from the King's name. The opposition, however, was not confined to the secular clergy, whose personal interests were at stake, but was strong in popular opinion; and the daring Primate was compelled to resort to those lying wonders in which he was an accomplished adept.

The whole tale of Dunstan is so completely interwoven with portents and revelations, that it is hardly possible to preserve the web without them neither, indeed, is the Church, which has admitted him into the catalogue of its saintly intercessors by any means inclined to sever them from his history. Some touch of compunction might, indeed, be supposed in the indignant tone with which Protestant historians are reprehended for dragging these anile fables from their contemptible depositaries, were not the mental bondage of the lower orders of the Romish communion maintained, to this day, by the inculcation of similar legends, and occasion taken from the derision they excite, to yindicate the power and providence of God in the dispensation of miracles.

The learned Romanist who should define, whether from the stores of the Vatican, or by the manly exercise of an acute discrimination, the line which separates these old wives' tales from graver testimony, would confer no slight obligation upon the historian, who, in defect of such aid, must disentangle them as he may.

In the first place there is no difficulty in the question, " Whence hath this man these mighty works?" Dunstan, it appears, was early distinguished for his proficiency in the mechanical and the fine arts, and, probably, promised himself amusement in the wonder, rather than triumph in the credulity of others, when he employed his ingenuity in constructing the harp which produced music as it was suspended against the wall. When, however, the generosity of youth had given way to the ambition of manhood, the talents, which he had thus early developed, became subservient to the advancement of his great end and aim, and his mechanical contrivances were palmed upon an ignorant people as miracles wrought in confirmation of his purpose. Neither was the establishment of the axiom, which occurs in the account of the revelation made to him of the death of Edred, unimportant to his success. He had left that king at the last extremity, when he set forth upon a journey, during which his horse fell dead under him. He immediately declared that a voice from heaven had communicated the king's deccase; and the fate of the animal was deemed portentous. Impos jumentum et indignum : sermonem audire angelorum." A convenient principle with which to confound the sturdy sceptic who should presume to trust his own senses in opposition to the word of Dunstan. When the national feeling in favour of the secular Clergy compelled Edgar to submit the question of their expulsion to a council at Winchester, the Primate seems to have trusted his cause to the ingenious trick of making the crucifix pronounce an oracle in favour of the monks. The countenance of the king, however, who in the course of his reign established the Benedictines in no less than forty-eight monasteries, had by no means destroyed the

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estimation in which the seculars were held; and Dunstan was not satisfied with a partial triumph over them. They still constituted the parochial Clergy, and found support from the most powerful and intelligent of the nobility, who, if they contemplated no further evil, nevertheless regarded with national jealousy the influence of strangers, who, flocking over from the foreign seed-plot of their order, were planted out in every province of the kingdom. The most grievous of the charges brought against the seculars, namely the delegation of their duties to others, was the natural consequence of the superabundant endowment of their churches, and was by no means removed, nor likely to be so, by the transfer of their benefices to the regulars. The imputation of concubinage is the mere assumption of the illegality of their marriages; and whether that vice was more likely to prevail among them, or under the profession of celibacy, neither history nor human nature will allow of a question. Lest neither of them should be deemed to constitute a substantial charge, it was further also objected to them, non fuisse illis coronam patentem, nec tonsuram convenientem ;" but in spite of this array of accusation and of the oracle of the crucifix, their repression was discussed in a second council, after the death of Edgar, and still, inconclusively. The issue of a third, at Calne, if not fatal to their argument, was at least so to their lives and limbs. Beornelm, a Scottish Bishop, alleged custom and reason and Scripture against the celibacy of the Clergy, but waited in vain for the reply of the primate. He had withdrawn from the contest, and absorbed in prayer committed his cause to preternatural aid. The art in all this is too manifest to allow of the supposition that the failure of the floor beneath the rebellious advocates of Scripture and of reason, was unpremeditated by Dunstan; and the suggestion, on the other hand, that these circumstances may have been the fictions of succeeding monks is invalidated by their palpable contrivance.

The chroniclers of the cloister might, in the indulgence of invention, at just as cheap a rate, have summoned an angel from heaven to declare the divine will, as have spoken through their dumb idol, or have opened a gulph in the solid earth, as have broken the stubborn necks of the seculars by an accident calculated to awaken suspicion. The fraud apparent in the action, removes all imputation of fraud from the relation. Whatsoever was the immediate result of the Synod, the

May not that passage in the Ode in praise of Edgar, preserved in the Saxon Chronicle, which censures his bringing crowds of vicious and outlandish men into the kingdom, be referred to the unpopularity of this feature of the monkish policy? It is observable, that that curious record, manifesting, as it does, the adverse opinions of its several continuators, nevertheless, consistently adopts the cause of the sons of the soil; whilst it was palpably an object with the Church to absorb all the ties of kindred and of country in its paramount claim. One of the first steps towards the foundation of alien priories, which afterwards swallowed up so large a portion of the wealth of the country, seems to have been the endowment of the Abbey of St. Peter at Ghent, with the extensive manor of Lewisham, in Kent, by Edgar, at the instance of Dunstan, who had found shelter there during his exile.

cause of the Monks was manifestly on the decline after the death of Edgar.

