pied by a few thousand squatters' and dependents. The rush to the diggings was, if possible, even more violent, the excitement madder, than in California herself. And it was fearfully aggravated by the presence of large numbers of runaway convicts, or scarcely less dreaded expirees and ticket-of-leave men,' flocking in from the quondam prison-settlements of the neighbourhood. Every one conjectured, and not unnaturally, that the scenes of the Sacramento were to be repeated with new varieties of extravagant lawlessness, on the slopes of Ballarat and Bendigo. But the fact turned out far otherwise. There was no doubt a considerable amount of crime and violence; one serious insurrection, some sanguinary riots; but the still, regular voice of old English law and order was heard throughout. The true conservative element of society, reverence for established institutions, insignificant in themselves, but most significant as parts of a whole, carried the community safely through a struggle of unparalleled intensity. The tribunals continued their steady working throughout, never silenced, corrupted, or intimidated; never, so far as we know, even suspected. Except in a few insulated cases, there was no recourse to irregular popular justice; it was felt that no such recourse was needed. Legal redress was never far to seek, nor unsafe to rely on, though temporary difficulties might for a while impede its attainment. Victoria is three years younger (in her auriferous character) than California. Her produce of gold is not larger. She is a less fertile, picturesque and attractive region. Yet her population already amounts to 450,000, of whom one-third are females; still a serious, but not unmanageable disproportion. Though she draws her supplies of people, on the whole, from more distant sources and by more costly routes, yet, as Mr. Seyd confesses, she is constantly supplied with large num'bers of emigrants of all classes: foreign capital is abundant and cheap, and all enterprises encouraged to their utmost ' extent.' In respect of moral and social advance, we will institute no invidious comparison between the two: we will merely state, that notwithstanding the mass of quondam convicts supposed to be established in Victoria, the total number of persons under police surveillance' was reported in December last not to exceed 934.

What are the causes of a difference so marked in the recent fortunes of these sister regions? We will suggest only two, and leave them to the judgment of our readers. The first is, the different management of the public lands. While those of California have been from the beginning the prize of clever speculation, yielding absolutely nothing to the State and contri

buting in no degree to its public purposes, the gold discoveries found those of Victoria strictly tied up under the almost pedantic restrictions of the Wakefield system, adopted, it need not be said, with a view to a wholly different state of things. Half the proceeds of her enormous land sales were regularly remitted to England, and spent under Act of Parliament by three commissioners sitting in London, but spent in supplying the colony, under strict regulations, with the very thews and sinews of her future people, with numbers of stout agricultural settlers, women especially, as the need of females was greatest; settlers of a class the most valuable of all to the colony, and whom their own unassisted exertions could not possibly have conveyed there. Between 1851 and 1857 the commissioners sent out in round numbers 30,000 male and 50,000 female emigrants. The local government has now possession of the land revenue, but seems disposed to spend it with due regard to the lessons of former experience. This was a case, -a rare one, we must, of course, admit, in which red-tape succeeded where the favourite principles of modern days, Let-alone and Go-ahead, must have inevitably and signally failed.

The second cause was, and is, difference of government. The people of Victoria may boast themselves as free as those of any commonwealth under the sun they are self-governed, in the only sense worthy of the name, making through their representatives their own laws and managing their own finances. But throughout the period of their trial, and indeed up to this day, they have been under executive officers ultimately dependent on the people, but not directly chosen by the people, and therefore untouched by that contempt which the multitude so capriciously attaches, elsewhere, to the temporary favourites of its own ballotbox. And, what is of far more importance, their judges have been throughout appointed, after the good old European fashion, by the supreme executive authority, and practically for life. The head of the government, with little direct power but much personal influence, has been the representative of the parent State, free from the local passions of the community; and there has been in the distance the shadow of the Crown. Let those who will dispute the efficacy of these causes; we can at all events point with confidence to the result: the younger of the two golden sisters, and the less favoured in natural gifts, has for the present outstripped the elder one, and seems likely to continue to do so.

ART. II.1. A History of the Church of Russia. By A. N. MOURAVIEFF. Translated by the Rev. R. W. BLACKMORE, B.A. Oxford: 1842.

2. A History of the Holy Eastern Church. By the Rev. JOHN MASON NEALE, M.A. General Introduction and Patriarchate of Alexandria. 4 vols. London: 1848-51.

3. Ὁ Συνοδικὸς Τόμος, ἢ περὶ ̓Αληθείας. Athens: 1852. 4. Dissertations on Subjects relating to the Orthodox' or 'Eastern "Catholic' Communion. By WILLIAM PALMER, M. A. London: 1853.

5. Papal Aggression in the East: or the Protestantism of the Oriental Churches. Edinburgh: 1856.

6. Περὶ Δογμάτων, Διοικήσεως καὶ Ἱερουργιῶν τῆς ̓Αγγλικῆς Εκκλησιάς Πονημάτιον Κοσίνου Ἐπισκόπου Δυνέλμου, κ.τ.λ. ἐκδιδοντος Φρεδερίκου Μεῤῥίκου, Τ. Δ. Oxford: 1856.

