moving quickly in the heavens'-literally covered with dust in (the realm of) his father, Zeus.' This metaphorical sense of KEKOVIμévoç (as the reading ought to be) has been in use from the time of Homer downwards. The idea that the light of the Milky Way shows on the figure of the Gorgonicide, like dust on a traveller's back after a ride in the dog-days, appears to us supremely absurd. We know that the authority of the Greek Scholiast on Aratus may be alleged in defence of Dr. Lamb's interpretation—but what improbable, ridiculous, or impossible doctrine cannot be dignified with these same scholiasts' approval?

But we have already dwelt sufficiently long, much longer than we willingly would have done, upon the imperfections of Dr. Lamb's work. We are anxious not to treat Dr. Lamb with unfairness. We are meeting him as a scholar on the neutral ground of literature. Were such our present theme, we had much, and of greater severity, to say to him as Dean of Bristol, and about his unwarrantable and discreditable attempt to suppress the choral service-an attempt already commenced-in that cathedral. However, from what we can gather, the people of Bristol seem as little disposed to submit to this outrage on their rights as Churchmen, as, on a very different occasion, the folks of Edinburgh were to receive an opposite attempt. As Bristol has only half a cathedral, and a moiety of a Bishop, possibly the Dean thought it a fit place to experimentalize upon. But the case is obviously one which demands the Episcopal Visitation to which all Chapters are amenable.-But to our immediate subject. We may now turn to the more pleasing side of the picture, and let us consider Dr. Lamb's production rather as a poem than a translation. We shall find that it is frequently pointed and vigorous, presenting much graphic description, with even an excess of poetic embellishment. We will proceed to make good our assertion by extracts from the work itself.

The exordium of the poem (to which allusion has already been made, will perhaps not be unacceptable to our readers, as it presents a fair specimen of the style of the whole, and, moreover, contains the words quoted by St. Paul in the 17th chapter of the Acts.

'Let us begin from Jove. Let every mortal raise
His grateful voice to tune Jove's endless praise.
Jove fills the heaven, the earth, the sea, the air;
We feel his spirit moving here and everywhere.
And we his offspring are. He, ever good,
Daily provides for man his daily food;
Ordains the seasons by his signs on high,
Studding with gems of light the azure canopy.

What time with plough and spade to break the soil
That plenteous stores may bless the reaper's toil,
What time to plant and prune the vine, he shows,
And hangs the purple cluster on its boughs.

To Him-the First, the Last-all homage yield,
Our Father-Wonderful-our Help-our Shield!'

Aratus' description of Astræa's departure from the earth, in abhorrence of man's increasing wickedness, perhaps excels in pathos any part of the whole poem; and, to our idea, far surpasses the passages in Hesiod, Catullus, and Ovid, referring to the same subject. We subjoin the Dean's version, even at the expense of being censured for a long quotation:

'Or art thou, goddess, she of heavenly birth
Who condescended once to dwell on earth,
Astræa called, in fabled days of old-
Alas! for ever gone-the poet's age of gold!
Then justice ruled supreme, man's only guide;
No fraud, no violence, no strife, no pride.

No sailor ventur'd then to distant clime,

And brought back foreign wealth and foreign crime.
All tended then the flock, or till'd the soil,
And milk and fruit repaid their easy toil.

All happy-equal, as the poets sing,
No fierce seditious mobs-no tyrant king.-
But soon these days of innocence were gone :
In his sire's place arose a viler son

Of silver race. Then to the mountain's glen,
Scared and offended from the haunts of men,
Fair Justice fled. Yet still at times were seen
Her angel figure and her godlike mien.

But when she view'd the crowded city's throng—
The proud man's contumely-the poor man's wrong-
Vex'd was her righteous soul. "Mortals, farewell,

66

'Farewell," she said, "no more with man I dwell.

"Ye of your sires a vile degenerate race,

"Your offspring you their fathers will disgrace.
"War soon will desolate these fruitful lands-

"A brother's blood will stain a brother's hands.

66

Rising to view I see a ghastly train

"Revenge-oppression-love-despair-and pain."
She said; and, hastening to the mountain's height,
Fled far away from mortals' longing sight;

These men soon pass'd away, and in their place

Far viler sons arose-the brazen race

They first the stubborn ore obedient made,

And forg'd-unhallow'd skill-the murd'rous blade.

The patient ox, long wont to till the soil,

To tread the corn, and share his master's toil,

Dragg'd from his stall-poor harmless slaughter'd beast—
Gave to his cruel lord a bloody feast.

Justice was shock'd, the blood-stain'd earth she flies;
Jove bade her welcome to her native skies.'

We will, with the indulgence of our readers, make one more extract. It shall be the description of tempest portended by the bright appearance of the constellation Ara' in a cloudy sky. We will append a literal, unpretending ('sermoni proprior') version of our own, that the reader may have an opportunity

of comparing, tolerably accurately, Dr. Lamb's translation with the sense of the original.

'When Scorpion in the South his claws expands,
Burning with constant fire an altar stands.

Primeval night, who with the God of day
O'er earth and ocean holds divided sway,
Pitying the toils and dangers of the brave
Adventurous sailor, through the pathless wave,
By certain signs the coming tempest shows,
While zephyr breathes and smoothly ocean flows.
When thou behold'st the altar bright and clear,
While all around is cloud and darkness drear,
Forewarn'd, take heed-soon loud and fast (sic)
Will Notus drive upon the furious blast.
The prudent sailor, with attentive eye,
Observes the warning beacon placed on high:
Tightens each rope-binds fast the flapping sail—
And rides securely through the threat'ning gale.
Imprudent mariners these signs despise,

Nor heed the murmuring wind, and lowering skies:
With sail to shivers torn, and broken mast,
Headlong they drive before the furious blast:
Now frowns with ruin big the mountain wave-
Now gapes the dark abyss a yawning grave.
If to their prayer propitious Jove attend,
And from the north storm-quelling Boreas send;
Dispersed the clouds-serene the troubled air-
And curb'd is Neptune in his mad career.'

