States—cannot yet be predicated. One thing is certain, that it is a providentially-ordered mutation, and we may add, that we cannot see how any one holding the Anglican view of the Papal usurpations can fail to look for good arising out of it; but we should be very cautious not to mar this good by meddling. For instance, the more books of sound English theology we print and throw upon the Italian markets the better, but the less we attempt direct influence, especially if it comes in the person of one who can be taxed with change of side, the wiser it will be. The Italian reformation, when it comes, must be the work of Italy, wrought out at home by Italians, and shaped in an Italian mould.
Of the Colonial Church, properly speaking, we have not much to say. It seems, for the two last years, to have been quietly going on, holding its stated synods, and making a progress which may be all the surer because the less noisy. The chief notes of onwardness are in Canada, in which the Bishop of Montreal, after completing his cathedral, has, as first metropolitan, held the first Provincial Council, and where the new diocese of Ottawa has been constituted with, we understand, a very satisfactory choice of diocesan. Bishop Chapman has resigned Colombo, and has been succeeded by Bishop Claughton; and the Bahamas have been constituted an independent diocese. The desirable separation of Singapore from Calcutta, and its incorporation with the diocese of Borneo, is still pigeonholed in Downing-street. But we trust that it may not be long before this needful step will have been completed to cheer the good Bishop, returned to his sphere of earnest, loving duty. The admirable sense which Bishop Macdougal adds to ability and self-devotion makes us peculiarly hopeful of his mission. There is also a movement in progress to create a new see at Goulburn, in New South Wales, adjacent to which, the new Colony of Queensland has received its independent organization as the see of Brisbane. How far the miserable war in New Zealand may have affected the evangelization of that land, living, as we do, at a distance, we have no means of judging; but the results cannot fail to be disastrous. Whether the Church will see its way to seizing the opportunity opened out in Madagascar remains to be proved. The importance of its doing so cannot be questioned.
Altogether, the Church at home and in the Colonies appears for the present to be safe. Present safety would a few years since have seemed a very slight object of congratulation; but, in the whirl and crash of mundane things, in this age of revolutions, stability is progress. Yet it is a safeness which must
