raised in the diocese for Church purposes was 308,565%. In the next three years it was 330,215, and now, so far from the liberality of the diocese being exhausted, the amount of contributions is larger than before, and reaches 345,0672.

The charge for 1876 gives a sum-total under the same heading of 394,676. Some years of unusual commercial prosperity are included in the period thus brought under review, but the " Record of the Diocese" contained in the "Ripon Diocesan Calendar " for 1877 abundantly proves that the recent unparalleled depression of Yorkshire trade has not as yet checked the steady increase of benefactions to the Church.

Church still holds in elementary education. Unhappily the pressure is most felt in the poorest districts, the very places in which voluntary schools were most needed, and where they have been planted by the most self-denying exertions. It is satisfactory to learn from the ample statistics given in the "Report of the Committee of Council on Education for 1876-1877," that only fifteen schools which had obtained a building grant have been closed in consequence of the competition of school boards. We are surprised to find that more than half of the 3,500l. thus wasted was granted for school-buildings in Leeds and Halifax, where public spirit might be expected to sustain any efficient voluntary school.

But a deeper study of the authorized statistics reveals a condition of things which is positively startling, and more than justifies the complaints which have been made of the unfair pressure of Mr. Forster's Act upon the supporters of voluntary schools. At the date of the last annual return there was an average attendance of 39,338 scholars in the board schools of the West Riding, and of 131,532 scholars in voluntary schools, of whom 89,459 attended Church of England schools, and 42,073 belonged to other communities.

The board schools earned an annual grant upon inspection of 27,306.; the Church schools 59,722.; and the other voluntary schools 27,0597.: so that the board schools obtained a grant of about 3 1-2d. a head more than the scholars in Church schools, and had a greater advan tage over voluntary schools not connected with the Church of England.

A curiously perverted argument in favor of the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church has been based upon the magnitude of its voluntary efforts during the last half-century. A Church, it is argued, which can do so much for itself, can spare the endowments bequeathed to it by the past. It would be as reasonable to argue that a load which four strong horses can drag easily up-hill could therefore as well be drawn by two of them. It is the endowments of the past, together with the benefactions of the present, that have placed the Church in her high position. Without the action of the ecclesiastical commissioners in supplying endowments for poor livings with large populations, and in liberally meeting benefactions in the cases where Church patronage is vested in private persons, the results of recent Church extension might have been far less satisfactory. That Churchmen are capable of large sacrifices to maintain their clergy, even when required to do so under circumstances which might afford a specious reason for refusal, was signally proved in their redemption last year of the Halifax vicar's rate at a cost of 12,000l.; when their liberality not only relieved the vicar from all anxiety about his income, but made a present to every non-subscribing and Nonconformist landlord of the purchase-value of the rate to which his property was Hable. But the barest justice demands that the question should be shaped very differently, and that it should be asked, with respect to the property held in trust for the Church, whether the ob-enables us to do. jects of the trust are legitimate, and whether the funds are being properly applied to them.

The Education Act of 1870 naturally came into immediate operation in the large West Riding towns, and it is with some anxiety that we inquire what position the

Such a result might be regarded with equanimity. The race seems hardly an unequal one when it is remembered that every little village school has been entered into our estimate, and that it is much harder to meet known deficiencies in all such instances from voluntary subscriptions than from rates. If due allowance be made for such cases, it will be evident that the Church schools, as tested by results, supply an equally good secular education with the board schools. But it is most important to investigate the cost at which these equal results are obtained, and this the "Report of the Education Department"

The whole amount of building grants to Church schools, including sums granted by the treasury before a committee of council was formed, was 116,143/. 135. 2d., to which 25,822/. 75. 8d. should be added for other voluntary schools, making a total cost to the public purse of 141,966. for

requisite; and a lecture hall, which fur-porary churches. At least a hundred of nishes a place for religious meetings and these are now forming the centres of fufor gatherings which foster corporate feel- ture congregations, and preparing the way ing and lead to the united action of for more settled and stately services. We Churchmen, these are among the advan- are constrained to dismiss, with a passing tages afforded by the Bradford Church notice, the choral services which form so Institute, which is probably entitled to remarkable a feature of public worship in take the first place in the list, and which the West Riding, and which are so univerhas enrolled four hundred and thirty-six sal in town parishes, that a surpliced choir honorary and thirteen hundred and eighty- and full cathedral service is the rule, not six ordinary members. The Bradford the exception, and is no longer distinctive building cost over 14,000l.; that at Leeds, of a party. We can only allude to the 8,300l. Almost every large town and im- combined efforts made at intervals, through portant village has now its Church insti- a Church mission, to reach, if only for a tute; and a Yorkshire Union of Church season, the entire population even of the Institutes has been formed, to gather and most populous towns, and which, when disseminate the results of the experience carefully prepared beforehand and effiof separate institutions, and to combine ciently carried out, as at the Leeds Church them, when necessary, for united action. Mission in 1875, arrest the attention of The importance of this agency, as afford- every class, and, after all allowance made ing new power for Church work, is al- for mere excitement, leave the Church a ready considerable, and it bids fair to fur- substantial gain. But beyond and in some nish an effectual tête de pont against the degree including all these, the most noteassaults of foes from without. worthy feature of recent Church progress in Yorkshire is the growing desire for increased corporate life and action. If union be strength, associated action must further and assist individual effort, and the tendency to such development is everywhere manifest. Church parochial councils, Sunday-school associations, Church institutes, Church conferences, are but varying forms which spring from the same motive. Most wisely is this feeling fostered by the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Ripon. The year 1878 will see the first Ripon Diocesan Conference, in which the laity in equal proportions with the clergy will take, as they are entitled, their full share in deliberation upon questions vitally affecting the welfare of the Church.

