6

The political status of the House of Peers is worthy of consideration. At the time of Emerson's visit, the list numbered five hundred and seventy. But he says, "On ordinary days there were only twenty or thirty in attendance. Where are the others?' I asked. At home on their estates, devoured with ennui, or in the Alps, or up the Rhine, in the Harz Mountains, or in Egypt, or in India, on the Ghauts.' 'But with such interests at stake, how can these men afford to neglect them?' 'Oh,' replied my friend, 'why should they work for themselves, when every man in England works for them, and will suffer before they come to harm." Still these six hundred peers, not one in ten of whom has reached that place except by reason that his father before him was a peer, have, in theory at least, fully as much weight in the Government as all the rest of Great Britain. Upon this point Emerson says:

THE STATUS OF THE PEERS.

"The existence of the House of Peers as a branch of the Government entitles them to fill half the Cabinet; and their weight of property and station give them a virtual nomination of the other half; whilst they have their share in the subordinate offices as a school of training. This monopoly of political power has given them their intellectual and social eminence in Europe. A few law-lords and a few political lords take the brunt of public business. In the army the nobility fill a large part of the high commissions, and give to these a tone of

expense and splendor, and also of exclusiveness. They have borne their full share of danger and duty in the service. For the rest, the nobility have the lead in matters of state and expense; in questions of taste, in social usages, in convivial and domestic hospitalities. In general, all that is required of them is to sit securely, to preside at public meetings, to countenance public charities, and to give the example of that decorum so dear to the British heart."

Of the religion of England, as crystallized in the rites of the Established Church, Emerson has many things to say, and some not altogether laudatory. To his view it is not the embodiment of a system of faith. "English life," he says, "does not grow out of the Athanasian Creed, or the Articles, or the Eucharist. . . In the barbarous days of a nation some cultus is formed or imported altars are built, tithes are paid, priests ordained. The education and expenditure of the country takes that direction; and when wealth, refinement, great men, and ties to the world supervene, its prudent men say, 'Why fight against fate, or lift those absurdities which are now mountains? Better find some niche or crevice in this mountain of stone which religious ages have quarried and carved wherein to bestow yourself, than attempt anything ridiculously and dangerously above your strength, like removing it."" Still the Church of England has in it a mighty power, as he acknowledges:

DEVELOPMENT OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH,

"The Catholic Church, thrown on this serious, toiling people, has made in fourteen centuries a massive system, close-fitted to the manners and genius of the country, at once domestical and stately. In the long time it has blended with everything in heaven above and the earth beneath. It moves through a zodiac of feasts and fasts; names every day of the year, every town and market and headland and monument; and has coupled itself with the almanac, that no court can be held, no field plowed, no horse shod, without some leave from the Church. All maxims of prudence or shop or farm are fixed and dated from the Church. Hence its strength in the agriculturial dstricts. The distribution of lands into parishes enforces a church sanction to every civil privilege; and the gradation of the clergy-prelates for the rich, and curates for the poor-with the fact that a classical education has been secured to the clergymen, makes them, as Wordsworth says, 'the link that unites the sequestered peasantry with the intellectual advancement of the age." "

THE OLD CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE.

"The English Church has many certificates to show of humble, effective service in humanizing the people, in cheering and refining men, feeding, healing, and educating. It has the seal of martyrs and confessors; the noblest book; a sublime architecture; a ritual marked by the same secular merits-nothing cheap or purchasable. From the slow-grown Church important reactions proceed; much for culture, much for giving a direction to the nation's affection and will to-day. The carved and pictured chapel-its entire surface animated with image

and emblem-made the parish church a sort of book and Bible to the people's eye.

"Then, when the Saxon instinct had secured a service in the vernacular tongue, it was the tutor and university of the people. The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization; for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved. Here in England every day a chapter of Genesis, and a leader in the 'Times.' This is binding the old and new to some purpose."

THE CHURCH AND LOYALTY.

"From his infancy every Englishman is accustomed to hear daily prayers for the Queen, for the royal family, and the Parliament, by name; and the life-long consecration of these personages can not be without influence on his opinions. The universities, also, are parcel of the ecclesiastical system, and their first design is to form the clergy. Thus the clergy for a thousand years

have been the scholars of the nation.

"The national temperament deeply enjoys the unbroken order and tradition of its Church; the liturgy, ceremony, architecture; the sober grace, the good company, the connection with the throne, and with history, which adorn it. And while it thus endears itself to men with more taste than activity, the stability of the English nation is passionately enlisted to its support, from its inextricable connection with the cause of public order, with politics, and with the funds."

ENGLISH AGES OF FAITH.

"Good churches are not built by bad men; at least. there must be probity and enthusiasm somewhere in society. These minsters were neither built nor filled by

atheists. No church has had more learned, industrious, or devoted men; plenty of clerks and bishops,' as Fuller says, 'who, out of their gowns, would turn their backs on no man.' Their architecture still glows with faith in immortality. Heats and genial periods arrive in history; or, shall we say? plenitudes of divine presence, by which high tides are caused in the human spirit, and great virtues and talents appear, as in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and again in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the nation was full of genius and piety."

In Emerson's judgment those pious ages are no more; and the Anglican Church of the present is not what it was:

THE PRESENT ANGLICAN CHURCH.

"But the age of the Wycliffes, Cobhams, Arundels, Beckets; of the Latimers, Mores, Cranmers; of the Taylors, Leightons, Herberts; of the Sherlocks and Butlers, is gone. Silent revolutions in opinion have made it impossible that men like these should return or find a place in their once sacred stalls. The spirit which once dwelt in this Church has glided away to animate other activities; and they who come to the old shrines find apes and players rustling the old garments."

A CHURCH OF MANNERS.

"The religion of England is part of good-breeding. When you see on the Continent the well-dressed Englishman come into his ambassador's chapel, and put his face, for silent prayer, into his smooth-brushed hat, one can not help feeling how much of national pride prays