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Dioceses is there even a seeming falling off from the numbers of 1856; and in all these, we are satisfied, a full report would give a different result. The total, it will be seen, gives a net increase of 10,000 in two years; by no means, however, what we might expect, when, in one year, 17,400 were confirmed. The losses by deaths, if three per cent per annum, would indeed, in two years, amount to about 7000, (a solemn thought truly,) yet if there were 10,000 confirmed in 1856-7, and 17,000 in 1857-8, our gain ought to have been 20,000 instead of 10,000; for there are few, we trust, who would now present for Confirmation those who did not expect, at least, shortly to become communicants. We are sure that there are not so many as this would indicate withdrawing from our communion. It is to be remembered that the numbers confirmed are taken from the Bishop's Addresses which are reliable, the summary of communicants is from Parochial Reports, which are very incomplete. South-Carolina, for example, seems to have lost, in two years, 440 communicants; yet more than 800 were confirmed in the one year. But aside from all corrections, we have a total of 130,000 communicants; of those who habitually avow their faith in Christ and devotion to Him at His holy table: so many soldiers not only enlisted, but marshaled and accoutred for the Christian warfare. What are they doing in Christ's service? What might they be expected to do? Our limits of time and space forbid us to follow up or to attempt to answer these questions.

There are two or three aspects of these figures, at which however, we would like for a very short time to look. See Table B.

There is a wonderful inequality in the Dioceses thus measured. Only one, New-York, has over 20,000 communicants. Only three, Pa., Conn., and W. N. Y., have from 10,000 to 20,000. Five, Md., Mass., Va., S. C., and Ohio, have from 5000 to 10,000, N. J., III., N. C., R. I., Wis., Mich., have from 2000 to 5000. Sixteen Dioceses have less than 2000 each; they all together, with Michigan and Wisconsin added, not equalling the single Diocese of New-York. And yet, in our General Conventions, New-York has its one Bishop, and these have 18; New-York

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has four Clerical Delegates, and these may have 72. Still more, the work of administering that great Diocese devolves on one Bishop; has he too much to do, or have these eighteen too little? Should that Diocese be divided, or should some of the others, if practicable, be consolidated? In New-York county alone, there are reported 8500 communicants, and a full report would make the number exceed 10,000; so that were this county to be made a Diocese it would rank fifth; in this respect exceeding twenty-four of the existing Dioceses. So it is

in the next great city of our Union, in the adjoining Diocese of Pennsylvania. The reports from Philadelphia county, omitting eight parishes, (some of them quite large,) give an aggre gate of 8987; so that there are probably 10,000 communicants in the whole county; a number almost twice that reported from all the rest of that Diocese. It would be an interesting inquiry did our space permit, what, in the whole history of the Church has been the relation between the city and the country as affecting its growth and resources, and for ourselves what ought to be done to secure the hold of the Church of our af fections upon the rural population of the land? The last U.S. Census estimated the city, town, and village population of the Union to be only about one fourth of the whole number. What magnitude, then, have the just claims of the Diocesan Missionary work, now so feebly prosecuted in most of our Dioceses!

Among our investigations into the relations of these statistics to each other, we have been struck with the change of the relative position of the several Dioceses in view of the number and the growth of population, and of the extent of territory embraced. The smallest of our organized Dioceses is Rhode Island, with 1300 square miles. The least population is in Delaware, with 95,000 souls. The largest Diocese is Texas, with 237,000 square miles; enough to make 180 Rhode Islands. The greatest population is in Pa., estimated at 2,700,000almost as many as are found in all the New-England States. In Connecticut, our communicants bear a ratio to the whole population of one to thirty-four; in Tennessee and Indiana they are as one to one thousand. In comparing the reported communicants of 1838 with those of 1858, we find that Illinois has advanced 1337 per cent, and Louisiana 852 per cent, while Vermont has gained but 43 per cent. Yet if we take into account the relative increase of population, we shall find Vermont ranking among the first in proportionate growth. In this view Alabama has grown most rapidly, the communicants having advanced 640 per cent, while the population has increased 41 per cent the Church thus growing 15-61 times faster than the population. Maine comes next, then Georgia, then Ver

mont, Tennessee, Louisiana, Kentucky, Delaware, Indiana, Illinois, New-Hampshire, Connecticut, North-Carolina, Mississippi, and New-Jersey, in all of which Dioceses the growth of the number of communicants has exceeded more than five-fold that of the population. It is pleasant to perceive that there is a like advance in kind, if not in degree, in every Diocese. Every where the Church is gaining at least in numbers; God grant that her members may be faithful to the high trust committed to them, so that their growth may be healthful as it is steady! The Lord our God add unto His people, how many soever they be, a hundred fold!

ART. III.-GLADSTONE'S HOMER AND THE
HOMERIC AGE.

Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age. By the Right Hon. W. E. GLADSTONE, D.C.L., M.P. for the University of Oxford. 3 vols. Oxford. At the University Press. 1858.

Ar a time when the importance of classical culture is so little appreciated, it is refreshing to meet with such a noble contribution, as these volumes afford, towards the settlement of those great questions which relate to the Poems and the Age of Homer. We can not but feel a special pleasure, also, in the fact that these volumes are the production of one who labors under a constant pressure of the most important public duties; for it assures us, that there are some, who in the midst of the cares and perplexities of office, love to renew the generous studies of their youth, and to gather broad and comprehensive views and a calm and elevated wisdom, from a fresh perusal of those works which stirred the imagination and roused the enthusiam of their early years. The world owes a debt of gratitude to Mr. Gladstone for the new light which he has thrown upon the marvellous wealth and beauty of the poems of Homer. VOL. VI.-12

His abundant illustrations of every department of his subject, and his fine taste and discrimination in critical analysis, have added vastly to the interest and delight with which even the Iliad and the Odyssey are read. But we conceive that Mr. Gladstone is most of all entitled to our gratitude for the ability with which he has resisted some of the most dangerous historical errors of the age, and vindicated some of the most important principles of a Christian Philosophy of History.

One would hardly have expected to find, in a work upon the Poems and Age of Homer, a discussion of questions which affect the view which we take, of the whole history of the world; and by which the ground-plan, so to speak, of that History must be determined.

But these poems, it must be remembered, furnish us with peculiar advantages for such universal investigations. They stand at the fountain-head of secular literature. They furnish us with the earliest information, which we possess, of that wonderful civilization, which they themselves did so much to mould, and which has come down from that age to us. They present to us the only picture which we have of that heroic race and age, in which the human side of our complex civilization had its rise. Now we are greatly mistaken, if these facts do not furnish us with some most valuable results. We are fully aware of the great difficulty, which attends these investigations; and that in many respects, probability must be our only guide, but we are satisfied that a calm and dispassionate consideration of these facts will convince us, that we stand on solid ground, and that our inquiries only confirm the great principles of a Christian Philosophy of History.

We are met at the beginning of these investigations with a difficulty, which must first be considered. Mr. Grote, whose extraordinary ability in the department of Grecian History must be admitted, and whose opinions are entitled to profound respect, rejects all incidents previous to the Olympiad of Coræbus, or 776 B.C., as not reducible to history or chronology.* If this is so, the poems of Homer are without value, as the

*Grote's History of Greece, ii. p. 34.

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