"The movement commenced by Henry VIII, judged by its present results, had brought the country at last into the hands of mere adventurers. The people had exchanged a superstition which, in its grossest abuses, prescribed some shadow of respect for obedience, for a superstition which merged obedience in speculative belief; and under that baneful influence, not only the higher virtues of self-sacrifice, but the commonest duties of probity and morality, were disappearing. Private life was infected with impurity to which the licentiousness of the Catholic clergy appeared like innocence. The Government was corrupt, the courts of law were venal. The trading classes cared only to grow rich. The multitude were mutineers from oppression.... The better order of commonplace men, who had a conscience, but no special depth of insight--who had small sense of spiritual things, but a strong perception of human rascality--looked on in a stern and growing indignation, and, judging the tree by its fruits, waited their opportunity for action." When Mary came to the throne there was an immense outburst of enthusiasm, the time of the Protestant protectorates was looked back on as a bad dream. In spite of the fact that England was under an interdict, the Mass was restored, and no rector or vicar cared a straw for the Papal bull, nor indeed did Mary, who heard Mass in the chapel of the Tower, and afterwards in S. Paul's. If Mary had only accepted the advice tendered to her by Charles V, she would have reigned as a popular monarch, and have settled the condition of the Church of England on lines that commended themselves to nobles, commons, and clergy alike, Catholic but not Papal. But she had looked too long to the see of Peter as her support, and she managed completely to alienate the affections of her people. The fires of Smithfield brought the fanatics who had been discredited in the former reign into favour once more; and when Elizabeth came to the throne, and had been deposed by Pope Pius V, and her subjects released from allegiance to her, and plots formed for her assassination, under favour of the Pope, the religious sentiment in England was cleft as with a hatchet--some who loved the religion of their fathers were constrained against their will and consciences to become Papists, and others became wild and reckless fanatics in a Puritan direction. Between these two parties sat the vast bulk of the English people, looking this way, that way, and deeming all religion foolishness, and self-interest the only thing to be sought after. All the foundations of the religious world were out of course. The _via media_ is all very well in theory and when well trodden, but when it is experimental, and one road to the right leads to Rome and that to the left to Geneva, the _via media_ may be taken to lead nowhere, and those who tread it have to do so uncertainly. A session between two stools is precarious, and the Church of England had been forced by the folly of