In taking leave of the Caroline revision, it may be permitted to dwell for a moment upon the serious character of the conclusion reached by the ecclesiastical leaders of that day. An opportunity was given them to conciliate dissent. Without going all lengths, without in any measure imperilling the great foundation principles of Anglican religion, they might, it would seem, have won back to the national church thousands of those whom their sternness not only repelled but permanently embittered. But it was the hour of victory with the Churchmen, and "Woe to the conquered" seems to have been their cry. They set their faces as a flint against concession; they passed their iron-clad act of uniformity, and now for more than two hundred years religion in Great Britain has been a household divided against itself. Perhaps nothing that the men of the Restoration could have done would have made it otherwise. Perhaps the familiar question of the cynical Dean of St. Patrick's, "What imports it how large a gate you open, if there be always left a number who place a pride and a merit in refusing to enter?" was a fair question, and fatal to any dream of unity. And yet one may be pardoned for believing that had a little of the oil of brotherly kindness been poured upon those troubled waters we whom the waves still buffet might to-day be sailing a smoother sea. As stated above, the Convocation of 1662 gave to the Prayer Book of the Church of England the form it has ever since retained. But it must not be supposed that no efforts have been made meanwhile to bring changes to pass. The books written upon the subject form a literature by themselves. The one really serious attempt to reconstruct the Liturgy in post-Caroline times was that which grew naturally enough out of the Revolution of 1688. In every previous crisis of political change, the Prayer Book had felt the tremor along with the statute-book.