fine, when it exceeded half a year's allowed income, should be paid to them.

We here close our task. It was not undertaken from mo-. tives of personal hostility to any of the prelates who have been named, but we considered it incumbent upon us to call the attention of friend as well as foe to the present state of the Anglican hierarchy, in order that both may profit by the lesson to be derived from it; and that both may join in considering the causes of a scandal which thus attaches itself to the established religion, as it is supposed of all Englishmen. Were the deeds of the Maltbys, the Monks, and the rest of them, the isolated acts of ungifted natures, the chance products of a defective organization or a demoralizing education, we should not have cared to stir up the mass of petty turpitudes collected in the blue book of the . commissioners. But their acts are the natural, nay, the necessary, fruits of a bad system. They are the exponents of that system; and when they are condemned, the system must share in the condemnation. There is but one religion which gives the power of self-sacrifice, without it man's moral nature must, in the long run, as certainly suffer corruption when exposed to powerful temptation, as his physical frame must succumb when under the influence of noxious gases. That grapes grow not on thorns, nor figs on thistles, we know from revelation as well as from observation: and if the English bishops have not been models of that blamelessness and sobriety of conduct which St. Paul deems essential qualifications of a bishop; if they have not been exempt from that greediness of filthy lucre and covetousness which he deems incompatible with their office, the system is to blame, not the men. Humanly speaking, it would not have been difficult to prove a priori that such must have been the result.

The bishoprics of the Establishment are offices of high rank and great emolument. They are in the gift of the crown, or rather of the prime minister: and it is not difficult to conjecture whether a politician and the head of a political party is likely to be influenced in his choice as much by zeal for religion, as by the desire of providing for a relation or dependent, or of acquiring a useful supporter. It is seldom, therefore, that the unobtrusive parochial clergyman is promoted to a see. The great prizes, as they are called, fall to the scions of noble houses, to the college tutors of whig or tory ministers, to smart

His

pamphleteers, and to clever electioneering canvassers, mendici, mimæ, balatrones, hoc genus omne. If learning is sometimes rewarded, the prize is given to the editor of a Greek play, or to a lecturer of doubtful orthodoxy. But these are exceptions. Upon his elevation to the mitre, the college Don, or aristocratic sprig, finds himself transported from a narrow sphere and moderate income, into the widest arena of politics and fashion, and into the receipt of a princely revenue. Though appointed the overseer of his diocese, though he has undertaken to superintend the spiritual government and well-being of millions of souls, he passes seven months out of every twelve in London, attending in the House of Lords, as a baron of the realm, to the material interests of the country. seat in that assembly and his ample fortune give him a high position in society. He has, in most cases, a wife more or less managing, and, probably, daughters less or more bent upon matrimony; and he is quickly whirled into that vortex of Chiswick fetes and ancient concerts, out of which husbands are best fished. His town residence becomes the resort of the rich and the noble; and if etiquette banishes déjeuners dansants and midnight polkas from the episcopal mansion, its well spread mahogany attracts suitable matches for his numerous progeny. In the country his castle-gates are open to the peer and the squire: but its walls frown coldly on all of lower degree. His rank and wealth place him so immeasurably above his clergy, that the duties of hospitality are as completely forgotten, as the ties of brotherhood; and although the poor curate will sometimes find his bed and board when chance or duty takes him to his bishop's, he is more frequently turned empty away from his diocesan's palace.

The bishop is rich, it is true; but his wealth consists of a life income; and he is, in general, no longer young when he first succeeds to it. His station in society is exalted; but it is personal, not hereditary or transmissible; and the position of his family in society will not be, when he is gone, what it is while he is living. Hay must be made, then, while the sun shines:

Dum loquimur fugerit invida

Etas. Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.

Money and patronage are in his hands. To what better purpose can a father devote the funds and the influence at his disposal, than to the advancement of the interests of

his children? When a fine may be obtained for a lease at a nominal rent, what chance has the voice of the Church of drowning that of nature? Fines, consequently, are taken, and successors robbed. Livings of every degree of fatness are in his gift; but how can piety, learning or eloquence hope to compete with the claims of a son or of a daughter's husband? Charity begins at home, says the proverb and so says the bishop. And his good deeds die not with him: his name lives in his diocese for another generation at least, in the palpable shape of an obese pluralist or an otiose canon.