Immersed in the pursuit of pleasure, and unrestrained in that pursuit, for the frivolity of the penance imposed by Dunstan for the violation of Wilfrida, who had in vain sought refuge within the walls of a monastery, was rather applying the flattering unction to his soul than rousing him to a feeling of remorse, he was, to all the purposes of government, little more than the puppet in their hands; and the peace of the kingdom, which was preserved by their vigilance, was improved to their exaltation. The attempt, however, to perpetuate their authority, by exercising the same control over his son Edward, roused the indignation of the nobles. Alfere unscrupulously purged his duchy of Mercia of the intruders; and, when Elfrida had opened the way for the accession of her son by the assassination of the young King, the murdress was maintained by their swords, and Dunstan was compelled to attend the coronation of Ethelred. His high spirit, however, revolted from the office, and, when he should have set the crown upon his head, he fainted.

The glory of Dunstan was, in fact, departed. When Ethelred, in 986, in resentment against the Bishop of Rochester, laid siege to that city, the Primate in vain endeavoured to divert him from his purpose, by denouncing the wrath of its tutelar St. Andrew, and was fain to tender him the peace-offering of one hundred pounds. To the indignation of the Primate he accepted it, and turned from the walls to lay waste the lands of the cathedral. Instead of the thunders which Dunstan had formerly wielded, he was now, however, reduced to indulge his spleen in evil auguries. Of these ebullitions he was by no means sparing; and the gathering misfortunes of the kingdom gave them the air of prophecy. Influencing, as they did, the fate of the kingdom as well as the Anglo-Romish Church, it is hardly possible to treat the lives of Odo and of Dunstan in reference merely to the metropolitan See; but the interests in which she shared must not render us unmindful of those which peculiarly belong to the Church of Canterbury.

The

We have no reason to reason to doubt but that Odo was a great promoter of the fabric of his cathedral, though we may be allowed to abstract the miraculous from the record of his aid; and it seems highly probable that much of his work still remains in the Undercroft. discrepancy in the accounts of two early writers (Osberne and Gervase) relative to the place of Dunstan's sepulture, is at once removed by the recollection that the present structure encloses and rises over the ancient Church.

The endowment of the Cathedral was largely increased in their time, Edred added to it that of the desecrated Abbey of Reculver, and Edgar that of Liminge; but Edgiva, the mother and grandmother of those Princes, seems to have been the greatest benefactress to their Church. In the catalogue of her gifts, are comprehended lands and manors, of which there is, in some instances, no trace of the Church of Canterbury

having come into the possession; and, indeed, the date ascribed to them is subsequent to that which is assigned to her death; but a portion of the lands of Earl Sigeline, her father, who is called Lord of Meopham, Cowling, and Leanham, continued in its Chartulary, and the paramount manor of Monkton, in Thanet, placed the whole of that İsland (the endowment of the Abbey of Minster, which was afterwards transferred to that of St. Augustine, already comprehending one half of its extent) in the hands of the Church. In recording this last gift, it is only reasonable to observe, that the fertility of that district, which the Monks were pleased to represent as a blessing upon the spot which afforded the first shelter to Augustine, may, with better foundation, be ascribed as the blessing of God upon those labours which were carried on under the direction of the ecclesiastics, in the clearing of woods, the draining of fens, and the reclaiming of land from the sea. Indeed, whilst we deplore the fabric of superstition which they reared, it would be uncandid to suppress the acknowledgment due to the superior intelligence displayed by them in mechanics, in agriculture, and in all the ordinary affairs of life.

In the history of the arts, Dunstan could hardly escape honourable mention; but the Church is scandalized by his canonization. He died at the age of 64, in the year 988, and his relics constituted a source of wealth both to the Cathedral of Christ Church, and to the Abbey of Glastonbury, whose rival claims were prosecuted with undiminished warmth even to the eve of the Reformation; that Abbey, of which he had been the "nursing father," claiming to have rescued them from the smouldering ruins of the ancient Church, when Canterbury was destroyed by the Danes, in 1011, and Warham disclosing the shrine to which they had been translated by Lanfranc.

STATE OF THE DIOCESES

IN

ENGLAND AND WALES,

FROM APRIL TO JUNE INCLUSIVE.

The Right Rev. THOMAS BURGESS, D.D. Lord Bishop of St. David's, and Prebendary of Durham, translated to the See of SALISBURY, vacant by the death of Dr. John Fisher, late Bishop thereof.

The Very Rev. JOHN BANKS JENKINSON, D.D. Dean of Worcester, promoted to the Bishoprick of St. DAVID's, and to a Prebend of Durham, vice Dr. Burgess.

The Rev. James Hook, D.C.L. Archdeacon of Huntingdon, and Prebendary of Winchester, to the Deanery of Worcester, vice Dr. Jenkinson.

The Rev. Richard Cockburn, B.D. late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, to a Prebendal Stall in the Cathedral Church of Winchester, vice Dr. Hook.

The Hon. and Rev. Hugh Percy, D.D. Archdeacon and Prebendary of Canterbury, and Chancellor of Sarum, to the dignity of Dean of Canterbury, vacant by the death of Dr. Andrewes.

*

The Rev. James Croft, M.A. Prebendary of Canterbury, to the Archdeaconry of Canterbury, vice Dr. Percy.

The Rev. Charles Richard Sumner, D.D. Prebendary of Worcester, to a Prebendal Stall in the church of Canterbury, vice Dr. Percy.

The Rev. Thomas Gaisford, M.A. Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford, to a Prebendal Stall in the Church of Worcester, vice Dr. Sumner.