of Rome; yet, we think, our readers will acknowledge, not stronger than his own previous narrative fully justifies. If, in the matter of 'dogma,' the Council was preserved from 'error,' it was because, as we have seen, in that respect, they did nothing at all; and their abstinence from action or at most their adoption of the comprehensive formula already existing in the writings of Epiphanius or Gregory of Nyssa, was probably due to the moderation of the eminent man whom they cast out of his bishopric. Their numerous errors, of a far graver kind than any dogmatic mistake, in the matters of justice, mercy, and truth, are an incontestible proof of the accuracy of the statement of the English Article, that General 'Councils, forasmuch as they be an assembly of men whereof 'all be not governed with the Spirit and Word of God, may err and sometimes have erred even in things pertaining unto 'God.'

But M. de Broglie's picture of the littleness and futility of this Council is doubly valuable from the time when it appears. At the very moment in which we write two such Assemblies have been convened-not indeed according to the ancient usages of the Church by the commandment and will of 'princes-but by two high ecclesiastical authorities, who have taken upon themselves to do that from which the Constantines and Theodosiuses of our times have wisely shrunk. The Bishop of Rome and the Archbishop of Canterbury* have each issued invitations to an Assembly of Bishops to meet, the one, it has been reported, on June 29th at the Vatican, the other on September 24th at Lambeth. Each, indeed, falls short of the dignity, however much the former of them may aspire to the name, of an Ecumenical Council. The Roman Assembly is to exIclude all the Eastern and all the Protestant Churches, and the invitations to the Anglican Synod, although convoked in such general terms as would, if fairly interpreted, include at least the Bishops of Scandinavia, and perhaps those of the Greek and Roman Churches, are understood in point of fact to be addressed only to English, Scottish, and American Bishops. But each professes to aim at representing the voice of the communion from which the summons was issued, and each, according to the

* For a comparison of the two synods, with their relative advantages and disadvantages, and for the numerous difficulties involved in the prospect of the English gathering, see the Letter of the Bishop of St. David's to the Archbishop of Canterbury on the Episcopal Meeting of 1867,-a document which will well repay every reader who is capable of entering into an union of judicial wisdom with playful irony, such as is rarely seen in modern literature.

designs of those who have promoted the respective gatherings, has analogous, if not similar instructions. The Roman Council is intended, if we may believe common rumour, if not by the venerable Pontiff himself, at least by his most influential advisers, to be called together partly for the sake of suppressing an obnoxious prelate, the Cardinal Andrea at Subiaco, partly in the hope of adding to the articles of the Roman Catholic faith two new dogmas, one on the Infallibility of the Pope, the other on the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. The Anglican Council is intended-not indeed by the venerable Primate who has issued the invitations, but by the prelates* at whose request they were issued, and with whom the whole project originated -to be called together partly for the sake of suppressing an obnoxious bishop in South Africa, partly in the hope of adding two new dogmas to the faith of the Church of England, one on the Verbal Inspiration of Scripture, the other on the Everlasting Torments of Hell. Each has been convened within the space of a few short months, without any public exposition of the reasons of their assemblage, without any prescribed rules to guide their debates, and with the command-rumoured in the one case and openly avowed in the other-to despatch these momentous questions in the course of a few days.

It is obvious that in some important respects these Assemblies will meet under serious disadvantages compared with even the questionable Council whose proceedings we have just been discussing-which at least had the guidance and control of the Imperial Legislature, which knew beforehand what it was to transact, and which had two months to bring its labours to a completion, and moreover had at starting one of the most eloquent, temperate, and liberal men of the age to act as its moderator and president.

We could not wish a better study to those who have convoked our modern Councils than the lively description that M. de Broglie has given of the Council of Constantinople. They will there see how far such an assembly succeeded in its object and how far it failed; what were the causes of any success that it achieved; what also were the causes of its failure. They will see also what is and is not the prestige of any such assembly; they will see that no multitude of bishops, neither 144, as at Lambeth, nor 150, as at Constantinople, nor 1,000, as at Rome, can of themselves com

See the Address of the Bishop of Capetown to his diocese, in 1867, and the Appendix to the Sermon of the Bishop of Montreal on the Pananglican Synod, 1866.

mand the confidence of the Christian world, or protect them against the just censures of the best and wisest of their contemporaries. They will recognise that in the judgment of their own time and of posterity, all the claims of numbers and of ecclesiastical titles go for nothing, compared with the charity and learning of a Gregory of Nyssa, in spite of his latitudinarianism; or the eloquence and moderation of a Gregory of Nazianzus, in spite of his want of worldly wisdom.

