NEWS OF THE WEEK.
MR. GLADSTONE'S paper on Ritualism, to which every poli- tician had looked forward with profound interest, has appeared, and has apparently given very needless umbrage,—to the English Press, not for what it says, but for what it fails to say, and to the Irish Press, not for what it fails to say, but for what it says. As we have shown elsewhere, Mr. Gladstone has dis- cussed an abstract instead of a concrete question—though in a thoroughly Protestant spirit—without probably so much as thinking of what was expected from him ; and of course the English Press immediately read evasion in his omissions, while the Irish Press read insult in his commissions. The Times darkly hints that though Mr. Gladstone gives his approval to only two High-Church customs,—the recitation of the General Thanks- giving by the whole body of the congregation and the reading of the Lessons by a layman,--excellent customs surely,—" there is plenty hinted at that would be more distasteful to an English mind ;" but after carefully studying the paper, we cannot even conceive 'what the "plenty hinted at " is, unless the Times is unfair enough to regard Mr. Gladstone as in any way wishing to adopt or sanc- tion the ritualistic customs which he cites from the Lutheran and other Churches, especially the Danish and Norwegian, and which he uses only to prove that, even genuinely Protestant bodies often feel no objection to names and rites which by Englishmen are considered distinctively Romanist. There is not a trace of any approval of these rites in his paper, but it was obviously necessary to his argument to show how differently different worshippers interpret the same ceremonial.
