be answered without any equivocation or shuffling reservation whatever?

The letter of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford (Dr. Plumptre) to the Duke of Wellington abounds with statements-assertions rather which require to be proved. How are they to be proved to the satisfaction of the public but by a rigid investigation and by the report of well-informed and impartial Commissioners ? One of the most extraordinary reasons assigned for the resistance of certain parties to this Commission is the following:-" It would obviously tend, not only to interrupt our labours and studies, but to check and obstruct the natural and healthy progress of improvement which has of late years proceeded as rapidly as is consistent with the proper working of the academical system." In reply to such a vague and extraordinary statement as this, we remark that no Commission whatever will be blessed with sufficient powers to see the progress of this improvement; but people of ordinary capacity can see through the objections to the Commission. Some of the tradesmen in the university towns can bear witness to the manner in which the hours of "labour" and "study" are passed; and too frequently have we presented to us, in the records of the Insolvent Court, the result of these "labours" and "studies;" that Court having, from week to week, shown that it alone possesses the proper check to what is called the "natural" and "healthy" progress of university improvement.

It will be observed that his Royal Highness Prince Albert distinctly says-and no doubt the Prince is well advised-" Any hostility or opposition on the part of the university (Cambridge) could not prevent the issue of the Commission by the present Government; and, while it might add strength to the accusations of their enemies, would only lead to the result of the enquiry remaining incomplete, and as based upon one-sided evidence, probably injurious to the universities themselves." The tone of the Prince in his missive to his Vice-Chancellor is not only dignified but kind: in a previous part of his letter his Royal Highness says "I would recommend the authorities of the University not to meet it [the Commission] with opposition; but rather to take it as the expression on the part of the Crown and the Parliament of a natural desire to be accurately informed upon the present state of institutions so closely connected with, and of such vital importance to, the best interests of the nation; and to take a pride in showing to those who have indulged in attacks against them that they have conscientiously and zealously fulfilled the great task entrusted to them."

We are glad to see that his Royal Highness Prince Albert

has taken this part in academical reform. To be connected with the improvement of that which ought and must give a tone to the intellectual and spiritual feelings of the nation, is a high ambition even for one in his exalted position. We can scarcely forbear quoting a well known sentence of Machiavel, which appears to bear upon the attempted reform of abuses so great as those which exist at Oxford and Cambridge. It is to the effect that a prince desirous of a monument of imperishable fame should select a period full of faults and errors to apply remedies where they are most necessary.

We wish we had time to add a few words with respect to the authority of Parliament, in spite of our promise to abstain from this question. In the reign of Edward I. the right of jurisdiction of the Parliament is fully acknowledged. We have the "Petitio Universitatis in Parliamento facta," together with the "Non obstante prohibitione; cui responsum est, sicut habet Universitas Oxoniensis, sic habeant." In the reigns of Edward II. and III. we have a variety of Acta in Parliamdento. Then comes the Act of Incorporation of Queen Elizabeth, with the full flourish of royal prerogative appended to it. However, on these points we refer to a work of Mr. Dyer on the University of Cambridge, where will be found much research and learning. "The supreme visitorial power in our universities (says this gentleman), now in fucto as well as de jure, resides there(namely, on the supreme authority of the State); and on any great occasion, which would justify their interference, it would be the joint duty of the High Court of Parliament to appoint Commissioners, wise and good men, who might advance such improvements as, from the light of the times and the present state of our universities, might be thought expedient,'

Such is the object of the present Royal Commission. We trust that the advice of Prince Albert will be taken by the universities; and that all real, good, and disinterested friends of Oxford and Cambridge will agree openly with us, that it is at once necessary and expedient to reform, and that this is the best method of creating a reformation.

Corporations, like individuals, when what they conceive to be their interests are attacked, are naturally narrow-minded and selfish. We are assured that a more liberal spirit will create a new interest for the universities, and that their real power and wealth will be rather increased than diminished by the results of the Commission; whilst the benefit to the whole world, beginning with England as the centre, will be great, distinguished, and valuable.

Let us add that, if it should be determined at the termina

tion of the Commission, that there are many ancient statutes, ordinances, and customs, worthy of being preserved, as counter to any spirit of advancement of the day which is not based on truth or true religion, then it will become a duty to sift the good from the bad, and to adapt what is good to the present state of improvement and to the wants of this age as exhibited in its free genius and scientific attainments. The useless, the bad, and the false in application, will at the same time be separated and dismissed from their injurious connexion with the universities.

"Hoc illud est præcipue in cognitione rerum salubre et frugiferum, omnis te exempli documenta in illustri posita monumento intueri: inde tibi tuæque reipublicæ, quod imitare, capias: inde fœdum inceptum, fœdum exitu, quod vites."

Christianity in Ceylon. By Sir JAMES EMERSOn Tennent, K.H., &c. London: Murray. 1850.

