Nor even an Archbishop is wise at all hours, and we regret to find that the gravest and most cautious of prelates Dr. Tait, has for once spoken unadvisodly with his lips. We cannot find a reason for his Grace's observation, except that he was at Carlisle, a town which appears to enjoy a perennial "silly season," and the air appears to have " blown this vice" of rash speech into the usually calm Caledonian word-weigher. The occasion of the unwonted indiscretion was a missionary. gathering, and the Archbishop of Canterbury was pleading the cause of the evangelization of the heathen. The ground he took was certainly new, and we fear that is all that can be said in its favour.
London, as all the world knows, was lately blessed with the presence of the Burmese Ambassadors, and it is also Known that a score or two of Hindoo gentlemen are at this moment studying Law at the Temple and at Gray's Inn.
On these rather slender data the Archbishop erects a very large edifice. He avers that there is much danger from the presence of these heathen. They are attractions, and are duly lionized by the leaders of Fashion who are anxious for a sensation and a novelty, and hence it is believed there is considerable peril to the faith of the British people. Now, really, we think that on this occasion caution has become timidity. We do not imagine that the people of England are likely to be perverted by the Panthays or led into wild and deadly heterodoxy by the Burmese. From the Japanese we conceive there is even less danger, for, if they go on being Europeanized at their present pace, all that will remain for the Westerns to imitate will be a bad copy of themselves.
Tt is hardly decorous to imagine an Archbishop (specially when he happens to be a Scotchman) making jokes, but the idea that the denizens of Pump Court will suddenly become Buddhists, or that the royal and noble personages who have assisted at the receptions of the Burmese, will be led into strange beliefs by the example of these Orientals, seems to have very little probability to bear it out. Still more fantastic is the apprehension that the miserable Chinamen and Lascars who frequent the opium dens in Ratcliff Highway will corrupt London roughs. It is trae that, in the "Mystery of Edwin Drood," a chorister in a Cathedral is represented as succumbing tothe pipe, but this precedent is not to be insisted on, and, as the work is (alas!) incomplete, we can scarcely venture to use it in this connection. As the field of conjecture with regard to the end of the novel is perfectly open, we may in charity suppose that Mr. Dickens intended to have the Opium-smoking Chinaman ultimately converted; at all events, this is as good an end to the book as any which has been supplied, and it is certain that no heathen missionary of mischief could possibly have made Mr. Jasper a greater scoundrel chan he was. Jesting apart, however, we think that harm is done by exaggerations like that of which the Archbishop has been guilty. The dwellers in the East end of London are so bad that it would probably be a blessing if they adopted any system which taught the rudiments of morality and adhered to it; and, as for the West end, we fear that Ambassadors from the Far East are more likely to learn evil in the Great City than to teach it. The Mikado will soon probably be in England, and if the authorities would learn from him a few lessons in Ecclesiastical Reform, the whole nation would be gainers. We have dwelt on this important subject lately, and have no desire to return to it, but, when we read of the vagaries of sectarianism in the old countries, we are tempted to wish for a hint from the Sovereign who has called unity out of chaos in the religious world of Japan by a stroke of his pen, If we may credit Captain Burton's new work, " Unexplored Syrian," there is much reason for alarm lest the Mahomedans in and about Damascus be corrupted by the Syria Christians, who seem to bring every vice to ripe perfection. It would be awkward if the Imanm should take a leaf out of Dr Tait's book, The slip, however, has doubtless been repented of; and we may say with another Archbishop, the great Leighton, "Deliver me from the errors of wise men; yea and of good men."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.