iew_ bishops, such as Dr. Copleston, of Llandaff, whose powerful
pen, as well as his wise administration of the great Oxford College
over which he long presided, amply justified his promotion. So even in
the eighteenth century the illustrious Butler had been Bishop of
Durham, as in Ireland the illustrious Berkeley had been Bishop of
Cloyne. But, on the whole, the bishops of our grandfathers' days were
more remarkable for their prudence and tact, their adroitness or
suppleness, than for intellectual or moral superiority to the rest of
the clergy. Their own upper-class world, and the middle class which,
in the main, took its view of English institutions from the upper
class, respected them as a part of the solid fabric of English
society, but they were a mark for Radical invective and for literary
sneers. Their luxurious pomp and ease were incessantly contrasted
with the simplicity of the apostles and the poverty of curates, and
the abundance among them of the gifts that befit the senate or the
drawing-room was compared with the rarity of the graces that adorn a
saint. The comparison was hardly fair, for saints are scarce, and a
good bishop needs some qualities which a saint may lack.

That revival within the Church of England which went on in various
forms from 1800 till 1870, at first Low Church or Evangelical in its
tendencies, latterly more conspicuously High Church and Ritualist,
began from below and worked upwards till at length it reached the
bishops. Lord Palmerston, influenced by Lord Shaftesbury, filled the
vacant sees that fell to him with earnest men, sometimes narrow,
sometimes deficient in learning, but often good preachers, and zealous
for the doctrines they held. When the High Churchmen found their way
to the Bench, as they did very largely under Lord Derby's and Mr.
Gladstone's rule, they showed as much theological zeal as the
Evangelicals, and perhaps more talent for administration. The popular
idea of what may be expected from a bishop rose, and the bishops rose
with the idea. As Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Samuel Wilberforce was among
the first to make himself powerfully felt through his diocese. His
example told upon other prelates, and prime ministers grew more
anxious to select energetic and popular men. So it came to pass that
the bishops began to be among the foremost men in the Church of
England. Some, like Dr. Magee of Peterborough, and afterwards of York,
were brilliant orators; some, like Dr. Lightf