If Protestant Dissenters boast of their enlightenment or of their reverence for Scripture, the Church may meet them on that ground likewise with the utmost confidence. The Prayer-book scarcely recognises a person to be a Churchman if he cannot read; and she directs some forty psalms and some thirty chapters of the Bible to be gone through every week. In a word, approach the Church of England from the most opposite points, and she will be found to possess exactly that attribute which a person might think is most admirable. The man who reverences antiquity—who has a taste for art—who has a passion for ritual—who would have everything “understanded of the people,”—he who insists upon ranks and orders—and he who stands up for popular rights, will equally find in the Church of this country the very quality which he deems important. Never was there any institution so “many-sided;” never one that became with so much success “all things to all men.” How she could ever have lost her hold on the affections of Englishmen is indeed wonderful; but, in truth, until lately, she has never had a chance of making herself understood. _Now_, for the first time, her theory is beginning to be appreciated; and the success which has attended her, wonderful as it has been, is probably but the foretaste of a future more brilliant than anything of which we can now form an idea. FOOTNOTES. {11} The above tables, it is right to say, have been obtained by subtracting Mr. Mann’s tables relating to the Church from the tables relating to places of worship in the aggregate. {19} It is right to say that the decennial periods do not exactly agree. In Mr. Mann’s tables they are from 1801–11, &c.; in Mr. Bright’s return, from 1800–10, &c. It is not, however, apprehended that this circumstance would materially affect the calculation. {25} Neale estimates the Nonconformists, in the time of Charles II., at a hundred and fifty thousand families, or three quarters of a million persons; in other words, at about a sixth of the population. If the Dissenters had in 1801 only 881,240 sittings, their number of morning attendants would be considerably less than 400,000; and, allowing each attendant to represent three persons, that would give a Dissenting population of about 1,100,000. {26} The faculty of reasoning correctly in figures is not so ordinary an accomplishment as might have been supposed. Even so intelligent a writer as Mr. Henry Mayhew prints, at page 391 of his “Great World of London,” a table, of which the following is a specimen:— 1842. Can neither Can read read nor only (percent) write (percent). Convicted at assizes 39.79 27.21 and sessions Convicted—summarily 39.90 21.65 Average 39.84 24.43