Whatever the feelings amongst pronounced Dissenters, the influence of the Church in the West Riding is enormously increased amongst that vast mass of the working class who are indifferent to all merely religious disputes. Three causes have specially contributed to this result. 1. The active support afforded by the clergy to the Ten Hours' Bill. 2. The efforts made by the Church to provide elementary education. 3. The pastoral work of the clergy, who have for the most part observed no distinction of sect in house-to-house visitation and in the distribution of charitable offices. The favorable impression thus made has been immensely aided by the wide adoption of the free and open church system, which, fostered as it is by the prelates who govern the Church of the West Riding, is advancing rapidly, and promises, more than any other individual agency, to win back our working people to public worship.*

We have no space to dwell upon one of the newest forms of Church extension by the erection of mission-rooms and tem

A few figures will show how liberal a response is made when the maintenance of the Church services and of parochial institutions is left under this system to the voluntary offerings of the congregation. The offertory at Leeds parish church last year amounted to over 1,500l., of which sum more than two-thirds was made up of silver and copper coins. St. John's, Leeds, shows a gradual and almost uninterrupted advance from 4257. in 1868 to 6367. in 1876. Wakefield parish church returns 1,056.; St. Jude's, Bradford, 8557.; and Holy Trinity, Bradford, a very poor and populous district, 3631.

It is in no spirit of idle self-complacency that Churchmen contemplate the advance made during the last few years by the Church of the West Riding. If much has been done, much still remains to be done. Yet we may thankfully believe that the ground already occupied will afford a sufficient base of operations from whence to make renewed efforts. Experience has taught what means are the least costly, the speediest in results, and the most elastic in adaptation. A few years ago the position of the Church in this populous region might have seemed hopeless; now, it is not too much to say that, vast as is the task that lies before her, it is not beyond her power effectually to deal with it. But to accomplish so glorious a result the Church must be true to herself. We could sum up the action required of her by reversing Hu

bert's advice to King John, and could | King Arthur's castle of La Garde Joyeuse.

Fret not yourself against your other foes,
Only make peace between yourself and you.

It is the solemn duty of all Churchmen at this season of great opportunity, and therefore of great responsibility, to encourage the united action of men of various shades of opinion; to continue and increase their self-denying efforts for Church extension; and to repress, even at the cost of strong personal feeling, any such development as can, by awakening prejudice, check the progress of the Church's hold upon the hearts of the people. Such a wise and generous policy would enable the Church in the West Riding to overtake the arrears of the past, to meet the wants of the present, and, by God's blessing, to insure a future of lasting and unspeakable benefit to the warm-hearted and intelligent people to whom it is her duty and her privilege to minister.

THE FERRY OF CARNOET.

A BRETON BEGGAR'S STORY.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "PATTY."

WE were extremely hungry - famished is perhaps a truer word, for we had started from Landerneau without breakfasting. We wanted to see several places of interest near this pretty little town, and we had reached the inn so late the night before, that we had not bespoken any provisions for our journey.

These ruins consist of a picturesque fragment of a gateway, overgrown by trees and wreathed in ivy, and a sort of vaulted crypt into which one of us nearly tumbled. The driver was so long in finding out this ruin that we began to feel starved, but though we stopped at every place like an inn in the villages we passed through, the answer was always the same when the driver asked for "white bread," a shake of the head.

After this we went in search of the fa

mous tomb of Troilus of Montdragon in a ruined church near the Horn, but our driver either could not or would not get into the right road; so at last we gave up the search, and told him to drive till we could find a place to breakfast in. It was now two o'clock; and we had grown so faint and sick with hunger that I believe if the villages we passed through had looked less squalid and dirty, we should have been capable of sitting down humbly to a meal of sour black bread and cider. But our driver gave us no choice; he had a good horse, though it was getting tired, and he drove on rapidly while we felt cross with him, and with one another, and lost all interest in the charming country through which we had been hurried.

A sudden turn in the road, and we all gave a shout of joy. We were in the midst of a much larger village than any we had yet passed through; but there was no sign of an inn except that over a squalid-looking shed with a filthy pool of black mud in front was written, "Ici on loge à pied et à cheval," with its Breton equivalent beyond. But our driver, to our joy, did not stop here, but drove across the wide, stony street to a long, low house, in the window of which were some groceries and "sweeties."

We jumped out gladly, and followed the driver through the low, arched doorway into a long room with heavy black beams overhead, from which hung skins of lard, bunches of herbs, and bundles of crêpes.

This morning, when our vehicle, a comfortable-looking machine with a good horse, a capacious hood, and a seat big enough to hold three behind the driver, came clattering over the uneven stones, our landlord and his wife were still asleep. We asked the name of a place to breakfast at, but both the white-capped, staring maids shook their heads, they could only speak Breton; we asked the driver, but his A very pleasant-faced, intelligent-lookFrench was very bad, and he did not seeming woman came forward to speak to us; to comprehend what we wanted. One of clinging shyly to her apron was a lovely our party understood Breton thoroughly, little girl about six years old, fair-skinned, but she could only speak just sufficient to with regular features and wonderful large, tell the ugly, sallow-faced fellow that we dark eyes; her head was covered with a would stop for breakfast wherever he could lilac cap, shaped like a Phrygian headfind "white bread," for although black piece and fitting close in front. bread when new is eatable, it seems generally stale and sour, and in this state is most unpalatable.

Off we drove, first to see the ruins of

The woman apologized, and said her house was not fit for us. She had "white bread," but she could only give us bread, butter, and eggs.