How could a prelacy thus organised prosper? Is a statesman the best judge of the qualifications of a bishop? Is humility the distinctive virtue of titled families, or of university professors? Is it fostered by elevation to rank, privileges, and wealth? Does common honesty thrive under the sudden accession of large means coupled with the strongest temptations to misuse them? In a word, could any system have been better devised to secure unsuitable men for the office, and to prevent them from performing the duties of it when appointed? A calm judgment or an unbiassed mind could answer these questions without waiting for the results of experience. But experience is the only school in which the bulk of mankind will learn; and even there they learn but slowly. Prejudice is inaccessible to the voice of reason, and finds its bliss in that ignorance to which it owes its existence. The supporter of the Established Church who opposes all change, sees in his bishop nothing but a holy man in lawn-the sackcloth of a civilized age-who occasionally reads the communion service in his cathedral, or preaches a sermon in the parochial church of his country mansion, and subscribes to local charities. But he sees also something more in him than that ;—and this perhaps is the secret of the effective support which the bishops and clergy of the Establishment have received in their struggle against every reform, from the blind and suicidal conservatism of their flocks ;-he sees in the pomp and circumstance which surround his bishop, his own superiority over Popery and Dissent. However, even prejudice, even the most stubborn conservatism must, in the end, yield to the pressure of facts. Hitherto the world has had very imperfect means of judging of the conduct of the bishops of the Established Church; but the returns

of the commissioners have brought to light transactions and letters which were probably never intended for the public gaze, but which enable the public to form a correct judgment of the moralty of the state bishops. Let the world judge them as it would judge other men, and the verdict will not be doubtful. Their conduct in private transactions has been laid bare, and a suitable reform may be hoped to follow closely upon the public enlightenment. No man is a hero to his valet de chambre. Will the bishops long continue saints in the eyes of those who have seen what are their acts, and their notions of right and wrong?

ART. VI.-Cecile; or, the Pervert. By Sir Charles Rockingham, Author of "Rockingham," "Love and Ambition," &c., &c. 8vo. London, Colburn, 1851.

WE

E had occasion, in our last number, to comment upon the active and unscrupulous use which, in default of heavier weapons of offence, has been made of Fiction in the recent crusade against Catholics in England. We wish it were, even yet, in our power to speak of this as a thing past and gone, and to bury it for ever as one of the painful memories of an evil time. But we regret to say that we have before us, even now, only too abundant materials for a continuation of the subjecttoo many evidences that the spirit of religious bigotry is ever as slow to retire, as it is prompt to come forth in obedience to the slightest and most passing spell by which it may be evoked.

We prefer, however, to close our eyes to this and many other unhappy recollections of the year which is now drawing to its close. We would fain leave behind us on the threshold of the joyous season upon which we are entering, every thought of bitterness which past events have provoked; and we gladly avail ourselves of the clever

volume named at the head of these pages, for the purpose of putting our readers and ourselves into that hearty good humour which beseems the Christmas time. "Cecile" is indeed a book which, by showing that justice has not yet entirely left the world, may help to restore the tone which the recent contest had interrupted, and may do much to console Catholics and all true friends of religious freedom for the multiplied obloquy, bitterness, and misrepresentation over which they have had to grieve during this long and ill-starred agitation.

We feel, however, that we do some injustice to this able and original work by associating it, even in contrast, with the great mass of vapid and vulgar productions that have emanated from the anti-Catholic school of fiction. Indeed the most consoling circumstance connected with the Papal Aggression controversy, is the recollection, that, whatever may be its eventual result as regards the legal position of Catholics in England, it has at least had the effect, during its progress, of eliciting in their defence a display of genius and eloquence to which they may look back with pride even while suffering under the stroke which it vainly strove to avert. In the legal argument; in the debates of both Houses of Parliament; in every form of the discussion which deserves the name; wherever, in a word, mind could assert its prerogative; wherever eloquence was not overborne by clamour, and reasoning shouted down by boisterous vituperation ;-there the simple truth and justice of our cause were signally and confessedly triumphant. The profound constitutional knowledge; the far-seeing philosophy; the generous eloquence; even the lighter graces of composition-the classic elegance-the caustic humour-the brilliancy-the wit-were all, or almost all, our own; and while the anti-Catholic spirit fretfully evaporated in a series of prosy pamphlets, of truculent and over-bearing newspaper articles, of vulgar addresses at county meetings or Protestant associations, and of specious but irrelevant declamations from the benches of a renegade Treasury, or those of the ill-assorted allies who had enrolled themselves, for the time, under its dishonoured standard; the defence of the despised and persecuted Catholics, from the first note to the last, from the Cardinal's opening "Appeal" to the closing "Protest" of the dissentient peers, bears upon it the genuine impress of truth, vigour, and reality; and has left behind it, in every