dry a night; and having eaten everything we could lay hands on, were set quietly down to chess, and coffee brewed in Geysir water; when suddenly it seemed as if beneath our very feet a quantity of subterraneous cannon were going off; the whole earth shook, and Sigurdr, starting to his feet, upset the chessboard (I was just beginning to get the best of the game), and flung off full speed toward the great basin. By the time we reached its brim, however, the noise had ceased, and all we could see was a slight movement in the centre, as if an angel had passed by and troubled the water. Irritated at this false alarm, we determined to revenge ourselves by going and tormenting the strokr. Strokr-or the churn-you must know, is an unfortunate Geysir, with so little command over his temper and his stomach, that you can get a rise out of him whenever you like. All that is necessary is to collect a quantity of sods, and throw them down his funnel. As he has no basin to protect him from these liberties, you can approach to the very edge of the pipe, about five feet in diameter, and look down at the boiling water which is perpetually seething at the bottom. In a few minutes the dose of turf you have just administered begins to disagree with him; he works himself up into an awful passion; tormented by the qualms of incipient sickness, he groans and hisses, and boils up, and spits at you with malicious vehemence, until at last, with a roar of mingled pain and rage, he throws up into the air a column of water forty feet high, which carries with it all the sods that have been chucked in, and scatters them scalded and half-digested at your feet.

So irritated has the poor thing's stomach become by the discipline it has undergone, that even long after all foreign matter has been thrown off, it goes on retching and sputtering, until at last nature is exhausted, when, sobbing and sighing to itself, it sinks back into the bottom of its den.

STOCKS AND SHARES.

(1) What must I pay for £3,750 in the 3 per cent. consols, if I buy at 98?

(2) How much stock at 76 can I purchase for £5,000?

(3) How many shares of £100 in the New Zealand Bank can be purchased for £10,000, when they are at a premium of £15? (4) What sum, invested in the 3 per cents. at 85, will produce an income of £150 per annum?

(5) If I invest £8,000 in the following manner, viz. one-half in the 3 per cents. at 901, two-fifths in the 3 per cents. at 87, and the remainder in 4 per cents. at 95, what income shall I annually derive from my investments?

(6) What will be the brokerage on the above investments at per cent. on the amount of stock purchased?

WOLSEY AND THE CLERGY IMMEDIATELY BEFORE THE REFORMATION.

(From the History of England,' by J. A. Froude, M.A.)

in-cip'-i-ent, beginning

a-bey'-ance, not in possession or active

exercise

le'-gate, a Pope's ambassador

trans-i'-tion, change from one place or state to another

mor-tu-a-ry, a burialplace, a gift left to the church

fa-vor-em hæ-ret'-i-ca pra'-vi-ta-tis (Lat.), the favour of an heretical depravity

stat'-ute of pro-vi'-sors, an act passed in

the reign of Edward III. rendering it penal to receive appointments to benefices from the Court of Rome præ-mu-ni'-re, an act passed in the reign of Richard II. (1393), making it unlawful for anyone to bring into the kingdom bulls, excommunications, &c., from the Court of Rome. The offence against which this was directed was called a 'præmunire.'

po-lem'-ic, controversial, relating to a discussion

[The celebrated Cardinal Wolsey, son of an Ipswich butcher, who had risen to the highest offices in Church and State, attempted a reform in discipline without touching on doctrine or the jurisdiction of the Pope. He was eventually driven from power, in consequence of the refusal of the latter to grant the divorce between Henry VIII. and Catharine of Arragon. The King then declared the Church of England independent of that of Rome: and thus was commenced the Reformation, which was not completed, however, until the succeeding reign of Edward VI.]

