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At last, however, the attempt was made-we will not add with what success-to give them some respite. The great majority hailed the measure with unmitigated joy; but the more factious, goaded on by Jewish intrigue and infidel declamation, joined with an innumerable host of artizans and ragamuffins in an uproarious demonstration against it. The very persons against whom the bill was directed were those to whom it was ultimately conceded; for personal inspection has assured us that Sunday trading would well-nigh cease to exist by the spontaneous efforts of the shopkeepers themselves, but for the obstinate perverseness of some few in every district, whom nothing short of compulsion will induce to join with their neighbours in closing their shops on Sundays. There is a large class of persons among the labouring classes who, from thoughtlessness or habit, suspend their weekly purchases until Sunday-to say nothing of those whose Sunday pleasures consist to no small extent in gormandizing and drinking. It is obvious that these persons will resort to whatever shops are open, so that if any one closes his shop, he will lose an amount of custom which he is utterly unable to afford. The obstinacy of a single man is often sufficient to keep open the shops of a whole neighbourhood; whereas, if the Bill of Lord Robert Grosvenor had passed, all would have been closed alike, nominally by compulsion, but the majority in reality voluntarily. With the exception of those who ruin the health of the masses by the vending of medicated drinks, putrescent fruit, and sickly pastry, none would have derived any pecuniary loss from the change the amount of money which is actually expended would not have varied; the only alteration being, that what is now spent on Sunday would have been spent at some other period of the week.

:

We are assured that the Bill is only temporarily withdrawn, and we therefore indulge in the sanguine hope, that the friends of the Sabbath will meanwhile busy themselves to enlighten the public mind as to the real nature of this fancied act of tyranny. Let each in his own immediate neighbourhood strive to disseminate the plain truth--that its primary object is the relief of shopkeepers-that it will cause no diminution of their profits, but only an extension of their rest; that although it will redound to God's glory, it will also be for man's good; and that it will enable the trader, as well as the artizan, to know the full meaning of the hackneyed text- -"The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath."

TILNA mund te the progress of the movemeno je praz milya giderly a weekly half-holiday I am fl auxiliary to the of a home better posem of the Sabbath; besides being I meas if sum quruh mal improvement. The run scummy var fi tak ter fourteen or sixteen bms messi libri Sulay, feels too wearied for

in Suly, or fi mechanic, after a week of armed sensates on Sunday to gaze with his wife toes to the pen is mi pare sky. Those ♥ the sting atmosphere of a manufacturing town Apgreat the Lady of earning to induce a of making his Sunday walk, or pagar bis Stadly mat a la als Such things are LIK ILSTEINER, Elms Ether opportunity be proviled ther yake the place of attendance at the buse of Go if a hibadayisiven on Saturday, be removed, and we shall be in far gour Sabbaths desecrated by numberless arties to the art as places of entertainment which infest the outskirts of every gren G.

The movement his been tim up by some of the most in in the diy of London, and but for the obsti

of thepaste faires, it would have received a kind of publie suminen by the dosing of the law-offices at Selick on Saturdays. There is every reason for encounemen, må for erchuued effort; the success which has crowned the movement at the cutset gives us every reason to hope, that before long employers and manufacturers will universally see the benefit of giving their employées an opportunity for recruiting their physical and mental strength.

PARLIAMENTARY NOTES.

LORD EBRINGTON's motion on the Burial Acts is not without its significance. He proposed that if the lines of demarcation between the two parts of a burial-ground are "such as have been generally deemed requisite," but not such as to satisfy the diocesan, the ground should be declared fit for use by one of the Secretaries of State: and that ministers of the Church of England should be exempted from ecclesiastical penalties for officiating at interments in ground thus left unconsecrated. The motion was only lost, after a prolonged discussion, by a majority of three. We certainly have no

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wish to let our party differences rise up impassably between the bodies of men whose souls are together in glory-but, on the one hand, the majority of those who have spent their lives in our branch of the Church on earth, have a natural desire to lie in death in the place which she has set apart for Christian burial; and, on the other hand, it would be impossible that any but the Church's ministers should perform the last offices over those who are thus laid in ground which she has consecrated for her members. Lord Ebrington's motion would have secularized one of the holiest of our privileges as members of the Church of England, and we are therefore glad that it was defeated.

The same noble Lord has given notice of a motion next session for the opening of the National Gallery, British Museum, and Crystal Palace on Sundays. With a Government which can countenance Sir Benjamin Hall's Sabbath brass-bands, what might not be the result of such a measure! God grant, for His Church's sake, that it may fail!