THE British empire in India is, in all respects, one of the most remarkable that the world ever saw. It is not the dominion of force over weakness-of intellect over imbecility-of brute vio-- ! lence over enervated civilization, nor of civilization over barbarism; but it is a strange and yet beneficial compound of all. There are races as brave and as formidable as any Anglo-Indian army that could be exposed to them; scholars as profound as any sent forth by our universities; arts and civilization far more ancient; but the whole power of the European mind bas been brought into collision with the whole power of the Asiatic mind. The finest races of both continents have been engaged in the struggle, and Asia has succumbed. In the warlike part of the contest the result has necessarily been immediate; the natural consequence of each successive campaign has been to increase the territory of the victor; the native princes have sought the aid of the British power, have become first allies, then protected rulers, and at last merely agents. The shadow of independent government has been finally given up, and new provinces added to the Indian dominions of Great Britain.

But the intellectual and spiritual rule of Europe has not been so rapidly successful. Entrenched in the intricacies of. difficult and complicated languages-of metaphysical and comprehensive systems--the native learning and religions have kept their own place with comparatively little invasion. The native

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Indian hears the discourse of the missionary, pronounces it very good," exhibits the most invariable politeness, and indeed high breeding, and goes away for the most part with his mind totally unaffected, and his heart altogether untouched. The island of Ceylon, as the most interesting in many points of all our Indian possessions, has been particularly the object of missionary enterprise, and its supposed failure there has struck discouragement to the hearts of many who hoped to see Christianity everywhere triumphant. The work named at the head of this article is a wise and seasonable publication: sound in matter, quiet and unenthusiastic in tone, it is yet calculated to raise the spirits of the missionary, and to encourage missionary exertions at home more than any work which has for years issued from the press.

Sir James Emerson Tennent, long and advantageously known as the able Secretary of the Board of Control and representing Belfast in Parliament, has for some years past occupied the important and distinguished post of Colonial Secretary at Ceylon. Deeply interested in all religious and educational questions, he made it his business to investigate the labours and to ascertain the prospects of those engaged in Ceylon on these momentous objects; to aid them with all the power and influence which his position gave him; and to protect them from being misunderstood, or, what is always more likely, from being misrepresented. The work before us contains the result of his observations, and we are bound to say that a book more characterised by learning, research, soundness, and enlarged Christian charity, would not easily be found. Sir Emerson commences with the earliest ages in which Christianity was, or was supposed to be, existent in Ceylon.

"The earliest notice of the existence of Christianity in Ceylon is that of Cosmas Indopleustos, an Egyptian merchant, and afterwards a monk, who published his Christian Topography' in the reign of Justinian, in order to vindicate the cosmography of the Old Testament from what he believed to be the heresies of the Ptolemaic system." Cosmas, who was himself a Nestorian, tells that in Taprobane (the ancient Greek name of Ceylon) there existed a community of believers, with an episcopal form of discipline, priests, deacons, and a liturgy. This slender statement has afforded material for enlarged speculation as to the doctrines, the extent, and duration of an early Church in Ceylon. It has been assumed as proof of the conversion of the Singhalese prior to the fifth and sixth centuries; and the author of the History of Christianity in India' propounds it as more than probable that the Church so implanted survived till the arrival of the Portuguese in 1505, when their buildings no doubt shared the fate of the temples of Buddhu, which they (the Portuguese) pulled down, and

with the materials erected churches of their own religion on all parts of the coast."

It would, indeed, be delightful could we imagine that the apostles had thus planted the cross in this most interesting of islands; but, alas, for the legend! Facts and authorities range themselves on the other side, and we must renounce the notion :

"A reference to the original authority disposes at once of these eager conjectures. Cosmas expressly declares that the members of the Church in Ceylon were Persians, and merely sojourners-a portion, no doubt, of that concourse of merchants and travellers who then resorted to the northern parts of the island as the great depot and emporium of eastern trade; but that the natives and their kings were of a different religion. As to doctrine, the probability is that they were of the same faith and form of ecclesiastical government as the Syrian Churches in the southern promontory of India, which were founded in the third or fourth century by Christians from the Persian Gulf, whose successors to the present time have preserved a form of Christianity, however corrupted, and maintained an uninterrupted connexion with the original Church; first, through the see of Seleucia, and since through the Patriarch of Antioch. But, with the decline of oriental commerce, and the diminished resort of merchants from Arabia and Persia, the travellers and adventurers who formed the members of the first Christian body in Ceylon, ceased to frequent the shores of Manaar; and Christianity, never firmly rooted, gradually decayed and disappeared. Between the sixth century and the arrival of the Portuguese in the sixteenth, we have but few accounts of the internal condition of the island, and no mention whatsoever of a Christian community."

The first missionaries, then, properly so called, were the Roman Catholics; and they attended the Portuguese invaders in their career of conquest :

"Information is scanty as to the nature of the means adopted by the Portuguese for the introduction and establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in Ceylon. There is no proof that compulsion was resorted to by them for the extension of their own faith, or violence employed for the extinction of the national superstitions; and the probability is that the priests and missionaries of the Portuguese were contented to pursue in Ceylon the same line of policy and adopt the same expedients for conversion which had already been found successful by their fellow-labourers on the opposite continent of India.

"Their possessions in either place were detached, their tenure uncertain, and in danger at all times, from the jealousy or hostilities of the neighbouring princes; and, from the analogy of the two cases, the presumption is warranted that the Portuguese in Ceylon, under the pressure of similar circumstances, followed the example and instructions of the Viceroy and Archbishop of Goa, and that tlie amount of assist