The truth is, the changes set forth in _The Proposed Book_ were too sweeping to commend themselves to the sober second-thought of men whose blood still showed the tincture of English conservatism. Possibly also some old flames of Tory resentment were rekindled, here and there, by the prominence given in the book to a form of public thanksgiving for the Fourth of July. There were Churchmen doubtless at that day who failed duly to appreciate what were called in the title of the office, "the inestimable blessings of Religious and Civil Liberty." Others again may have been offended by the treatment measured out to the Psalter, which was portioned into thirty selections of two parts each, with the _Benedicite_ added at the end, to be used, if desired, on the thirty-first day of any month. Another somewhat crude and unliturgical device was the running together without break of the Morning Prayer and the Litany. I speak of blemishes, but _The Proposed Book_ had its excellences also. Just at present it is the fashion in Anglican circles to heap ridicule and contempt on _The Proposed Book_ out of all proportion to its real demerits. Somehow it is thought to compromise us with the English by showing up our ecclesiastical ancestors in an unfavorable light as unlearned and ignorant men. It is treated as people will sometimes treat an old family portrait of a forebear, who in his day was under a cloud, mismanaged trust funds, or made money in the slave trade. Thus a grave historiographer by way of speaking comfortably on this score, assures us that the volume "speedily sunk into obscurity," becoming one of the rarest of the books illustrative of our ecclesiastical annals. And yet, curiously enough, _The Proposed Book_ was in some points more "churchly," using the word in a sense expressive of liturgical accuracy, than the book finally adopted. In the Morning Prayer it has the _Venite_ in full and not abridged. The _Benedictus_ it also gives entire. A single form of Absolution is supplied. The versicles following upon the Creed are more numerous than ours. In the Evening Prayer the great Gospel Hymns, _the Magnificat_ and the _Nunc dimittis_, stand in the places to which we with tardy justice have only just restored them.