culty which they appear to have had was with the hired servants, of whom, at an early period, great numbers came over to this country, binding themselves to the richer families. The number of illegitimate children born of them and thrown upon the parish led to much action on the part of the vestries and the legislature. The lower order of persons in Virginia, in a great measure, sprang from those apprenticed servants and from poor exiled culprits. It is not wonderful that there should have been much debasement of character amongst the poorest population, and that the negroes of the first families should always have considered themselves a more respectable class. To this day there are many who look upon poor white folks-for so they call them-as much beneath themselves, and in truth they are so in many respects. The church-wardens in this parish, among other things, were directed to assign seats in the churches to the different families, which they no doubt did with some reference to family and wealth, as in England. Mr. Matthew Kemp, an old servant of one of the congregation, as church-warden, received the commendation of the vestry for displacing an unworthy woman, who insisted on taking a pew above her degree. Four of the families of Wormley, Grymes, Churchill and Berkeley obtained leave of the vestry to put an addition of twenty feet square to one of the churches-the lower one-for their special use. It was very common, as we shall see hereafter, for certain families to build galleries for themselves after the manner of their forefathers in England, and it was hard sometimes to dislodge their descendants, even when their position was uncomfortable and not very safe. There was one very important duty which the vestries had to perform, and which was sometimes a subject of dispute between them and the Governor of Virginia, namely, to maintain their rights, as representing the people, in the choice and set

do well to follow. The following extracts from the presentments of a Grand Jury of Middlesex, in 1704, are proofs of this:

1st. We present Thomas Sims for travelling on the road on the Sabbath day with a loaded beast.

2d. We present William Montague and Garrett Miner for bringing oysters ashore on the Sabbath day.

3d. We present James Lewis for swearing and cursing on the Sabbath day. Ordered, That John Hutney be fined according to law for being drunk on the Sabbath day.

tlement of ministers. In the English Church the congregation have no part in the choice of their ministers. Patrons appoint them, and livings support them. In Virginia, as the salary was drawn directly from the people by the vestries, the vestries sometimes claimed not only the right to choose the ministers, but to turn them away at pleasure. In the absence of bishops and canons to try the ministers, it is evident that there would be a strong temptation on the part of the vestries to act arbitrarily if the power was entirely vested in them. To prevent this, the Governor claimed to be the ordinary, and to act as Bishop in relation to this point. He, appealing to an English canon, allowed the vestries the right of choosing their minister and presenting to him for induction. Being inducted, the minister could not be displaced by the vestry, had a right to the salary, and might enforce it by an appeal to law. Should the vestry not appoint a minister within six months after a vacancy, then the Governor might send one and induct him as the permanent minister, not to be removed by the vestry. The Governor of Virginia, in 1703, Mr. Nicholson, at the time about which I am writing, maintained also that he had a right to send a temporary supply to any parish immediately on the occurrence of a vacancy, which supply might be superseded by one of their own choice within the six months. It is the same power which some have proposed to vest in our Bishops in relation to a temporary supply of vacant parishes. It is evident that such a power would very much interfere with the free choice of ministers by the vestries, since the minister thus sent as the supply would have a great advantage over others who might be obtained. To refuse him after trial would be to condemn the choice of the Bishop, and be an offense to himself. The above is the view taken of the relative power of the vestry and Governor in an opinion of the Queen's Attorney General, Mr. Edward Northy, which was sent by the Governor to all the vestries of the church, and directed to be put on record.*

* Beverly, in his History, expresses the following opinion of Governor Nicholson:

"And lastly, Governor Nicholson, a man the least acquainted with the law of any of them, endeavored to introduce all the quirks of the English proceedings, by the help of some wretched pettifoggers, who had the direction both of his conscience and his understanding."

The action of the vestries uniformly shows their determination to defend themselves as well as they could against the evils consequent upon such a construction of the law. As to the immediate temporary supply of the vacancies, that does not appear to have been attempted by the Governor, although the right was claimed. In order to prevent the minister being suddenly inducted and put upon them for life—whether one of their own choice or of the Governor-who might soon prove unworthy, while in reality there was no method of getting rid of him, since no civil governor could depose a minister, the vestries fell upon the expedient of employing ministers for a limited time, generally twelve months, sometimes less, repeating the same again and again, until they were sufficiently satisfied of their worthiness and suitableness, and then of presenting him to the Governor for induction and permanent settlement. Against this there was no law, and the Governor acquiesced in it. And who can blame them for adopting such a course? Bad as the state of things was, even under that wise precaution, how much worse would it have been if the choice of the vestry or the appointment of the Governor, after such a slight acquaintance as either of them were likely to have with foreigners, must be perpetuated for better for worse, even as the marriages of some in that day, who imported their wives from England without knowing them. It is but justice to the vestries to say, that as a general thing, when they secured the services of a respectable minister, they retained him during life. Although I shall shortly show one instance to the contrary, I shall also show a number in confirmation of it. It is also due to the vestries to say, that in compliance with the decision of the Governor, they always allowed to the ministers who were not inducted the same rights, perquisites, and privileges with those who were inducted. This principle is, I believe, confirmed by one of the canons of our General Convention.

