man's hut and in that great man's palace, out of which have come the elements that make our country "first flower of the earth, first gem of the sea.” We give

God the glory.

The roll of our country's conquering drum, that encircles the earth with its morning and evening beat, will continue in all likelihood to the end; and the boom of her guns will still be heard, the signal of deliverance to the oppressed and of retribution to the oppressor. Her flag will continue to be unfurled in all winds, and her anchors will still drop on every strand; and her sun, we trust and believe, will not set till it is lost in the rising splendours of that sunrise that will have no western declension. With all its sins and faults it is a noble heritage—a land in which to live and die and leave one's children sure, at least, of the patronage of fair opportunity—a land in which one can lie down beneath the overshadowing pinions of the public peace, and rise amid the protection of a pure and enlightened public sentiment

a land in which sovereignty is fatherhood and loyalty is love-in which law never becomes tyranny, and liberty rarely degenerates into licence. Britain is the Pharos of Europe, the lighthouse of the earth. Founded on the Everlasting Rock, she holds up the imperishable light of an open Bible; and in its light the ships of all lands pass and repass on the sea of life with thankful salutations. The great hurricanes of successive revolutions have struck it, and spent their force on it, and retired. The huge sea-waves

of the agitated nations have smitten it, and recoiled in spray, shattered and broken. Shoals of priests and cardinals and bishops and Jesuits, attracted by its brightness, and anxious to quench it, have rushed at it like the wild sea-gulls, in order to destroy it, but only to dash themselves in pieces, and fall dead at its base.

M. de Tocqueville says: "I have so much to say on England, which I have re-visited after a lapse of twenty years, and with a larger experience of men, that it would take many letters to describe the impressions and the ideas produced by the scenes which I witnessed. The spectacle is the greatest that the world affords, though every portion of it is not great. It contains, indeed, things unknown in the rest of Europe-things which consoled me.

"I have no doubt that there exist among the lower orders some feelings hostile to their superiors; but they do not show themselves. What does show itself is the union of all the educated classes, from the humblest tradesman to the highest noble, to defend society, and to use freely their joint efforts to manage as well as possible its affairs. I do not envy the wealth or the power of England, but I envy this union. For the first time, after many years, I breathed freely, undisturbed by the hatreds and the jealousies between different classes, which, after destroying our happiness, have destroyed our liberty.

"I enjoyed, too, in England, what I have long been deprived of—a union between the religious and

the political world, between public and private virtue, between Christianity and liberty. I heard the members of every denomination advocate free institutions, as necessary not only to the welfare but to the morality of society. Never, on any occasion, did I see what prevails on the Continent, the moral monstrosity of pious men applauding despotism, leaving to infidels the cause of liberty."

This future of our nation does not demand silence on our part when she sins, or teach that ours will be impunity notwithstanding our sins. This would be to "sin because grace has abounded." On the contrary, they who are most deeply impressed with this bright anticipation of our future are generally most decided and unsparing in their protests against the many crooked acts of policy which have taken place in recent legislation. But faulty as recent legislation has been, our nation retains in her policy a sufficient amount of Protestantism to provoke the wrath, and, nevertheless, the irrepressible praises, of the most eloquent ultramontane in Europe. Montalembert says, "She will find what matchless folly she has committed in arraying against her will all the animosities, all the rancour, all the jealousy which she excites, and which she aggravates every day, the just resentment and the filial anguish of 100,000,000 of Catholics."

In strange and ominous terms so far as one party is concerned, and in complimentary words respecting another, he adds:

"Twenty-one Catholic members for Ireland, disposing of the majority in a new parliament, had, at the most critical moment for the Papacy, the clever notion of transferring the power from the hands of Lord Derby and a minister essentially conservative, moderate, and full of good-will towards the Catholics, to those of Lord Palmerston, whom every one knows, and Lord John Russell, who distinguished himself among all the statesmen of England by the violence of his invectives against the religion which is professed by 150,000,000 of Christians and ten millions of British subjects; and of Mr Gladstone, who, I regret to say, placed himself, by his last tirade against Pius IX., on a level with Lord Russell."

"England," he adds, "is alarmed at her isolated and menaced condition in contemporaneous Europe."

Lord Russell and Mr Gladstone ought to be proud of the compliments thus liberally given them, and earnestly do I pray they may live to deserve them more than they have hitherto. Lord Palmerston richly deserved even higher compliments than these. May we long preserve the isolation of a Protestant people. With great candour, however, and, according to our construction, with impartial appreciation, Montalembert thus writes of England:

"As for England, I admit without difficulty all the accusations alleged against her for the part she has played in Italy. More than once I have thought it right to express in these pages the embarrassment and the annoyance one feels in speaking the truth

on the faults and vices of England, for fear of being confounded (at a period when the art of confounding is very willingly practised) with her stupid and brawling detractors, who attack in her only liberty, dignity, and political vitality, and who believe they defend Catholicism by maintaining that people are more happy, more proud, and more free in Naples than in London, simply because they work less at the foot of Mount Vesuvius than on the banks of the Thames! But one has less pain in overcoming this embarrassment and this annoyance when he is, what I am, and when he remains, the sincere friend and passionate admirer-I have perhaps the right to speak, the well-known confessor-of the manly virtues and glorious institutions which have placed England in the high position she occupies. She must take care not to fall from that height."

She will not, we hope, fall from it. Her renunciation of her national Protestantism is the only possible price of apostasy, and surely she is not prepared to pay so much. Her throne is based on God's eternal truth. Her palladium is Protestantism. Her glory is her full recognition of the Lord Jesus as King of nations. Her strength is inspiration from on high. Her safety is her loyalty and allegiance to Him who has crowned her with loving-kindness and tender mercies. Our hope is that she will ride out the storms of the world and live.

"Thou, too, sail on! O ship of state,

Sail on! O England, strong and great.