*

eye exceedingly various, pointing no doubt to great differences of chemical composition. Several astronomers, especially Sir J. Herschel, Admiral Smyth, Sestini, and Struve, have devoted much attention to this subject. Admiral Smyth states, as the general results of the surveys made, that of 2540 stars, the yellow stars are about half the total number, and equally distributed; the white stars are one-fifth, in scattered portions; and the orange rather more than one-fifth. The red or the blue are rare from the Pole to 30° of north declination; the blue then become numerous ( = 4) to the equator, especially from right ascension 18 hours to 20 hours, and the red abound from 0° to 30° south declination and right ascension 16 to 20 hours. Sir J. Herschel gives a list of insulated stars of a red colour almost as deep as that of blood, and gives many interesting details concerning particoloured double or multiple stars. He believes, however, that no green or blue star (of any decided hue) has been noticed unassociated with a companion brighter than itself.†

A solitary observation of the spectrum of a coloured star, Herculis, is recorded by Brewster, who, for this purpose, applied a fine prism of rock-salt to Sir James South's great achromatic refractor. He found there was one defective band in the red space, and two or more in the blue space, so that the orange colour of the star arose from the greater defect of the blue than of the red rays.‡

There can be little doubt that the predominance of yellow light in the heavens is due to the wide extension and powerful light-producing quality of sodium, especially as the spectra of Pollux, Capella, Betalgeus, and Procyon prove that this element exists in these stars. In Sirius and Castor we may assume that at least very little sodium exists. We shall be much interested to learn what elements produce the blood-red and the bluecoloured light of certain stars. What if we should be enabled to map out, however imperfectly, the whole of apparent space of the heavens into regions of the metals, regions of the alkalies, regions of the alkaline earths! How astounding if we should prove the existence of globes composed of little else than copper, silver, gold, or platinum, just as there is some reason for thinking that our own system is chiefly composed of iron! We may even discover elsewhere elements unknown in these parts of space. All the sciences have their own peculiar beauties and delights; but there is nothing which raises such intense wonder within us as astronomy in its descriptive and chemical branches.

* Edes Hartwellianæ, p. 291. + Outlines of Astronomy, 4th ed., p. 580. Prof. Swan appears recently to have made observations on this subject. In the Phil. Mag. [4], vol. ii. p. 448, he describes a method of measuring the planetary or stellar spectra by a prism and common sextant.

The wildest fables of the Arabian Nights Entertainments, so far from being foolish in their extravagance, will appear weak and commonplace for the very opposite reason, when we come to read such descriptions of the physical constitution of the sun and stars as may, before very long, be expected. Just at the present time, the scientific world is awaiting the publication, not only of further researches by Kirchhoff and Bunsen, but of the result of the Astronomer Royal's expedition to Spain at the late solar eclipse. Hence it is only common prudence to avoid mere speculation on these subjects.

All discoveries concerning the spectrum have a very important bearing upon molecular philosophy. The definite rays in the spectrum of an element inform us most precisely of the vibrations of which the elementary atoms are capable. A complicated spectrum must indicate that the elementary atom is itself a compound of many simpler atoms; a suspicion of which fact has long been familiar to chemists, from the simple relation holding between the equivalent weights of several series of elements. Already some coincidences may be observed, which are probably more than accidental. Sodium, which has nearly the most simple spectrum possible, is likewise distinguished by the fact that all its salts are soluble, so that its determination by ordinary analysis is difficult. Again, iron, which has an extremely complicated spectrum, has the most extensive family relations with the other elements. At the present time, mathematicians, electricians, opticians, chemists, and even physiologists, are united in one immense confederation, irrespective of nation or of language, for the purpose of solving the great remaining problem of natural science, that of the molecular constitution of matter, and the mutual relations of the physical forces. If we consider the intense concentration of the highest ability and the most unremitting labour upon this subject in every branch, which this century has witnessed for the first time in the history of mankind, we cannot think that the solution is far distant. The second great step in our knowledge of the world will then have been made, comparable in importance and difficulty to the discovery of the differential calculus and the law of universal gravitation, achieved, however, by a whole army of thinkers and workers, not by a single intellect.

ART. II.—THE EASTERN CHURCH: ITS PAST AND ITS FUTURE.

Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church; with an Introduction on the Study of Ecclesiastical History. By Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D., Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University of Oxford, and Canon of Christ Church. London, Murray; Oxford, Parker. 1861.

MARKED sympathy with the Eastern Church and Greek theology is no unprecedented phenomenon in our English Establishment. At an early period of our religious history predilection was expressed by different parties in a very decided way for the Latin or for the Greek Fathers. The first Reformers, and the great Puritan party, which inherited their principles, were strongly imbued with the spirit of Augustine's theology, and looked with comparative disfavour on the milder theories of Basil and Chrysostom. We are told that Bishop Cox, a high Calvinist, was sorely displeased at finding Queen Elizabeth one day intent on certain Greek Fathers. But reaction against Puritanism, and increasing devotion to Greek learning,-which had revived in Europe at the outbreak of the Reformation, and worked along with it as a powerful ingredient in the ensuing form of civilisation,-produced in England, before the close of the sixteenth century, an unequivocal transference of sympathy among the leading Churchmen from Augustine and his followers to the great doctors of the Eastern Church. Anglicanism was at once catholic and anti-papal. Repelled as strongly by the Puritans as by the Romanists, our Church sought relief to her unappeasable yearning in the spirit of a communion which was older than both. This tendency is traceable as early as Jewell.* It assumed a more rigid and authoritative tone, as the controversy deepened, in Andrewes and Laud. Its influence on Jeremy Taylor is unmistakable. The margin of his pages is filled with citations from the Greek preachers of the fourth century. When the Church was overthrown, the same theology, made dearer by contrast with the ascendant Calvinism, comforted the hearts of the dispossessed clergy under the enforced silence of their obscure retreats. The fruits of this were visible at the Restoration. From the first, the Liturgy had been enriched from Greek sources; and in the interval of persecution, the attachment of its adherents had strengthened for the old formularies, which expressed the devotion of the primitive Church before

