It need hardly be observed that the unfavourable impression to which allusion has been made has been entirely created by Mr. Horace Mann’s Report on the Census of Religious Worship. That report has been assailed by the Bishop of Oxford, and other right reverend prelates; but their strictures, it is respectfully submitted, do not go quite to the point. It is not the account given of the present relative positions of Church and Dissent which has done the mischief. Every one knew that the Church was strongest in the country and Dissent in the towns; and seeing that the rural and the urban population were about equal, the public could scarcely be surprised to learn that the two bodies were also of nearly equal strength. According to the census, the Church had in 1851, 5,317,915 sittings, and the Dissenters 4,894,648; but the Bishop of Oxford has shown that there are good reasons for believing that the Church sittings have been unfairly diminished, while those belonging to Dissenters have been much exaggerated. On that point the writer will only add that the number of sittings assigned to the Churches in the tables relating to one large town, the only one he has had occasion to verify, is not above three-fourths of the real amount. The total number of attendants at Church on the census morning was 2,541,244, against 2,106,238 in the meeting-houses. Now, without pressing any objection that might be made to these figures on the score of dishonesty in the returns, it must be obvious that they do not fairly represent the average attendance. In the first place, such institutions as the colleges at the Universities are not taken into account. In the next place, no reference is made to such places as the workhouses, in most of which service is performed by a chaplain, and from which the dissenting inmates are allowed to attend the meeting-houses of their respective communities. Thirdly, the weather on the census Sunday was very inclement, and while the attendance generally would, no doubt, be less than an average, the effect would, beyond all controversy, be much more felt in Churches than in meeting-houses. The strength of the Church, it has already been said, is in the country, and it is quite a different thing in bad weather to walk a few hundred yards along a well-paved street, and to trudge a mile down a muddy lane. Fourthly, the attendants at all the morning masses in Roman Catholic chapels are returned, whereas it is well known that devout persons of that persuasion often “assist” at more than one mass on the same morning. Those persons have thus been counted twice over. Lastly, the day on which the census was taken was Mid-Lent Sunday, on which rustics in the northern counties are accustomed to pay visits to their friends instead of attending Divine service. That, in its degree, would also act unfavourably on the church-going of the census Sunday. If, therefore, we said that on