s episcopal
career placed himself at the head of every movement in the Church which
others had originated, and had as regularly withdrawn at the right
moment, when the heat was over, or had become, on the contrary,
excessive. Furiously evangelical, soberly high and dry, and fervently
Puseyite, each phasis of his faith concludes with what the Spaniards
term a 'transaction.' The saints are to have their new churches, but
they are also to have their rubrics and their canons; the universities
may supply successors to the apostles, but they are also presented
with a church commission; even the Puseyites may have candles on their
altars, but they must not be lighted.

It will be seen, therefore, that his lordship was one of those
characters not ill-adapted to an eminent station in an age like the
present, and in a country like our own; an age of movement, but of
confused ideas; a country of progress, but too rich to risk much change.
Under these circumstances, the spirit of a period and a people seeks a
safety-valve in bustle. They do something, lest it be said that they
do nothing. At such a time, ministers recommend their measures as
experiments, and parliaments are ever ready to rescind their votes.
Find a man who, totally destitute of genius, possesses nevertheless
considerable talents; who has official aptitude, a volubility of routine
rhetoric, great perseverance, a love of affairs; who, embarrassed
neither by the principles of the philosopher nor by the prejudices of
the bigot, can assume, with a cautious facility, the prevalent tone, and
disembarrass himself of it, with a dexterous ambiguity, the moment it
ceases to be predominant; recommending himself to the innovator by his
approbation of change 'in the abstract,' and to the conservative by his
prudential and practical respect for that which is established; such
a man, though he be one of an essentially small mind, though his
intellectual qualities be less than moderate, with feeble powers of
thought, no imagination, contracted sympathies, and a most loose public
morality; such a man is the individual whom kings and parliaments
would select to govern the State or rule the Church. Change, 'in the
abstract,' is what is wanted by a people who are at the same time
inquiring and wealthy. Instead of statesmen they desire shufflers; and
compromise in conduct and ambiguity in speech are, though nobody will
confess it, the public qualities now most in vogue.

Not exactly,