UNITED STATES AND CANADA.-THE ROYAL PULPIT.

BISHOPRIC OF MANCHESTER, 1870.-RELIGIOUS EDU

CATION. DIOCESAN WORK.

N 1858 the Duke of Newcastle's Commission

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on Elementary Education was appointed, and Mr. Fraser was named as one of the AssistantCommissioners. The appointment gave him special pleasure by bringing him into official connection with his old schoolfellow, Lord Lingen. They had met after an interval of some years in a way which Lord Lingen thus picturesquely describes :—

"I had gone down from London to Salisbury with the present Bishop of London, and we had walked to see Stonehenge, from which, making a circle, we met on the top of the Beacon Hill, Fraser, then rector of Cholderton, and another Fellow of Oriel, whose name I now forget. The surprise was so great that I always look back to it as a new commencement of intimacy. We did not always agree on educational matters. We differed less when he passed into a

larger sphere.

I mention this only as it aids my recollection of his character and manners. I recall the irresistible 'Come now' with which, radiantly smiling, he used to return to the charge, and I fear oftener got his own way than I care to particularize. Both before and after he became a Bishop he not unfrequently stayed at my house, and I really can say without exaggeration that the very sight of him had the effect of sunshine both on the servants and on ourselves. If ever there was a sociable and sympathetic man, he was one, pleasantly inquisitive, and ready to talk to any one. 'Which was the maid who cooked that nice dish?' said he, one morning, after he had read prayers, to us all-referring to something he had praised at dinner the day before."

The report of the Assistant-Commissioner exhibited those qualities of keen observation, independent thought, mastery of detail, lucidity of statement, and a remarkable power of discerning and seizing the key of the position, which were peculiar characteristics of its author. Mr. Hughes, as we have already said, describes it as invaluable "a superb, I had almost said a unique, piece of work." It marked out the author at once as a man for public employment.

In March, 1865, another report fell to Fraser's care.

He was appointed a Commissioner to report on the state of education in the United States and Canada.

So keen an observer could not but be intensely interested in the new surroundings amid which he found himself, and his criticisms on American ways are pleasant and suggestive reading.

"Church services in America," he writes, "are very cold things, nothing congregational about either prayers or singing. The Episcopal community attracts the wealthier people, but does not seem to have much hold on the poor."

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He did not scruple to speak out his mind plainly, according to his wont, when opportunity offered. a sermon preached "in the Tremont Temple,” after a glowing panegyric on the energy, philanthropy, public spirit, and illimitable resources of the great Republic, he continued :—

"But there is one thing I have not found, though I have sought for it, not only within the communion to which by conviction and profession I belong, but without it also. I have not found my ideal of Christian congregational worship. I have gone about, as Paul went about Athens, 'beholding your devotions,' and they have seemed to me-suffer me to speak my mind frankly-somewhat lifeless and cold. They are different to what I have been accustomed

to, not only in our great cathedrals, but in our little. country parish churches at home. I want hearty responses, not decorous silence. I want congregational psalmody, not merely ears open to catch the cadences of a well-trained choir. 'Fine prayers addressed to the congregation,' as some among you wittily called them, don't meet my notions of Christian worship; and quartett choirs, with fine voices indeed, but who keep the singing all to themselves, and, as I have seen in this very city, take up their parasols and leave as soon as their part in the performance is over, and the sermon about to begin, do not satisfy my idea of Christian psalmody."

It was remarked that the people joined in the hymn which followed in such a way as to show that his reproof had had a good effect. He was not favourably impressed with American religion as a whole, any more than with its manifestations in the ordinary church services. "An American," he wrote-possibly generalizing with too much haste-"has no notion of fixing himself to anything; and as he practises perhaps half a dozen trades, so he also professes half a dozen religions in the course of his life."

Shortly after his return from America, a very different sphere of work was opened to him. Lord Salisbury, who was then Secretary of State for India,

offered him the bishopric of Calcutta. He was not insensible to the attractions and opportunities presented by so great a post, but after due deliberation he declined it. To one of his friends he gives the

reasons:

"I felt myself too old; I dreaded the climate, hot weather (as I found last year in America) always more or less incapacitating me for exertion, mental as well as bodily. I had a misgiving of my capacity for the work: I am a poor linguist; I do not feel sure that I should make a good administrator; I shrink from having to speak with authority upon some of the vexed questions on which my own mind is still unresolved. And so I calmly, but after anxious deliberation, put the offer away."

A more congenial task soon presented itself. A Commission was appointed to inquire into the condition of agricultural employment, with a special reference to the work of children. Mr. Tremenheere, the secretary, applied to Lord Aberdare for a suggestion of qualified assistants. "His prompt answer was, 'The first thing you do, try to secure that cheery, admirable fellow, Fraser.'" He tried and succeeded, and the result was another masterly report, which added to the reputation Fraser had already achieved in this line

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