employed several women to make favours of blue ribbons to adorn their expected triumph. The triumph, however, was on our side; and when I left Cambridge, with Messrs. G— and W, the preparations for a triumphal procession into the town of March were making by our clients. Wylde is certainly a most splendid advocate; his reply upon a portion of the case of the plaintiffs, was one of the most powerful specimens of forensic eloquence I ever heard.”

Cambridge, July 21, 1837.-" You will have been for some days, I presume, before this reaches you enjoying the sea breezes at Ramsgate. I don't know whether has exhibited anything like the alacrity at diving which she formerly did at Southampton. As to the gentle M- -,' she has already, no doubt, been at least half transformed into a sea-maid, worshipping Amphitrite instead of Diana-fancying cockle-shells instead of daffodils-and preferring periwinkles to primroses.

"We had a splendid banquet at Stowet-the Judges and Bar, with some of the Magistrates, constituted the principal part of the company; but, alas! that great attraction in all assemblies of the sort-the fair sex-was wanting: not altogether,—because the amiable Lady and her interest

ing daughter, with two or three of their immediate friends, graced the scene. Still it was a sumptuous thing as an entertainment, and had the interest which belongs to everything of the kind within the 'fair majestic paradise' of Stowe :

took me into the manuscript library and showed me some precious relics of olden literature."

Ipswich, August 17, 1840.-" The summer of the old school has displaced the summer of the reform era-the sun marches through a cloudless sky, refulgent with the rays of his olden glory-earth rejoices in the warm embrace of the 'god' of light, and poetry and life-on hill and valley broods his ripening influence—the corn-fields, laughing in their golden abundance,

[At that time the scat of the late Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. ED].

invite the sickle of the reaper-and I, instead of enjoying my taste for rural scenes by hill and valley, fountain and fresh shade, am about to undergo the purgatorial penance of a thronged and airless court, beneath a sky splendidly hot and magnificently melting.

"Mr. in speaking about Oxford's trial, added, 'I will tell you what I heard a noble Earl in London say— he stated that to have got such a verdict in the then state of the public mind on the subject, was all but a miracle."

333

Church Reform-Pluralities-Sinecures.

Oct. 17, 1834.-Advocating, as we do, the Church Establishment against the political and religious adversaries who have conspired together for its overthrow, we are most anxious that the abuses which sully the character and impair the usefulness of the sacred institution should be unsparingly extirpated. One of those abuses of the system we have often remarked upon-we mean that of pluralities—an abuse of Church patronage, which has wrought more mischief to the establishment, and given a greater handle of reproach to its enemies than any other. Indeed the evil consequences of pluralism have been for a long time past so many and so flagrant, that we cannot but wonder the evil should remain just as rank, (if not ranker,) at the present day, as when it was so emphatically denounced by Bishop BURNET at the close of the seventeenth century.

This is no party question. It unfortunately happens that both whig and tory ministers, and the great families of both parties, are equally prone to accumulate church preferments upon their own favoured connexions, without much regard to the interests of religion or the edification of the people

*

It is as impossible for the same clergyman to serve St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, and Ripon Minster, in Yorkshire, as to serve God and Mammon. The clergyman by whose labours the spiritual vineyard flourishes and brings forth the fruit of Christian instruction to the people, is not he whose heart is set upon "filthy lucre --who is "ambitious of prefer

ment for its gold," but he who, looking to no abiding city in this world, "lays up treasure in heaven," and has more pleasure in beholding his flock becoming rich in the gifts of Christian knowledge under his pastoral care, than in contemplating the sparkling hoards of corruptible wealth amassed from golden pluralities.

In attacking the abuses of systems, we war not with the individuals who profit by those abuses. Though undoubtedly, covetousness-a most unchristian vice-and an intense hankering after worldly possessions in many of the clergy themselves, gave rise to pluralities in order to gratify that craving propensity-yet we war only with the system which fosters that cupidity, and, by the temptations which it holds forth, is calculated to corrupt men who originally entered the Church with purer intentions. Of we know nothing

but what is manifested in his public conduct: of the system, of which he is a living example, we know too much. We hope the day will soon come when, for the credit of the reformed faith, it will be known in the Church no more.

