February 15th, 1908.

ON SUNDAY, “being the day after the burial of his late Majesty Charles, King of Portugal and the Algarves, Duke of Saxony, K.G., and his Royal Highness Louis Philippe, Crown Prince of Portugal, Duke of Braganza, K.G.,” their Majesties the King and Queen, together with the members of the Royal Family, attended an obituary service at St Paul’s. The Bishop of London was out of the country at the time, but the Primate was present. A great impression was produced by the beautiful “Russian Kontakion for the departed”, which ought to be better known than it is. . . Having said this, we feel at liberty to express regret that the commemoration of the departed Princes was not made at a Solemn Eucharist. A great opportunity was missed for showing that the Church of England, in common with the whole Catholic Church, associates with the Eucharistic offering the dead no less than the living. It would then not have been possible for the newspapers to contrast with the Mass offered in St James’s, Spanish-place, the improvised sort of function at St Paul’s, which seemed, in its petitions, to have far more reference to ourselves than to those for whose souls presumably we were praying. In that case, too, there would have been less justification for the King’s appearance in the Spanish Church, and we should have been spared the astonishing statement in a Church contemporary that “on Saturday a King of England attended Mass in his own dominions for the first time since the abdication of James II.”