r our own part, prefer
bishops and cardinals to poor dominies of the gospel, somewhat out at
the elbows.{3} The fine linen and the purple, the cope and the stole,
would at least have the effect of giving that sort of pleasant relief
to the widespread sable of our Assemblies which they possessed of
yore, ere they for ever lost the gay uniform of the Lord High
Commissioner, the gold lace of his dragoon officers, and the glitter
of his pages in silver and scarlet. 'We are two of the humblest
servants of Mother Church,' said the Prior and his companion to Wamba,
the jester of Rotherwood. 'Two of the humblest servants of Mother
Church!' repeated Wamba; 'I should rather like to see her seneschals,
her chief butlers, and her other principal domestics.'

We again saw Chalmers, and, in a corner apart from a social party, of
which his kind and genial heart formed the attractive centre, we found
he thoroughly agreed with us in holding that the time for the
discussion of the educational question had fully come. It was a
question, he said, on which he had not yet fully made up his mind:
there was, however, one point on which he seemed clear--though, at
this distance of time, we cannot definitively say whether the remark
regarding it came spontaneously from himself, or was suggested by any
query of ours--and that was the right and duty of a Government to
_instruct_, and consequently of the governed to receive the
instruction thus communicated, if in itself good. We remarked in turn,
that there were various points on which we also had to 'grope our way'
(a phrase to which the reader will find him referring in his note,
which we subjoin); but that regarding the inherently secular
character of the schoolmaster, and the right and duty of the
Government to employ him in behalf of its people, we had no doubt
whatever. And so, parting for the time, we commenced that series of
articles which, as they were not wholly without influence in
communicating juster views of the place and status of the schoolmaster
than had formerly obtained in the Free Church, and as they had some
little effect in leading the Church to take at least one step in
averting the otherwise inevitable ruin which brooded over her
educational scheme, the readers of the _Witness_ may perhaps remember.
We were met in controversy on the question by a man, the honesty of
whose purpose in this, as in every other matter, and the warmth of
whose zeal for the Church which he loved,