The literal translation of the poet is as follows:-
But underneath the scorpion's fiery sting
Southward the altar poised in heav'n appears.

Around that altar ancient night hath set,
In pity for man's toil, a token sure
Of storm by sea; for she rejoiceth not
In vessels tempest-tost, and often shows
In the mid ocean signs of coming gales.
If on the waves, while clouds obscure the sky,
Pray not that constellation may appear
Cloudless itself and bright, whilst all above
The dark mist presses; such as oft we see
When fierce autumnal Boreas blows amain.
For Night, dread goddess, by such circumstance
Of rising south wind oft forewarns the sailor.
If he forewarn'd believe the certain sign,
And quickly lighten and prepare his bark;

His toil will then grow easy. But should perchance
The direful storm on high dash on the ship

All unexpected, and the tackle rend

Or underneath the watery surge they drive;

Or, (should Zeus, at their prayer, to aid them come,
And the stout north wind gain the mastery ;)

After much labour past, again they see

Each other, on the vessel, face to face.'

76

ART. IV.-A History of the Holy Eastern Church. The Patriarchate of Alexandria. By the Rev. JOHN MASON NEALE, M.A. Warden of Sackville College, East Grinsted. 2 vols. 8vo. London: J. Masters. 1848.

AMONG other evils resulting from the miserable divisions of the Western Church since the period of the Reformation, and from the mutual estrangement, or rather hostility, of the various sections into which it was split by that ecclesiastical revolution, is the entire oblivion that prevails in this country of the past history, and present position-we might almost say, of the actual existence of other large branches of the Catholic family, comprehending four Patriarchates of ancient Christendom; to which has been added, since the separation of East and West, a fifth, of such extent as almost to compensate for the losses that the faith has sustained by the ravages of Nestorian and Monophysite heresy, and by the conquests of the Mahometans in the East. This oblivion of our remoter brethren we justly ascribe to our home divisions, which have left us little leisure to look beyond the limited arena of our own controversial strife. The fulminations of the Vatican, responded to by the heavy artillery of the Anglican divines, has raised a murky cloud on the continent of Europe, which has obscured from our view the regions further east; and these rude sounds, swelled by the din of our internal and domestic feuds, have drowned the plaintive melody of the Oriental Church, which, degraded, and debased, and enslaved though she be, still finds mournful utterance in the primitive seats of the Church's faith, among the scenes of its earliest and most glorious history, in spots associated with all its most sacred and thrilling recollections-amid the inhospitable crags of Sinai,-by the manger of the Nativity at Bethlehem,-over the fountain of the Blessed Virgin at Nazareth, and before the rocky monuments of still more awful mysteries at Jerusalem.

Occasionally, indeed, its witness has been appealed to by controversialists on both sides; and if its spiritual independence of the See of Rome, consistently maintained for nineteen centuries, has furnished Protestant writers with an unanswerable argument against the claims of Papal Supremacy, its perpetual consent with the Latin Church on points called in question by Protestants has not been forgotten by Roman Catholic divines as an argument against the Reformation. But these partial appeals have led, as was natural, to much misrepresentation, and have served but little to advance the cause of truth.

Occasionally, too, a faint attempt has been made to open communication and to restore friendly relations between the Church of England and the Oriental Churches; but while the attempt has met with small encouragement among ourselves, it has been still more unsuccessful in the East. And no marvel. For either the negociations have been generally conducted on our side by persons who had no pretensions to represent our Church, and were ignorant of the first principles of Catholic unity as they are understood by all churches; or they have been carried on with those who were as utterly ignorant of all that concerns us, as we are, for the most part, of all that concerns them; and who, having been prepared by no previous intercourse, thought of us as of one of the Protestant sects, of whose multiform varieties of error they had heard, all which alike had been condemned in the Synod of Bethlehem, whose decisions are of authority throughout the orthodox Church of the East.

But another, and still more deplorable error, has lately been committed in the indiscreet zeal of a newly-revived interest in the communities of oriental Christians; an error which, originating in ignorance or simplicity, threatens seriously to compromise the Anglican Church as represented by bishops and priests of her communion. The friendly correspondence of which we heard not many years ago between the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria, and the actual relations which Bishop Southgate is understood to have established with the Armenian Patriarch and Bishops at Constantinople, would be full of hopeful promise, if we had any security that the heresy which has for so many centuries separated them from Catholic communion, was properly viewed by both parties; if, that is, this friendly disposition of Copts and Armenians, on the one hand, could be taken as an indication of their desire to renounce their heresy and return to . Catholic communion; or if, on the other hand, the first and chief aim of those on our side were to win them from their heresy to the unity of Catholic doctrine. We do not, of course, mean that these heretical Churches need be assailed in the spirit which has too often actuated the controversialists of other orthodox communions in the East-a spirit which has tended to widen the breach, and to repel the heretics still further from the truth. What we mean is, that our intercourse must proceed on the distinct understanding that we can allow no compromise with heresy, and that the canons of Chalcedon, so obnoxious to them, are part and parcel of the teaching of our Church, part of the deposit which we have received and are pledged to maintain and transmit inviolate.

If only this were fairly stated and honestly understood, we