Apologia Eccles. Anglican, p. 29.

the controversies of the West began. All this led to minute and scarcely perceptible changes of diction (Archbishop Tenison reckoned them no less than six hundred) at the revision of 1662, which have imparted to the Prayer-Book, according to a high authority, a deeper catholic tone than it previously possessed." From that time there has been a strong Greek element latent in the Liturgy and Rubric, which it requires all the ingenuity of an ecclesiastical mind to reconcile with the Augustinian and thoroughly Western tone of the articles.

To any one who has well considered this peculiarity of our Establishment, it will not appear at all surprising that the first fruit of the appointment of Dr. Stanley to the chair of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford, should be a volume of Lectures on the Eastern Church, and that these should avowedly be given to the world as preparatory to a course on the Church of England.† The choice of the subject may be regarded as a fair index of the theological position and catholic spirit of the author. We are glad that he has taken it up. His work is a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the fortunes of Eastern Christendom. Though he has not, so far as we have observed,—at least in the earlier and larger portion of his volume,-brought to light any fact not already known, or even suggested any view which has not been anticipated by previous writers, yet such is the charm of his narrative, that he has contrived to invest an old subject with a new interest. He traverses paths, trodden again and again almost to weariness, with such a ready and genial appreciation of types of character and forms of thought long passed away, and with an eye so quick to catch whatever is picturesque and significant, that he imbues the reader with his own vivid enjoyment of the scene, and makes him feel sure for once that he is dealing, not with abstractions, but with realities. He throws a deep vitality into his subject, by showing how it grows out of principles that are the same through all time, and indicating its contact at innumerable points with questions which are still vehemently agitating the minds of men. In his concluding lectures, the most interesting and original of the series, on the Russian Church, he raises a strange undefinable emotion in the reader's mind by his prophetic outlook into a possible future, which has hitherto engaged but little attention in Western Europe. Like Herodotus, he combines the traveller with the historian; and much of the delightful interest which he has infused into his narrative, results from this circumstance. The manners and customs of the East, its forms of speech, and its peculiar garb, are familiar to him; and the sites of many of the old cities which he has occasion to describe, he has examined with his own eyes. • Remains of Alexander Knox, vol. i. pp. 59, 60. + Preface, p. v.

His descriptions of Constantinople reflected in the Bosphorus, with its innumerable minarets shooting up amidst groves of cypress,—and of his descent by lingering moonlight from the chestnut-wooded slopes of the Bithynian ridge upon the remains of the ancient Nicæa, as it lay beneath him on the shores of the quiet lake, enveloped in the mists of early morning,- are beautiful pictures, which we are almost startled to meet with in the usually monotonous dreariness of ecclesiastical history.

As an introduction to the present volume, Dr. Stanley has reprinted three admirable lectures on the nature and objects of his peculiar study, originally delivered by him on first assuming his professorship. He states in them very clearly and unreservedly his own conception of the duties of his office, of the objects to which the attention of the student should be chiefly directed, and of the various sources from which materials should be drawn to surround the study with the attractions of which it is susceptible. The result of what he very wisely and thoughtfully suggests, amounts to this: that the history of the Church, like every other branch of history, must have a new life imparted to it, by being made more human. It must be brought back, out of the sphere of baseless assumptions and forced inferences, into the world of reality. It is a human record which lies before us, and we must read it with human feelings. It is one chapter-and that not the least interesting and instructive-of the wonderful history of man. To understand it, we must not separate it from the nature of man. We must look at the phenomena which it presents to us truthfully, and not allow the arbitrary constructions of theologians to come between us and the veritable facts of the case. Hence, not dogmas alone and rites, and the controversies which have sprung out of them, are the exclusive subjects of this study,-for these form, as it were, the mere osteology of the living system,-but, as Dr. Stanley has well argued, equally, and perhaps even more, whatever in the contemporaneous condition of the world has indirectly affected the belief and practice of Christians, or been affected by them,-the products of art, local traditions, and the usages of sects, every vestige of former times or memorial of distant lands, even the peculiarities of race and the influences of climate,-each contributing some slight revival of human flesh and blood, which helps to clothe the skeleton, and set the past in all the glow of life and action before us. Viewed in this broader light, the moss-grown tombs of the old Covenanters and the faded frescoes of the catacombs are entitled to a place among the authentic monuments of Christian history, by the side of the decisions of councils and the ponderous tomes of Fathers and Schoolmen. Dr. Stanley has thrown himself entirely into this aspect of the subject. He has done