HENRY VII. sat too insecurely on his throne to venture on a resolute reform,* even if his feelings had inclined him towards it, which they did not. Morton durst not resolutely grapple with the evil. He rebuked and remonstrated; but punishment would have caused a public scandal. He would not invite the inspection of the laity into a disease which, without their assistance, he had not the strength to encounter; and his incipient reformation died away ineffectually in words. The Church, to outward appearance, stood more securely than ever. The obnoxious statutes of the Plantaganets were in abeyance-their very existence, as it seemed, was forgotten; and Thomas à Becket never desired more absolute independence for the ecclesiastical order than Archbishop Warham found established when he succeeded to the primacy. He, too, ventured to repeat the experiment of his predecessor. In 1511 he attempted a second visitation of the monasteries, and again exhorted a reform; but his efforts were even slighter than Morton's, and in their results equally without fruit. The maintenance of his order in its political supremacy was of greater moment to him than its moral purity: a decent veil was cast over the clerical infirmities, and their vices were forgotten as soon as they ceased to be proclaimed. Henry VIII., a mere boy on his accession, was borne away with the prevailing stream; and, trained from

* An Act had been passed by the first Parliament of Henry VII. for the punishment of priests, clerks, and religious men' who should be guilty of crimes; and Cardinal Morton procured authority from the Pope to visit the religious houses, the abominations of which had become notorious,' 1486.

his childhood by theologians, he entered upon his reign saturated with theological prepossessions. The intensity of his nature recognising no half-measures, he was prepared to make them the law of his life; and so zealous was he, that it seemed as if the Church had found in him a new Alfred or Charlemagne. Unfortunately for the Church, institutions may be restored in theory, but theory, be it never so perfect, will not give them back their life; and Henry discovered, at length, that the Church of the sixteenth century as little resembled the Church of the eleventh, as Leo X. resembled Hildebrand, or Warham resembled St. Anselm.

If, however, there were no longer saints among the clergy, there could still arise among them a remarkable man; and in Cardinal Wolsey the king found an adviser who was able to retain him longer than would otherwise have been possible in the course which he had entered upon; who, holding a middle place between an English statesman and a Catholic of the old order, was essentially a transition minister; and who was qualified, above all men then living, by a combination of talent, honesty, and arrogance, to open questions which could not again be closed when they had escaped the grasp of their originator. Under Wolsey's influence, Henry made war with Louis of France in the Pope's quarrel, entered the polemic lists with Luther, and persecuted the English Protestants. But Wolsey could not blind himself to the true condition of the Church. He was too wise to be deceived with outward prosperity; he knew well that there lay before it, in Europe and at home, the alternative of ruin and amendment; and therefore he familiarised Henry with the sense that a reformation was inevitable; and dreaming that it could be effected from within, by the Church itself inspired with a wiser spirit, he himself fell the first victim of a convulsion which he had assisted to create, and which he attempted too late to stay.

His intended measures were approaching maturity, when all Europe was startled by the news that Rome had been stormed by the Imperial army, -that the Pope was imprisoned, the churches pillaged, the cardinals insulted, and all-holiest things polluted and profaned. A spectator, judging only by outward symptoms, would have seen at that strange crisis in Charles V. the worst patron of heresy, and the most dangerous enemy of the Holy See; while the indignation with which the news of these outrages was received at the English Court would have taught him to look upon Henry as the one sovereign in Europe on whom that see might calculate most surely for support in its hour of danger. If he could have pierced below the surface, he would have found that the Pope's best friend was the prince who held him prisoner; that Henry was but doubtfully acquiescing in the policy of an unpopular mi

