stoles and gorgeous vestments.

Astonished congregations saw their church blossom in purple and red, and
frontal and hanging told of the silent energy of the group of Sisters.
The parson found himself nowhere in his own parish; every detail managed
for him, every care removed, and all independence gone. If it suited the
ministering angels to make a legal splash, he found himself landed in
the Law Courts. If they took it into their heads to seek another fold,
every one assumed, as a matter of course, that their pastor would go
too. At such a rate of progress the great object of woman's ambition
must soon come in view, and the silent control over the priest will
merge in the open claim to the priesthood.

It may be in silent preparation for such a claim that the ecclesiastical
hierarchy are taking, year by year, a more feminine position. The Houses
of Convocation, for instance, present us with a lively image of what the
bitterest censor of woman would be delighted to predict as the result of
her admission to senatorial honors. There is the same interminable flow
of mellifluous talk, the same utter inability to devise or to understand
an argument, the same bitterness and hard words, the same skill in
little tricks and diplomacies, the same practical incompetence, which
have been denounced as characteristics of woman. The caution, the
finesse, the sly decorum, the inability to take a large view of any
question, the patience, the masterly inaction, the vicious outbreaks of
temper which now and then break the inaction of a Bishop, may sometimes
lead us to ask whether the Episcopal office is not one admirably suited
for the genius of woman.

But she must stoop to conquer heights like these, and it is probable
with a view to a slow ascent towards them through the ages to come that
she is now moulding the mind of the curate at her will. He, we have been
told, is commonly the first lady of the parish; and what he now is in
theory, a century hence may find him in fact. It would be difficult even
now to detect any difference of sex in the triviality of purpose, the
love of gossip, the petty interests, the feeble talk, the ignorance, the
vanity, the love of personal display, the white hand dangled over the
pulpit, the becoming vestment and the embroidered stole, which we are
learning gradually to look upon as attributes of the British curate. So
perfect, indeed, is the imitation that the excellence of her work may
perhaps defeat