**

Jan. 29, 1835.—Our view of Church reform has always contemplated a total extirpation of sinecures—and any measure of reform which does not secure that object, we would consider mutilated and imperfect. * * As to piety and learning, we like both very much, and wish to see them encouraged and rewarded; but let them be rewarded in some more direct and honest way than that which "makes God's work a sinecure." Let the patronage of the Church be extended to pious and learned men, in preference to other claimants for ecclesiastical preferment. If patronage be exercised so as to regard nothing but the qualifications of the candidate in respect to piety, learning, and industry, the man possessing these requisites for the ministry will have his reward without society losing any thing of the usefulness of his exertion. It is possible that a scholar of great attainments and of shining abilities may be rendered useless to society, and eventually a burden to himself, by being taken out of the path of hardy enterprise and manly emulation, to become the spoiled and pampered child of ener

vating sinecurism. It is true that scholarship, to flourish well, should be raised above the sordid cares of daily life; but it is equally true that the indulgences of luxury and indolence are not less fatal to the energies of genius, than the crushing weight of unmitigated poverty.

But, in point of fact, the sinecures of the Church have never (for excepted cases only prove the rule) been disposed of, as if they were set apart to be the rewards of "piety, learning, and exertion." On the contrary, they have, in general, been bestowed as if they were created for the peculiar advantage of well-connected dulness and favoured incapacity. Defending the integrity of the establishment as we do, against all its enemies, we cannot conceal its abuses-we cannot disguise the evils which corrupt patronage has brought upon it. *

*

Long before Bishop WATSON's time, whose plan of Church reform we and others have lately alluded to, the celebrated Bishop BURNET endeavoured to bring about an extensive reform of the establishment; but, in consequence of the opposition which he met with in the Church itself, was not able to effect any thing beyond the passing of the Act in the second year of Queen ANNE, to appropriate the tenths and first-fruits to the augmentation of the maintenance of the poorer clergy.

*

Jan. 31, 1835.-It is not in human nature to expect that men will ever be very sanguine in the acknowledgment or correction of abuses of which they themselves partake. On this ground alone we may readily enough expect that the present, or any plan of Church reform, will not be very acceptable either to such of the clergy as are at present partakers of that part of the system which it proposes to do away, or to those who are among its expectants. We would wish to speak with the respect which we really feel towards the clergy of the

Church of England. * * **

If the mere worldly "blanks and prizes" of the Church, as at present divided, were placed before the view of any one entering upon its holy offices, unpatronised by any of those to whose distribution the latter fall, it would require no great sagacity

to perceive that the chance of valuable preferment must fall to the few, while the portals of insufficiency, if not of poverty, are wide open to the many. Even as regards those on whom this unequal state of things falls, it is a grievous injustice which has long called loudly for redress. But what is the injustice to them, compared to that which it works towards that great mass of the community, for whose eternal welfare the great scheme of human redemption was established! Viewed in this light, we heartily regret that any reasonable plan to put an end to inequalities, insufficiencies, and other abuses, should be likely to meet with the opposition to which we have alluded. On the contrary, we should be happy to see the part of the clergy we refer to taking the lead, and lending a ready hand in the correction of evils so fatal in their results to the spiritual welfare of the people, to the credit of religion, and to that spread of Divine Truth which it should be the great object of a Christian ministry to effect. But, however mortifying such an opposition may be, let it not on the one hand be overrated either in numbers or importance; nor on the other, let it deter the mind of any upright Minister of State from fearlessly pursuing what conscience and duty-not to say necessity-point out to be the line which he is bound to pursue. *

Feb. 12, 1835.- ** *Yes, we would impose a very great and serious task upon those who undertake the work of Church reform, because we would have that reform not a partial or a superficial one, but full, efficient, and satisfactory. We would have the dead and rotten branches lopped from the tree—the fungous excrescences which draw off its nutriment, and inflict upon it disease and debility, unsparingly cleared away—the parasitical plants that entwine themselves around its venerable trunk, and exhaust the sources of its vitality, wholly rooted out, that we might no longer see its strength and freshness decaying under the withering influence of their noxious embrace this is not destruction-it is preservation. *** Such a work of saving and restorative reform is, therefore, not an acceptable or popular work with those destructive politicians who only recognise