nister; and that the English nation would have looked on with stoical resignation if Pope and Papacy had been wrecked together. They were not inclined to heresy; but the ecclesiastical system was not the Catholic faith; and this system, ruined by prosperity, was fast pressing its excesses to the extreme limit beyond which it could not be endured. Wolsey talked of reformation, but delayed its coming; and in the meantime the persons to be reformed showed no fear that it would come at all. The monasteries grew worse and worse. The people were taught only what they could teach themselves. The consistory courts became more oppressive. Pluralities multiplied, and non-residence and profligacy. Favoured parish clergy held as many as eight benefices. Bishops accumulated sees, and, unable to attend to all, attended to none. Wolsey himself, the church-reformer (so little did he really know what a reformation meant), was at once Archbishop of York, Bishop of Winchester, of Bath, and of Durham, and Abbot of St. Albans. In Latimer's opinion, even twenty years later, and after no little reform in such matters, there was but one bishop in all England for ever at his work and ever in his diocese. I would ask a strange question,' he said, in an audacious sermon at St. Paul's Cross,' Who is the most diligent bishop and prelate in all England, that passeth all the rest in doing of his office? I can tell, for I know who it is; I know him well. But now I think I see you listening and hearkening that I should name him. There is one that passeth all the others, and is the most diligent prelate and preacher in all England. And will ye know who it is? I will tell you. It is the devil! Among all the pack of them that have cure, the devil shall go for my money, for he applieth his business. Therefore, ye unpreaching prelates, learn of the devil to be diligent in your office. If ye will not learn of God, for shame learn of the devil!'

Under such circumstances, we need not be surprised to find the clergy sunk low in the respect of the English people. Sternly intolerant of each other's faults, the laity were not likely to be indulgent to the vices of men who ought to have set an example of purity; and from time to time, during the first quarter of the century, there were explosions of temper which might have served as a warning, if any sense or judgment had been left to profit by it.

In 1514 a London merchant was committed to the Lollard's Tower for refusing to submit to an unjust exaction of mortuary,* and a few days after was found dead in his cell. An inquest was held upon the body, when a verdict of wilful murder was returned against the Chancellor of the Bishop of

* A peculiarly hateful form of clerical impost, the priests claiming the last dress worn in life by persons brought to them for burial.

* N

London; and so intense was the feeling of the city, that the Bishop applied to Wolsey for a special jury to be chosen on the trial: for assured I am,' he said, 'that if my chancellor be tried by any twelve men in London, they may be so maliciously set in favorem hæretice pravitatis, that they will cast and condemn any clerk, though he were as innocent as Abel.'

Symptoms such as these boded ill for a self-reform of the Church, and it was further imperilled by the difficulty which it is not easy to believe that Wolsey had forgotten. No measures would be of efficacy which spared the religious houses, and they would be equally useless unless the bishops, as well as the inferior clergy, were comprehended in the scheme of amendment. But neither with monks nor bishops could Wolsey interfere except by a permission from the Pope, and the laws were unrepealed which forbade English subjects, under the severest penalties, to accept or exercise within the realm an authority which they had received from the Holy See. Morton had gone beyond the limits of the Statute of Provisors in receiving powers from Pope Innocent to visit the monasteries: but Morton had stopped short with inquiry and admonition. Wolsey, who was in earnest with the work, had desired and obtained a full commission as legate, but he could only make use of it at his peril. He was exposing, not himself only, but all persons, lay and clerical, who might recognise his legacy * to a præmunire; and he knew well that Henry's connivance or even expressed permission could not avail him if his conduct was challenged. He could not venture to appeal to parliament. Parliament was the last authority whose jurisdiction a churchman would acknowledge in the concerns of the clergy; and his projects must sooner or later have sunk, like those of his two predecessors, under its own internal difficulties, even if the accident had not arisen which brought the dispute to a special issue in its most vital point, and which, fostered by Wolsey for his own purposes, precipitated his ruin.

MISCELLANEOUS EXERCISES ON PERCENTAGE.

(1) If a man buys goods for £3200 and sells them for £5000, what does he gain per cent. ?

(2) If I purchase silk at 5s. per yard and sell it at a profit of 20 per cent., what quantity must I dispose of to gain £100 ?

(3) A collector who receives 23 per cent. commission earns £300 per annum; how much does he collect?

(4) By selling 1000 yards of cloth a draper gains £15 12s. 6d. ; his profits being 12 per cent., what was the prime cost of the cloth per yard?

(5) If a tradesman's average profits are 20 per cent. on his outlay, what is his net income when his returns are £4560 per annum?

*The office of a Legate.

↑ The King's divorce.