not wholly lost their English character. He had the arched eyebrow, and the delicately cut cheek, and prominent eye of the beautiful Plantagenet face; a long, brown, curling beard flowed down upon his chest, which it almost covered; the mouth was weak and slightly open; the lips were full and pouting; the expression difficult to read." The Lords and Commons had agreed, with what Mr. Froude calls "dangerous unanimity," to make their formal submission to Rome:

"And now St. Andrew's Day was come; a day, as was then hoped, which would be remembered with awe and gratitude through all ages of English history. Being the festival of the institution of the Order of the Golden Fleece, high mass was sung in the morning in Westminster Abbey; Philip, Alva, and Ruy Gomez attended in their robes, with six hundred Spanish cavaliers. The Knights of the Garter were present in gorgeous costume, and nave and transept were thronged with the blended chivalry of England and Castile. It was two o'clock before the service was concluded. Philip returned to the palace to dinner, and the brief November afternoon was drawing in when the parliament reassembled at the palace. At the upper end of the great hall a square platform had now been raised several steps above the floor; on which three chairs were placed as before; two under a canopy of cloth-of-gold, for the king and queen, a third on the right, removed a little distance from them, for the legate. Below the platform benches were placed longitudinally towards either wall. The bishops sat on the side of the legate, the lay peers opposite them on the left. The Commons sat on rows of cross benches in front, and beyond them were the miscellaneous crowd of spectators, sitting or standing as they could find room. The cardinal, who had passed the morning at Lambeth, was conducted across the water in a state barge by Lord Arundel and six other peers. The king received him at the gate, and, leaving his suite in the care of the Duke of Alva, who was instructed to find them places, he accompanied Philip into the room adjoining the hall, where Mary, whose situation was supposed to prevent her from unnecessary exertion, was waiting for them. The royal procession was formed. Arundel and the Lords passed in to their places. The king and queen, with Pole in his legate's robes, ascended the steps of the platform, and took their seats.

When the stir which had been caused by their entrance was over, Gardiner mounted a tribune; and in the now fast-waning light he bowed to the king and queen, and declared the resolution at which the Houses had arrived. Then turning to the Lords and Commons, he asked if they continued in the same mind. Four hundred voices answered, We do.' Will you then,' he said, 'that I proceed in your names to supplicate for our absolution, that we may be received again into the body of the holy Catholic Church, under the Pope, the supreme head thereof?' Again the voices assented. The Chancellor drew a scroll from under his robe, ascended the platform, and presented it unfolded on his knee to the queen. The queen looked through it,

gave it to Philip, who looked through it also, and returned it. The Chancellor then rose and read aloud as follows:

'We, the Lords spiritual and temporal, and the Commons of the present Parliament assembled, representing the whole body of the realm of England, and dominions of the same, in our own names particularly, and also of the said body universally, in this our supplication directed to your Majesties-with most humble suit that it may by your gracious intercession and means be exhibited to the most reverend father in God the Lord Cardinal Pole, legate, sent specially hither from our most holy father Pope Julius the Third and the See Apostolic of Rome-do declare ourselves very sorry and repentant for the schism and disobedience committed in this realm and dominions of the same against the said See Apostolic, either by making, agreeing, or executing any laws, ordinances, or commandments against the supremacy of the said See, or otherwise doing or speaking what might impugn the same; offering ourselves, and promising by this our supplication that, for a token and knowledge of our said repentance, we be, and shall be always, ready, under and with the authority of your Majesties, to do that which shall be in us for the abrogation and repealing of the said laws and ordinances in this present parliament, as well for ourselves as for the whole body whom we represent. Whereupon we most humbly beseech your Majesties, as persons undefiled in the offences of this body towards the Holy See-which nevertheless God by his providence hath made subject to your Majesties-so to set forth this our most humble suit that we may obtain from the See Apostolic, by the said most reverend father, as well particularly as universally, absolution, release, and discharge from all danger of such censures and sentences as by the laws of the Church we be fallen in; and that we may, as children repentant, be received into the bosom and unity of Christ's Church; so as this noble realm, with all the members thereof, may, in unity and perfect obedience to the See Apostolic and Pope for the time being, serve God and your Majesties, to the furtherance and advancement of his honour and glory.'

Having completed the reading, the chancellor again presented the petition. The king and queen went through the forms of intercession, and a secretary read aloud, first, the legate's original commission, and, next, the all-important extended form of it.

Pole's share of the ceremony was now to begin.

He first spoke a few words from his seat. Much indeed,' he said, 'the English nation had to thank the Almighty for recalling them to his fold. Once again God had given a token of his special favour to the realm; for as this nation, in the time of the Primitive Church, was the first to be called out of the darkness of heathenism, so now they were the first to whom God had given grace to repent of their schism; and if their repentance was sincere, how would the angels, who rejoice at the conversion of a single sinner, triumph at the recovery of a great and noble people.'

He moved to rise; Mary and Philip, seeing that the crisis was approaching, fell on their knees, and the assembly dropped at their

example; while, in dead silence, across the dimly-lighted hall came the low, awful words of the absolution.

'Our Lord Jesus Christ, which with his most precious blood hath redeemed us and washed us from all our sins and iniquities, that he might purchase unto himself a glorious spouse without spot or wrinkle, whom the Father hath appointed head over all his Church,―he by his mercy absolves you, and we, by apostolic authority given unto us by the most holy Lord Pope Julius the Third, his vicegerent on earth, do absolve and deliver you, and every of you, with this whole realm and the dominions thereof, from all heresy and schism, and from all and every judgment, censure, and pain for that cause incurred; and we do restore you again into the unity of our Mother the holy Church, in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.'