Let us hope that in both these assemblies, if indeed they actually take place, the lessons of the past may have some effect. If the prelates who meet, whether at Rome or in London, determine each to maintain his own independent judgment, and not to be led by party-feeling or fear of the majority; if they insist on deciding nothing against the parties accused or interested without hearing fully from themselves what they have to urge in their own defence; if the obnoxious cardinal is welcomed from the Sabine hills, and the obnoxious prelate from the pastures of Durban, to take their places in the deliberations of their brethren; if they strictly confine themselves to the rules of law laid down by the Church and country to which they belong; if they determine, in the spirit of Basil and the two Gregories, to do nothing which can circumscribe the existing liberties of the Church; if they use every means to avail themselves of the superior truth and grace which Providence has awarded to the nineteenth over the fifth century; if the Italian bishops will lend their whole energies to reconcile themselves with the wants of their country, and the English bishops to remove whatever barriers prevent their Church from becoming truly national-then they will have reaped for themselves a glory which few, if any of the Ecumenical Synods have attained. But if, unfortunately, they fall under the temptations which ensnared the Fathers of the ancient Council-if party-spirit prevails over individual conviction-if the absent are condemned and the accused not heard-if the opinions which are condoned in the prosperous are censured in those who are in ill-favour— if the control of the law is set at nought and the advance of science and the claims of charity are disparaged-if the proceedings are conducted in secret, and the objects proposed are unknown-if they are made the mere instruments of furthering the private views of some ambitious or some fanatical leaderthen the utmost that can be hoped from such meetings is that they may be utterly void of fruit or effect; then, with so much the more force because charged with the accumulated experience of ages, will be awakened once more the reproach of Gregory Nazianzen, Councils and synods I greet afar off

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-I never saw from a meeting of bishops anything but an addition of evils.'

Di meliora piis. It may be hoped at least from the English synod that its members will remember the truth so constantly urged by M. de Broglie, that the decisions even of Ecumenical Councils depended entirely for their value on the reception which they met from the outside world, not on the rank or authority or numbers of those who uttered them. What force the decisions of the Italian Assembly may have for the members of the Roman Catholic Church, it is not for us to say. But, as it is certain beforehand that the decisions of the English Assembly will have no legal force whatever, so also it is certain that in themselves, as viewed apart from the moral or intellectual character of each individual, they will have no more weight in fact, than they will have in law. To be fully aware of this condition of an ecclesiastical assembly is its only safeguard against itself. If the bishops convened in July and September could place this fact clearly before their eyes-if they meet simply for the friendly interchange of varied experience, in the full light of day, without respect of persons, determined to ascertain the truth only from the best sources, and to see things as they are seen by the great lay world without them-if they bear in mind the human infirmities besetting all such joint deliberations, into which the spirit of worldly policy and of faction must of necessity largely enter then, although it is not to be expected that their meetings should lead to any striking results, they would at least avoid the scandals and just censures which have caused such gatherings to be viewed with suspicion, rather than with reverence, by those who would be most willing to pay honour and respect to the individual persons composing them.

ART. V.-The Textile Manufactures and the Costumes of the People of India. By J. FORBES WATSON, M.A., M.D., F.R.A.S., &c., Reporter on the products of India to the Secretary of State for India in Council. Printed for the India Office, 1866.

THE

HE art of weaving, in all its perfection and its beauty, has existed in India from the earliest period of which there is any record. It is impossible either to estimate its antiquity, or ascribe its introduction to any particular era or person, nor does any tradition on the subject exist in the country. The hymns and ritualistic observances of the Vedas afford direct evidence that it flourished in the very earliest times, and is coæval with the dawn of law and religion. In the Institutes of Menu, compiled perhaps a thousand years before the Christian era, weaving is spoken of as a familiar handicraft; and it is evident that the people at large were clothed with 'apparel,' rich or plain according to their circumstances. That ancient legislator did not disdain to regulate the rights of dress, and to determine the splendour of a trousseau. In ch. iii. v. 27 we find, 'The gift of a daughter clothed only with a single 'robe, to a man learned in the Veda, is the nuptial rite called ""Brahma; "' and in v. 28, The rite which the sages call 'Daiva, is the gift of a daughter whom her father has clothed in gay attire.' Again, in the same chapter, v. 61, Certainly if the wife be not elegantly attired, she will not exhilarate 'her husband;' and v. 62, A wife being gaily adorned, her 'whole house is embellished. If she be destitute of ornaments, 'all will be deprived of decoration.' The wardrobes of ladies of that period were probably valuable, since we find it provided in ch. iv. v. 200, that such ornamental apparel as women wear 'during the lives of their husbands, the heirs of those husbands 'shall not divide among them.' And at the present day, though widows no longer wear the rich clothing they possessed during their husband's lifetime, it remains their own property, and they are at liberty to give it away in charity, or to the younger members of their families, or dispose of it as they please. What the ornamental apparel alluded to in the above quotation may have been, we have no means of ascertaining; but that it was woven cloth of cotton or silk there can be no doubt, since in ch. viii. v. 30 there is the following passage regarding the practice of weaving: Let a weaver who has ' received ten palas of cotton thread give them back increased 'to eleven by the rice water, and the like used in weaving. He

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