those who would degrade our churches to the type of the conventicle, on the pretext that dignified ritual is contrary to English feelings. How cathedral restoration is to grow into cathedral extension, is too wide a topic for this place.
The crowded meetings which have taken place in London under the presidency of Lord Brougham, and at Oxford under that of the Vice Chancellor, in favour of Mr. Woodard's third school for the lower middle classes, and the support which the Times has bestowed upon the scheme, are a solid proof that the simple earnest zeal of that good man is now bearing good fruit, and that his scheme of leavening the middle classes of society with sound education in Church principles is no longer an improbable dream. All who have looked into the matter know too well that it is those classes for whom Mr. Woodard is labouring who have hitherto proved the mainstay of Nonconformity; it stands to reason, accordingly, that a plan which tends to make them Churchmen and to give them some of those elevating feelings which the higher strata of society derive from a University education, must tend to advance the cause of the Church in those quarters where hitherto it has confessedly been the weakest.
The year 1861 will, we believe, be distinguished in the annals of our Reformed Communion as that in which that Church emancipated herself from the connexion, which once seemed indissoluble, between the English ritual and the English flag. Up to the first day in 1861 there were, speaking generally, only two nationalities within which the English Church in its completeness could be said to exist. The one was the British empire, with its dependencies, and such adjacent countries as stood in terror of the reprisals of the British right arm. The other was the United States, on which depended missions in Africa and China. To whatever other triumphs the Church revival in our communion could point, that of enlarging the area of the really independent realms in which it was to be found could not be reckoned. The taunt of the Romanist and the Dissenter, that it was merely the Queen's Church, had still to be answered, not rebutted. But the year that has gone by has swelled the list with four additions. Its first week witnessed the consecration in Cape Town cathedral of the simple-hearted devout Mackenzie for the central parts of Africa. Whatever may be thought of the commercial prospects of his mission, of its Christian and civilizing value there can be no two opinions among Churchmen. A little later, Patteson was sent out to the dark islands of the South-Western Pacific, with the mission and the blessing of the apostolic Selwyn; and his honoured father lived long enough to have his last days cheered by the thoughts of his son's life-long
