rding
the income which he enjoys, and the comfortable place which so well
becomes him; but such matters have begun to be talked of in various
parts of England. Eager pushing politicians have asserted in the
House of Commons, with very telling indignation, that the grasping
priests of the Church of England are gorged with the wealth which the
charity of former times has left for the solace of the aged, or the
education of the young. The well-known case of the Hospital of St
Cross has even come before the law courts of the country, and the
struggles of Mr Whiston, at Rochester, have met with sympathy and
support. Men are beginning to say that these things must be looked
into.

Mr Harding, whose conscience in the matter is clear, and who has never
felt that he had received a pound from Hiram's will to which he was
not entitled, has naturally taken the part of the church in talking
over these matters with his friend, the bishop, and his son-in-law,
the archdeacon. The archdeacon, indeed, Dr Grantly, has been somewhat
loud in the matter. He is a personal friend of the dignitaries of the
Rochester Chapter, and has written letters in the public press on the
subject of that turbulent Dr Whiston, which, his admirers think, must
well nigh set the question at rest. It is also known at Oxford that
he is the author of the pamphlet signed "Sacerdos" on the subject of
the Earl of Guildford and St Cross, in which it is so clearly argued
that the manners of the present times do not admit of a literal
adhesion to the very words of the founder's will, but that the
interests of the church for which the founder was so deeply concerned
are best consulted in enabling its bishops to reward those shining
lights whose services have been most signally serviceable to
Christianity. In answer to this, it is asserted that Henry de Blois,
founder of St Cross, was not greatly interested in the welfare of the
reformed church, and that the masters of St Cross, for many years
past, cannot be called shining lights in the service of Christianity;
it is, however, stoutly maintained, and no doubt felt, by all the
archdeacon's friends, that his logic is conclusive, and has not, in
fact, been answered.

With such a tower of strength to back both his arguments and his
conscience, it may be imagined that Mr Harding has never felt any
compunction as to receiving his quarterly sum of two hundred pounds.
Indeed, the subject has never presented itself to hi