Amidst the hushed breathing every tone was audible, and at the pauses were heard the smothered sobs of the queen. Amen, amen,' rose in answer from many voices. Some were really affected; some were caught for the moment with a contagion which it was hard to resist; some threw themselves weeping in each other's arms. King, queen, and parliament, rising from their knees, went immediatelythe legate leading-into the chapel of the palace, where the choir, with the rolling organ, sang Te Deum; and Pole closed the scene with a benediction from the altar."

From the apostles of the triumphant Roman Church we must turn again to the fallen Church of Henry and Edward, degraded now to the condition of a seditious heresy. As we have said, the Reformation appeared for the first time in its true and pure colour in the fiery trials of Smithfield. We had now the reality of Protestantism face to face in its strength with undisguised Romanism. No royal patronage, no baneful worldly prosperity, lowered the character and obscured the merits of the reformed faith. Latimer, Ridley, and even Cranmer stood forward in a strength of dignified courage which man alone could. not give. Of Cranmer we have hinted our less favourable appreciation than that given by Mr. Froude. There is something, to our apprehension, which is more than amiable sensitiveness in the manner in which on several occasions he shrank from the call of duty. There is too much of the flattery of a courtier in his subserviency to the wishes of Henry; there is too much of personal spite in his treatment of Gardiner during the reign of Edward; there is something too painfully ignominious in the circumstances of his recantation-however nobly itself recanted-under the terrors of Mary's inquisitors. But the last scenes of his life hinder us from passing any severer judgment on Cranmer than that he, perhaps more than any other man, suffered morally from being involved in the confused and tangled meshes of that royal Middle-Scheme, from the snares of which two successive religious revolutions rescued the English

national character, and practically established the fact that in the two honest extremes, rather than in the dishonest via media, are to be recognised the true elements of England's greatness.

To our previous knowledge of the royal victim of the Catholic triumph under Mary," the Twelfth-day queen," the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey, Mr. Froude adds little beyond his sanction to the general meed of enthusiastic praise bestowed on her noble disposition and remarkable attainments in learning. But the shrinking reluctance which she displayed in accepting, and the thankful indifference with which she gave up her phantom title, might be quite as much indications of a mind unequal to the crisis, as of a high-minded superiority to selfish ambition. The manner, however, in which she succeeded in nerving her unstable though well-meaning father to undergo his fate with dignity, and without flinching from his religious convictions, is a clear indication, along with her own firm though gentle bearing, of something above the ordinary virtues of a devoted martyr. For her death the imperial ambassador seems to be primarily responsible; but who is to bear the fearful responsibility of the later persecutions which converted England into mere religious shambles it is not so easy to determine. Mr. Froude lays the burden on Cardinal Pole; but his reasons are at the best but plausible inferences, and all his references to the Cardinal savour a little too much of the rancour of the apologist of Henry against his most violent calumniator, not to make us pause before implicitly receiving such an imputation. If we are not mistaken, there are writings of Pole in which a more moderate course is recommended; and, zealot as he was, this is not inconsistent with his character. He was an Englishman after all in many of his feelings; and England once brought into submission to Rome, he had less genius for destroying a prostrate enemy than for combating him on equal terms, or bearding him in the fullness of his power. Has not Mr. Froude touched on the more probable authorship of these cruelties when he describes the increasing gloom, the feelings of wounded sensibility, the bitter disappointment of the queen herself? It is not necessary to picture her as a monster of wickedness if we accept this solution. She thought, doubtless, that in this, as in every thing that had gone before, she was strictly fulfilling her duty to God. But the future looked dark for the prospects of Catholicism in England. She felt that her own days were numbered. The longcherished hopes of a child to succeed her, and to be cradled in the faith of her ancestors, had faded away. She could not, she saw, prevent the succession of Elizabeth. Elizabeth, she knew, was bound over by the circumstances of her mother's

marriage to the cause of the Reformation. How could she save the Church from this great impending danger? By no longcontinued policy, by no gradual removal of the elements of evil could this now be effected. The medicine must be sharp and immediate in its action. She might so crush the hateful heresy, so maim it of all its leading members, that not even the goodwill of Elizabeth would be able to infuse new vitality into the shapeless body. At any rate it was her duty to try; and when she had resolved on this, there were many inferior agents to stimulate her zeal, and few in a superior position willing or able to stay her hand. She failed in her violence even more decidedly than her father had done with his ambiguous MiddleScheme. He had at least lowered the tone of the movement which he could not altogether guide in the path he had determined for it. She by a baptism of blood only gave it a new and nobler title to the affections of the English nation.

Under Elizabeth, the idea of a Middle-Scheme between pure Protestantism and Catholicism was partially revived, though in a modified form. This is not the occasion to speak of the merits or demerits of that "Anglican" platform; but the Puritan Revolution of the next century, and the Nonconformist disruption of the Protestant Church in England in the present day, do not say much for the wisdom, in a broader and far-sighted view, of the second via media of the Tudor princes.

ART. X.-THE NOVELS OF GEORGE ELIOT. Scenes from Clerical Life. By George Eliot. 2 vols. Blackwood. 1858.

Adam Bede. By George Eliot. 3 vols. Blackwood. 1859. The Mill on the Floss. By George Eliot. 3 vols. Blackwood. 1860. THE genius which has distinguished the most successful of recent English novelists has been the growth of a very light intellectual soil. It has been a social inspiration; the spirit of some special social atmosphere has entered into them, and all their individual creations have been possessed with it too. Miss Austen, Mr. Thackeray, Mr. Trollope, are all novelists of this class. Their characters all stand on one level, breathe the same social air, are delineated with great accuracy down to the same very inconsiderable depth, and no farther;-all, in short, are bas-reliefs cut out on the same surface. All of them are perfectly inexhaustible in resource on the special social ground they