iritual affairs, her infallible instructor, although the impending
second Reformation did chance to take the untoward form of the
emancipation of the Roman Catholics, followed in due season by the
destruction of Protestant bishoprics, the sequestration of Protestant
tithes, and the endowment of Maynooth.

In speculating on the fate of public institutions and the course of
public affairs, it is important that we should not permit our attention
to be engrossed by the principles on which they are founded and the
circumstances which they present, but that we should also remember
how much depends upon the character of the individuals who are in the
position to superintend or to direct them.

The Church of England, mainly from its deficiency of oriental knowledge,
and from a misconception of the priestly character which has been the
consequence of that want, has fallen of late years into great straits;
nor has there ever been a season when it has more needed for its guides
men possessing the higher qualities both of intellect and disposition.
About five-and-twenty years ago, it began to be discerned that the time
had gone by, at least in England, for bishoprics to serve as appanages
for the younger sons of great families. The Arch-Mediocrity who
then governed this country, and the mean tenor of whose prolonged
administration we have delineated in another work, was impressed with
the necessity of reconstructing the episcopal bench on principles of
personal distinction and ability. But his notion of clerical capacity
did not soar higher than a private tutor who had suckled a young noble
into university honours; and his test of priestly celebrity was the
decent editorship of a Greek play. He sought for the successors of the
apostles, for the stewards of the mysteries of Sinai and of Calvary,
among third-rate hunters after syllables.

These men, notwithstanding their elevation, with one exception, subsided
into their native insignificance; and during our agitated age, when the
principles of all institutions, sacred and secular, have been called
in question; when, alike in the senate and the market-place, both the
doctrine and the discipline of the Church have been impugned, its power
assailed, its authority denied, the amount of its revenues investigated,
their disposition criticised, and both attacked; not a voice has been
raised by these mitred nullities, either to warn or to vindicate; not a
phrase has escaped their lips or