have chosen a place which had less to teach him. Canterbury absolutely knows nothing of the life of an episcopal city. Its archbishop's. country residence is fifty miles off. His visits, considering his metropolitan duties in London, must of necessity be few and far between. Men do not reach the highest dignity in the Church at an age which admits of the wear and tear of a continual season-ticket journey of an hundred and twenty miles. So the result is, that Canterbury sees as much of its archbishop as Ramsgate, or Margate, or Dover, or Maidstone; and, except that it is sometimes made the centre for great diocesan meetings, no more. If it is a "Cité épiscopale" for one week

in any year, it has enjoyed more than its average amount of episcopal presence.

And, strange to say, in the present generation it is yet further deprived of even the archbishop's representatives, the archdeacons. In the bungling legislation of the beginning of the present reign, which attached those offices inseparably to two of the cathedral canonries, no account was taken of the case in which from natural reasons the active duties should be in abeyance. One would have thought that in this event the income of the canonry might have been taxed for the maintenance of a successor in the archdeaconry, while the cathedral dignity, with the remainder of its proceeds, should have solaced the former occupant in his retirement. But no such provision for the well-being of dioceses was ever thought of by the legislature; and the consequence is that probably every succeeding generation will see the performance of the most important offices in many of our dioceses suspended for years together. The consequences as regards church life in the diocese may be imagined; but they do not belong to our present subject.

The causes just mentioned have combined to render Canterbury at this moment perhaps the least episcopal city in England. If M. Esquiros wishes to see episcopal life in a cathedral city, we recommend him to visit the metropolis of the eastern counties, or of Wilts, or of Somerset. Of these, the last would give him the most complete specimen of a perfect cathedral town; the second, we venture to say, would offer him an example of episcopal devotion and energy hardly surpassed in any age or country.

Our author's pilgrimage, in his "aller et retour," seems to have been made via the South Eastern Railway. He would have given a more characteristic description of Kent, had he sacrificed his day ticket, and used both routes. By the other line, besides being on the track of the ancient pilgrims, he would have had a taste of those interminable tracts of forest and coppice which cover the uplands of East Kent, and relieve the bareness of its arable districts. There is hardly a journey in England fuller of domestic and rural beauty, as well as of general interest, than the route to Dover by the rich timbered lawns of Dulwich and Bromley, the watered valleys of the Crays and Farningham, the gradual unfolding, out of wooded hills and radiating glens, of the noble estuary of the Medway, with the ancient keep of Rochester, and the crowded shipping of Chatham. Nor is this interest diminished, or this beauty exhausted, as the track continues, through a land of cherry orchards and hop gardens, piercing the uplands of Blean Forest, and rushing down over the valley of the Stour into Canterbury.

Still, the journey by both lines is absolutely necessary, if it be only

for any complete idea of this last-mentioned valley. The traveller must have traversed the Weald by the South Eastern line, must have accompanied the Stour from its first intersection with the route near Ashford, must have seen Wye nestling under its broad down, and have threaded the hilly gorge from Godmersham to Chilham, before he knows what he ought to know of the dry estuary of fields and marshes, which, first opening out at Chilham, widens at last into the broad expanse of level shore stretching away from Ramsgate to Deal. We might also add, before he learns to appreciate fully the position of that city which, gathered round its great presiding minster, expands into size before him, as he watches it from the windows of his now slackening train.

To that city let us for a while give our attention, and to M. Esquiros' impressions of it.

He introduces his description by a notice of the valley of the Stour, which hardly represents the physical facts. We will let him speak for himself:

"Après deux ou trois heures durant lesquelles je vis repasser comme dans un rêve les canpagnes bien connues du Kent, je me trouvai au milieu d'une riche vallée, la vallée de la Stour,-couronnée à distance par des collines parsemées de bouquets d'arbres, de meules de grains et de vastes prairies dans lesquelles on s'étonne presque aujourd'hui de voir paître quelques vaches. Celles-là du moins avaient échappé à la maladie des bestiaux, la grande plaie qui désole si fort l'Angleterre. De la pente douce des collines descendent de limpides ruisseaux qui arrosent les houblonnières, et qui, après avoir formé plusieurs détours sans oser entrer dans la ville, se réunissent pour la plupart à la Stour, un petit courant au lit tapissé de longues herbes traînantes que le mouvement de l'eau soulève et agite comme la chevelure des naïades. Cette rivière du moins n'hésite point et pénètre bravement dans Canterbury, où elle va se jeter, sous de vieux arbres, contre la roue d'un moulin."

Where he found the limpid brooks, it is difficult to say. The valley is singularly destitute of them. In the neighbourhood of Canterbury there is but one, and that one hardly perceptible from the line by which he travelled. His "limpides ruisseaux qui arrosent les houblonnières" will, we fear, prove to have been the straight dykes which fence off the line from the marshy meadows. His first impressions are worth reproducing:

"Quand on arrive par le chemin de fer, la ville se dessine sur la droite, et la cathédrale profile au-dessus des toits enfumés, dans un ciel clair, ses trois tours obscurcies par une nuée de choucas. Ces anciennes basiliques sont des belles au bois dormant qui assoupissent tout autour d'elles. Aussi l'ancienne cité de Canterbury a-t-elle conservé depuis des siècles l'air d'une ville sommeillant dans ses traditions religieuses et dans des habitudes bien anglaises. Point de fabriques, nulle industrie, à peine un commerce local. Elle vit surtout de l'agriculture et de la récolte du houblon. On y entre par WestGate, sombre masse de pierre à mâchicoulis, flanquée de deux grosses tours