THE

HE existence of the Eastern Church is one of the great phenomena of history. Like the empire with which its destinies were for so many ages inseparably connected, it stands outside the ordinary field either of historical study or of theological controversy. The Orthodox Church and the Byzantine Empire, the Greek religion and the Greek nation, derive their importance from the very circumstances which have led to their general neglect. While new nations and new languages appeared, one after another, on the theatre of Western Europe; while new forms alike of freedom and of slavery were developed; while feudal sovereignty and civic republicanism arose and fell; while all the elements of the modern world were gradually called into being;-the ancient life of Greece and Rome still lingered on by the shores of the Bosporus; Roman Cæsars still retained their unbroken succession from Constantine and Augustus, and Greek historians still chronicled their deeds in a language hardly changed from that of Xenophon and Demosthenes. So too, while the ecclesiastical world has been shaken by the disputes of Catholic and Protestant, and by the internal schisms which have disturbed either fold, the Holy Orthodox Apostolic Eastern Church has stood majestically by, unmoved by the contentions of either disputant, a witness for and against both of them alike. After ages of controversy and warfare, sometimes persecuting, sometimes persecuted, the tyrant of the Monophysite and the Paulician, the victim of the

Catholic and the Moslem, the Orthodox Church, as she loves to style herself, still remains unchanged and unchangeable, still preserving the creed and ritual and discipline of ages before Western controversies were heard of. She, and not her Western rival, is the true semper eadem ;' she, with her ancient patriarchal thrones witnessing alike for hierarchical order and against Papal usurpation-with the pomp and ceremony of her immemorial liturgies, untainted by the worst of Rome's doctrinal corruptions-honouring the monastic life, and yet not imposing celibacy on her secular clergy-vying with Rome in reverence for the eucharistic rite, and yet administering it unmutilated to all her children-such a Church, the truest representative on earth of the old days of Fathers and of Councils, is the standing difficulty of Catholic and Protestant alike. Nothing is easier than for the one side to pass her by as 'corrupt,' for the other to brand her as schismatic.' To the charge of schism, her existence is sufficient reply; that fact alone disproves the claims of Rome to universal empire. Practically corrupt indeed she well may be, after ages of overweening prosperity succeeded by ages of grinding oppression. Yet, at least from an Anglican or Lutheran point of view, it would be hard to show that she has erred in more than one formal article of doctrine, in more than one important article of practice. She denies the double Procession; she allows and recommends Invocation of Saints. And, in the practice of her members, this latter speculative tenet degenerates into a superstitious reverence for likenesses traced by art and man's device. But the former strictly theological question is indeed one to which but few Protestants of the present day really attach any meaning. Day after day, month after month*, we are content to recite her creeds, and to denounce her anathemas against heresies of which many of us have forgotten the existence. Add to this that neither Roman nor Protestant Christendom has borne the same fiery trial on behalf of the Christian faith. Through a large portion of her communion, her existence for ages past has been one long martyrdom. Throughout vast provinces, every one of her members has been entitled to the rank of confessor. Every man, from the Tigris to the Danube, who has remained faithful to her, has incurred the certainty of civil degradation, the chance of spoliation, bonds, or death. And all this has been endured

* The so-called Athanasian Creed, the fullest and most scientific exposition of the Catholic theology, is, in its existing shape, a Latin production, but every one of its definitions, every one of the errors it anathematises, is of eastern origin.

in defence of a discipline which is the standing reproof of the pretensions of the Vatican, in defence of a creed which, in the nostrils of Exeter Hall, is no less unsavoury than that of the Vatican itself. Truly, both for Catholic and Protestant controversialists, by far the most convenient way is entirely to forget the existence of the Eastern Church, just as so many historical students and teachers find it convenient entirely to forget the existence of the Eastern Empire.

To one party alone among Protestants does the Orthodox Church commonly appear as an object of attraction. The High Church section of the English Church take a natural interest in a communion which, like their own, protests against the usurpations of Rome, while it sympathises with their special views of ritual and discipline, of sacramental efficacy and episcopal government. It is not, however, from a High Church, or from any strictly theological point of view, that we propose to consider the history and characteristics of the Orthodox Church. Many of our conclusions will be equally reprobated by Pope and Patriarch, while, even among ourselves, it is only from the 'Broad' section of our brethren that our general scope is likely to meet with much favour. At the same time we must express our obligations to several divines of the extreme High Church school for the labour which they have bestowed in elucidating a subject which to them had naturally a peculiar charm. Our object is different from theirs, but we are indebted to them for no little incidental help. Our thanks are especially due to Mr. Palmer and Mr. Neale, for the works which we have placed at the head of this article. To these we may add Mr. Blackmore's translation of Mouravieff's History of the Russian Church, which seems to have been made with a similar theological purpose. And, while we write, we are rejoiced to find that the subject of the Eastern Church has at last commended itself to a writer of a widely different school. Mr. Arthur Stanley, now Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford, has selected its fortunes as the theme of one of his earliest courses of lectures. From one of Mr. Stanley's known research, candour, and power of language, as well as from his recent personal acquaintance with the metropolitan Prelates and Doctors of the Church of Moscow, great things may be expected. We trust that his lectures, on a subject with which he is so well qualified to deal, may not be confined to his hearers in the Clarendon or the Theatre, but may become, in a printed shape, a permanent portion of our ecclesiastical literature.

Both Mr. Neale and Mr. Palmer made themselves a con siderable name in the Tractarian movement; and like most