out an unimpeachable title both legal and moral. The legal title of the Parliament of Ontario to sit after February 2, can hardly be said to have been unimpeachable: there is an objection which evidently makes some impression on legal minds; and it is at least conceivable that a court not anxious to postpone the Ontario elections, might refuse to put upon any statute, or jumble of statutes, the construction for which the Government contend, and which would leave the Province possibly for six or eight months without any legislative power or any means of calling one into existence, whatever the emergency might be; since pending the return to the Algoma writ, there would be a Parliament still in course of election, and capable neither of sitting nor of being dissolved. But be the legal title what it may, it is certain that the moral title is utterly wanting. The period for which the members of the Parliament of Ontario were entrusted by the people with the legislative power has unquestionably expired; and their present exercise of the power is redeemed from the character of barefaced usurpation only by a technical quirk. A dissolution and an immediate election would have set all right and cleared legislation from the cloud which now rests upon it.

By the election of a successor to the Bishop of Toronto attention is again called to the division of parties. in the Church of England. The fact is, there are not merely two parties but two churches under one legal roof. Between the pronounced High Churchman and the pronounced Evangelicals there is, no doubt, a large floating element of undecided and perhaps uninstructed opinion. But the pronounced High Churchman differs from the pronounced Evangelical not on any secondary point or on any mere question of degree, but vitally and fundamentally, as vitally and as fundamentally as it is possible

for one religious man to differ from another. They are diametrically opposed to each other in opinion as to the very nature and source of spiritual life. The system of the High Churchman is sacramental and sacerdotal; he believes that only through priests and the sacraments administered by priests can souls be saved. the system of the Low Churchman is anti-sacramental and anti-sacerdotal; he believes that by reliance on sacraments and priests as the means of salvation souls will be destroyed. It must be admitted that both parties have an historical and documentary status in the Church of England. Those who reorganized that Church in the reign of Elizabeth, when its character was finally stamped, were politicians little concerned about religious truth, as the chief of them had shown by quietly conforming to Roman Catholi cism under Mary, while peasants and mechanics were going to the stake for the Protestant cause. Their real objects in forming their ecclesiastical polity were to preserve the unity of the nation, and, above all, the supremacy of the Crown. They built into the reconstructed edifice, with little regard for the consistency of its parts, fragments taken from the Church of Rome on one side and from the Church of Geneva on the other; unity they sought to preserve, not by commending their ritual and doctrines to the convictions of all the people, but by legal coercion exercised through ecclesiastical courts. The discordant elements thus combined without being blended have not failed to give birth each to its natural offspring at successive periods in in the history of the Church. If there has ever been an intermission of this strife, it has been at epochs, such as the middle of the last century, when the whole Church was torpid and spiritual life was in abeyance. In the mother country, the disruptive forces are restrained by the great mass of endow

ments and the legal system of the Establishment; but in a country where there is no connection between the Church and the State, the divergencies of opinion have free play. That either party will succeed in eliminating the other is hardly to be ex

pected; the clergy, as a body, will always lean to sacerdotalism, while the laity, as a body, will always be anti-sacerdotal. Practically, the choice appears to lie between everlasting combat and peaceful separation.

THINK that a stranger, particularly if he be an Englishman, can hardly fail to be struck, on his first introduction to Canadian society, by the want of taste displayed by our ladies, in the arrangement of their drawing-rooms. One misses the homelike comfort, combined with an indescribable air of refinement and gentle culture, which make an English drawing-room, above that of any other nation, a feature of comfort and elegance. This result may be arrived at independently of costliness of ornamentation or richness of furniture. Such a room, intended not for show, but for daily use, is remembered after years of absence, with a touch of sentiment somewhat akin to our tender recollection of the well-loved faces of its occupants. How is it that our ladies fail to impart this subtle charm to their rooms? The secret, I think, lies mainly in one defect, which may be briefly defined as a want of simplicity. This feature is particularly noticeable in the drawing-rooms of people of moderate means, although it is by no means altogether absent even from the reception rooms of the wealthy. I shall not, however, attempt to criticise the latter, but will confine my remarks to the former, that is to say the rooms of those who have no wealth to expend in handsome decoration, and must,

therefore, fall back on their own taste and ingenuity. There is in such rooms a crowding of ornament, generally out of keeping with the room and its furniture, and a total absence not only of artistic aptness and unity of design, but of any attempt even at harmonious arrangement; and we must in sorrow confess that these characteristics are too often conspicuous in the dress of the ladies, as well as in the arrangement of their drawing-rooms. It must be admitted that Torontonians of moderate means have an almost insuperable difficulty to contend with in the design of the houses. The prevailing custom of having the drawingroom and dining-room in one may have its advantages in the way of economy of space and fuel, but it is surely not defensible on any other grounds. Nothing could be more fatal to any harmony of effect; the chief characteristics of a dining-room should be subdued simplicity of furni ture, and absence of superfluous ornament; that of a drawing-room, cheerfulness, tastefulness and comfort-and how can such opposite qualities harmonize By being placed in juxtaposition the effect of the one and the other is lost. The parlour,' be it ever so pretty and graceful, is marred by its incongruous extension, by the big, square table and the stiff chairs,

by the ugly expanse of painted folding-doors, and by the association of clattering plates and steaming dishes. The dining-room, on the other hand, loses all its inherent characteristics, and becomes a nondescript room. A worse result is attained, however, when an attempt is being made to reconcile the irreconcilable, the diningroom is converted into an ugly halfand-half back-drawing-room: light little ornaments are scattered over the chimney-piece, fancy chairs are placed about the room, and at the further end is a sideboard laden with a med