Among the other notices for next session we find one by Mr. Heywood for the Appointment of a Commission having for its object the revision of the present Translation of the Bible. We scarcely expected, on reading Rogers' "Eclipse of Faith," that the myth of the "Blank Bible" was in such imminent danger of speedy realization. We know not where the strifes of the revision-committee would end-we dare not picture the confusion which would inevitably ensue if King James's Bible were now superseded. We are not insensible to its many faults, but we think that every useful purpose would be effected if the marginal readings were adopted into the text. No new version, or extensive revision, could satisfy all sides: each denomination would soon have its own version, until versions would be as plentiful as texts of the manuscripts: we should thenceforth have no basis on which to argue; and those who repudiated the royal supremacy would not fail to set up their own version as the only true one, and to take their stand on it in controversy. Besides this, we think that a slightly improved accuracy of translation would be but a poor compensation for the loss of the inimitable beauties which cast a halo round our Saxon translation, before which even Luther's German shines dim. It would be a wrong to our common Christianity to rend from us the words which were stamped on our hearts while we were yet at our mother's knees, which grew up with us in youth, and have rung with their heavenly music through our hearts in manhood. Even Romanists themselves

despite their laudations of their Douay version-feel the wondrous potency of King James's Bible, for their principal literary organ has recently spoken of it thus:

"It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped on its verses. The dower of all the gifts and trials of a man are hidden beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments; and all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good, speaks to him for ever of the English Bible. It is a sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed, and controversy never soiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant with one spark of righteousness about him, whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible."

Let us then cling to it still!

MISS NIGHTINGALE.

A PROPOSITION has been set on foot to testify, in some public manner, the national gratitude for the services of Miss Nightingale and her companions. There are few, we think, who will not admire the heroic devotion and Christian charity which prompted an English lady to leave her English home that she might become a patient watcher by the side of the sick and wounded in the war; and there are few, too, who would hesitate to award her the prize which she has so nobly earned. But the peculiar turn which-from Miss Nightingale's pecuniary affluence—the testimonial has taken, may be calculated to excite in some minds a not ungrounded apprehension. It is proposed to establish a "Nightingale Hospital" in London; to be tended by unpaid nurses, similar to those who volunteered for service at Scutari and Smyrna. The idea is obviously taken from the “ Sœurs de Charitié,” of continental towns, although, so far as we can learn, there is no intention of establishing anything like a Protestant nunnery. In its simple application the scheme is one which both deserves and promises success: the voluntary services of Christian ladies at the bedside of the sick and dying, are not to be thrown lightly away. Our only fears are, lest Tractarian management should render such an institution as productive of spiritual harm as it would be of bodily good. If we had some guarantee that the hospital would not be perverted to improper purposes, we should not for a moment scruple to give it our most cordial recommendation. In the absence of any such guarantee, we must act with caution. We

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have every confidence in Miss Nightingale's ability; we will yield to none in enthusiastic admiration of her moral courage; but we must hesitate before we consent to give religious influence over dying men, to a lady who is so far advanced in extreme sentiments as to be commonly reported to have passed the threshold of Popery. We hope that the promoters of the hospital will, for the very sake of the cause, lay an impartial foundation, and thus allow members of the great evangelical body to join conscientiously in so great and noble an undertaking. If the management of the institution is thus free from sectarian bias, we shall rejoice in its existence, for it will be a standing protest against the mercenary system which has hitherto prevailed; it will be a fitting tribute to one whose energy of character has triumphed alike over prudery and routine in the effort to fufil her mission; and it will enable Christian ladies, without endangering their lives in the pestilences of stifled courts and the chambers of the sick poor, to shew their Christian charity and womanly tenderness in obedience to the Saviour's suggestion—" I was sick, and ye visited me.'

THE NATIONAL GALLERY.

THE National Gallery has long been a sad eyesore, both externally and internally; the one was the fault of our fathers, the other is our own; the former is, we fear, at present irremediable, the latter had lately a chance of amelioration. The cause of most internal defects was universally acknowledged to lie in the mismanagement of Sir Charles Eastlake, and accordingly Lord Elcho brought the matter before the notice of the House of Commons. A Parliamentary Committee of enquiry was appointed, and we began to think that a brighter day was dawning on national art; witnesses one after another spoke to the incompetence of the existing management, our hopes were more sanguine still; at last Sir Charles Eastlake's incompetency was admitted both by himself and the committee. We certainly began to discuss his successor. In April, Lord Palmerston informed the House that no appointment had hitherto taken place, and that all the arrangements of the National Gallery were still under the consideration of Government. In June, the House was again given to understand that the appointments were still "sub judice" and that no definite information could therefore be given. This continued postponement led the artistic world to expect that at least the old managers were thrown out,