LITERATURE OF QUARTER.

[UNDER this head it is proposed to give in each successive number of the Review, a brief sketch of such portions of the works issued during the preceding quarter, as it may be practicable and expedient to notice. In the present number, it is necessary to confine this department to the branches of History and Theology. In subsequent numbers, other branches will be noticed.]

HISTORY.

Among the historical works which have appeared since our last issue, Mr. MACAULAY'S third and fourth volumes are undoubtedly entitled to preëminence. They treat of a subject peculiarly near to us, both as Americans and as Episcopalians; and they address not a few readers, but almost the whole of the great population that speaks the English tongue. When a hundred thousand volumes are sold of Macaulay's sketches of the nonjurors, what are we to think in comparison of the two or three thousand that may issue from the ecclesiastical press? When we are attempting, with the small circulation of our denominational periodicals, to produce a specific popular impression as to particular stages in history, is it not worth while for us to take into consideration the mighty influence exercised by a historian such as Macaulay, with descriptive powers the most brilliant, with rhetoric the most finished, with prejudices the most inveterate and relentless, and with a field over which this magic sway is exercised embracing nearly the whole Anglo-Saxon race?

In some respects, Mr. Macaulay is a great gain on any preceding English historian. Of Hume, with whom he will be most frequently placed in comparison, he is, both in a political and a religious point of view, greatly the superior. Hume was an epicurean in politics as well as theology, and this led him to admire an excess of government in one case, and no government at all in the other. He was equally averse, if we may use the expression, to a disturbing people, and a disturbing Providence. The angry growls of the one, as it chafed against its oppressors, were as distasteful to him as the ma

jestic thunders of the other as it denounced those who despised its divine laws. He was thus an absolutist and a deist, and in each relation he was a propagandist both subtle and potent. For under the oil of a most perspicuous and easy style, he managed to conceal the poison in such slight and delicate quantities as entirely to escape the notice of the unobservant. And he did his work in perverting the minds of almost the whole of the generation which his work touched upon its first appearance.

Mr. Macaulay, in a political view, has not the same fault. He starts with the fundamental position, that to the good of the nation, as a nation, the privileges of both king and nobles are to yield. The treachery and falsehood of Charles I. are to him not the less treachery and falsehood because it was royalty by which they were committed. Charles II.'s profligacy, and James II.'s arbitrariness, are to him the more reprehensible from the elevation of the thrones which they stained. Nor is he wanting in a strong and manly sympathy with that spirit of freedom, which, breaking forth sometimes, it is true, in rude and irregular utterances, has yet given to the Anglo-Saxon race its dominancy in two continents, and has made the English and the American constitutions, each in its proper sphere, the most perfect safeguard of individual rights as well as of public prosperity, which the world has as yet known. That malign and indolent conservatism, which snaps and growls at every attempt to drive it from the spot where it has huddled underneath its single self clothes enough to make an alms-house comfortable, appears to him, what it is in truth, a detestable selfishness. And as in State, so in Church. The more majestic bigotry of Laud is as odious to him as the petty bigotry of Sancroft. No writer has ever brought such brilliant resources to play upon these icy barriers which arrogant pretensions, whether ecclesiastical or civil, have planted in the way of the free current of human development. And for this, and for the healthy and robust system of political economy which he has advanced, he can not receive too high a tribute.

But while all this is cheerfully admitted, there is a feature in these volumes which requires at least grave consideration. Mr. Macaulay, in attacking what is human and erroneous in religion, sometimes comes very near to attacking what is divine and right. And besides this, there is something in his very post of vision, which makes the great historical picture he has given us, wonderful as it is in the brilliancy of its colors and the accuracy of its details, deficient in at least one great element of truth. There is a Godlessness in it, which leaves a void in the mind of the serious observer, something like that which would be felt in a sketch of a watch-maker's shop with the watchmaker left out. There is a materialistic minuteness in tracing every event to its human antecedent, which is unrelieved by any thing like a reference to a grand overruling Cause. And when religion is noticed, it is in its weakness, not in its earnestness. Sects and sectaries are played off against each other, if not to improve a moral, at least to point an antithesis. Nothing can be more felicitous, sometimes, than the way in which this is done, as