ley of plate, painful to behold. Why people should fish out every bit of plated ware which the house can boast of, from a sprawling epergne, owned by the grandfather, to little trumpery articles, which are neither useful nor ornamental, and spread them all out on a little square sideboard, is more than I can understand. They certainly never use one half the things, and no room is improved by having one corner of it got up like a shop-window. This combination of rooms, however, is not the whole cause of the failure of picturesque effect, and, moreover, there is a decided desire to abandon this plan manifested by those who build their own houses. It must be remembered, however, that I am speaking altogether of those whose income obliges them to rent small houses proportionate to their means, and who perhaps think that they are unjustly upbraided for what they have no money to remedy. What I wish particularly to point out is, that it is not extravagance of outlay which necessarily makes a room charming, but the taste of those who arrange it. In one respect, particularly, is the absence of taste and artistic feeling especially flagrant- I refer to the pictures which are used to decorate the walls. Anything more abominable than the medley of pictures which the majority of people take pleasure in hanging in their rooms, one can hardly conceive. Chromos, lithographs, coloured photo

graphs, prints, are all put up, pell mell, and if a little picture with some pretensions to artistic merit finds its way into the room, it is shabbily framed and ignominiously hung in some corner under a gaudy chromo in a ponderous gilt frame. Now, there is no excuse whatever for this. People will spend twenty-five or thirty dollars on some daub, when a charming water-colour drawing, by one of the many clever Canadian artists, can be bought for half the money. It is a perfect disgrace to the country that paintings of real merit should fetch the low prices they do. At the sale, the other day, of the Ontario Society of Artists, it was posi tively distressing to see pictures, many of them very clever and conscientiously painted, sold for a mere song. I don't know how artists have the cour age to work at all, when the result of their labour is so little appreciated. It is probably only a want of education in artistic matters which causes such a state of affairs, but if people would only consult those who are better judges than themselves, and buy the works of really good artists, the improvement in taste would come of itself, and a very marked difference would soon be perceptible in the general appearance of sitting-rooms.

It is not to be expected that every one can have an eye for colour, or be capable of devising the most harmo nious and artistic combination of the means at their disposal, but an attempt can always be made. For instance, a piece of scarlet needlework need not be placed on a crimson sofa, a gaudy new chair need not be introduced among old and faded furniture; and much may be done by the disposal of carefully chosen bits of colour, in the way of flowers, china and other ornaments. I have seen a very small, simply furnished drawing-room, metamorphosed by the tasteful arrangement of a few pieces of old china; and another brightened and sweetened by some carefully tended plants or ferns. Such simple decorations are within

himself was much puzzled at this because, as he wrote to the Hon. Edward Everett, the book is quite insular in spirit. There is nothing cosmopolitan about it. I can well understand that it might have an interest for a few highly educated men in your country (the United States); but I do not at all understand how it should be acceptable to the body of a people who have no king, no lords, no Established Church, no Tories, nay (I might say) no Whigs, in the English sense of the word. The dispensing power, the ecclesiastical supremacy, the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience, must all, I should have thought, seemed strange, unmeaning things to the vast majority of the inhabitants of Boston and Philadelphia. Indeed, so very English is my book, that some Scotch critics, who have praised me far beyond my deserts, have yet complained that I have said so much of the crotchets of the Anglican High Churchmen-crotchets which scarcely any Scotchman seems able to comprehend.' Readers of the able Whig writer, however, and admirers of his terse and epigrammatic periods have no difficulty in finding reasons why this famous English history should have found such warm acceptance with everybody.

The

passionate skill of Macaulay, his glowing, flowing diction, his admirable portraits, his artistic pictures, his delightful colouring, and the splendid learning and analysis of character and motive which enrich every page of his work, readily enough tell the story. These statistics will interest many. In 1858, 12,024 copies of a single volume of the history were put into circulation, and 22,925 copies in 1864. During the nine years ending with the 25th of June, 1857, 30,478 copies of the first volume were sold, and during the same period ending June, 1866, the number reached 50,783, while in June, 1875, Macaulay's English publishers, the Messrs. Longmans, reported a sale of 52,392. In America its sale

was only exceeded by the Bible and one or two school books, universal in demand.

The present edition of this fine work is issued from new plates, well printed on good paper and bound substantially in excellent library style. It is in short the edition of Macaulay. No one should wish for any better. A steel portrait of the historian forms the frontispiece to the first volume.

Mr. Holly has done excellent service to housebuilders and architects and lovers of tasteful residences by the timely publication of some exceedingly useful thoughts on Modern Dwellings in Town and Country. As its name implies or its title suggests, his work is an intelligent discussion on the subject of comfortable homes and their surroundings. The work while specially designed to suit American wants and climate, will be found quite applicable to the requirements of the Canadian housebuilder. Over one hundred original designs, comprising neat cottages, charming villas and stately mansions, together with an interesting treatise, equally useful, on furniture and decorations accompany the book. Mr. Holly has in nowise exhausted his subject, but he has succeeded in presenting a large number of capital hints and suggestions which cannot fail in their object of affording much practical assistance to the builder. The author has treated his topic in a sensible and practical way. He has aimed at simplicity and beauty rather than extravagance and useless ornamentation. His aim has been to lessen the expenditure as much as possible, and while his figures may be taken only as a partial guide, for the cost of housebuilding fluctuates considerably, they will serve fairly well their purpose. More than one-half of

*Modern Dwellings in Town and Country, by H. Hudson Holly. New York: Harper & Brothers. Toronto: Hart & Rawlinson.