The second stood thus: “That the marriage of H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh to the daughter of the Czar affords hope of such mutual understanding between the English and Russian churches as may facilitate future intercommunion.” Alas, poor Church of England! Within the breast of many of her more earnest members is lovingly cherished the delusive dream of the “corporate reunion” of what they are pleased to call the “three branches of the church.” Wearied of their long isolation, they stretch out their hands—to whom? On the one side, to a schism about double the age of their own, but too free from many of their errors and too devoted to the Ever Blessed Mother of God to give easy welcome to so dubious an ally as the creation of Cranmer and his king; and, on the other side, to a schism of a few months old, to which they equally look forward to join hand in hand, and thus, by adding schism to schism, fondly expect Catholic unity as the result! But what, then, is their attitude with regard to the ancient church? Opposition, strengthened by jealous fear. There is in the Church of England an hereditary antipathy to the Catholic Church, which is evinced in its Articles, more fully developed in its _Homilies_, and sustained in the writings not only of the first reformers, but of all the succession of Anglican divines, with scarcely an exception, no matter how much they may have differed among themselves in their several schools of religious opinion. Nor is the spirit dead within it now. For instance, was there ever a more gigantic commotion than that which was raised all over England, in every corner of the land, and among clergy and laity alike, than that which followed upon the simple act of Pope Pius IX., when, within the memory of the present generation, he exchanged the government of the Catholic Church in England by vicars‐apostolic for that of a regular and established hierarchy? “The same animus exists even among the less Protestant and more eminent of its champions in the present day, among whom we need only mention the names of Dr. Wordsworth, Mr. Palmer, and the Dean of Canterbury among moderate High Churchmen.” It manifests itself also quite as plainly in the Tractarian, Ritualistic, and “Extreme” schools of High‐Church development; for instance, F. Harper quotes a letter published and signed by an “Old Tractarian,” in which the Catholic bishops are described as “the present managers of the Roman schism in England,” and a clergyman of the same school, well known at Oxford, on one occasion observed to the writer of the present notice: “We are the Catholics; you are simply Romanists; that is to say, Roman schismatics.”