a respectable baker drive through the city from the west end of the town, and let him cast an eye on the battlements of Northumberland House, has his little muffinfaced son the smallest chance of getting in among the Percies, enjoying a share of their luxury and splendour, and of chasing the deer with hound and horn upon the Cheviot Hills? But let him drive his alum-steeped loaves a little further, till he reaches St. Paul's Churchyard, and all his thoughts are changed when he sees that beautiful fabric; it is not impossible that his little penny roll may be introduced into that splendid oven. Young Crumpet is sent to school-takes to his booksspends the best years of his life, as all eminent Englishmen do, in making Latin verses-knows that the crum in crum-pet is long, and the pet short-goes to the University-gets a prize for an Essay on the Dispersion of the Jews-takes orders- becomes a Bishop's chaplain -has a young nobleman for his pupil-publishes an useless classic, and a serious call to the unconverted— and then goes through the Elysian transitions of Prebendary, Dean, Prelate, and the long train of purple, profit, and power.

It will not do to leave only four persons in each Cathedral upon the supposition that such a number will be sufficient for all the men of real merit who ought to enjoy such preferment; we ought to have a steady confidence that the men of real merit will always bear a small proportion to the whole number; and that in proportion as the whole number is lessened, the number of men of merit provided for will be lessened also. If it were quite certain that ninety persons would be selected, the most remarkable for conduct, piety, and learning, ninety offices might be sufficient; but out of these ninety are to be taken tutors to Dukes and Marquises, paid in this way by the public; Bishops' Chaplains, running tame about the palace; elegant Clergymen of small understanding, who have made themselves acceptable in the drawing-rooms of the mitre; Billingsgate controversialists, who have tossed and gored an Unitarian. So that there remain but a few rewards for men of real

merit-yet these rewards do infinite good; and in this mixed, checkered way human affairs are conducted.

No man at the beginning of the Reform could tell to what excesses the new power conferred upon the multitude would carry them; it was not safe for a Clergyman to appear in the streets. I bought a blue coat, and did not despair in time of looking like a Layman. All this is passed over. Men are returned to their senses upon the subject of the Church, and I utterly deny that there is any public feeling whatever which calls for the destruction of the resident Prebends. Lord John Russell has pruned the two luxuriant Bishoprics, and has abolished Pluralities: he has made a very material alteration in the state of the Church: not enough to please Joseph Hume, and the tribunes of the people, but enough to satisfy every reasonable and moderate man, and therefore enough to satisfy himself. What another generation may choose to do is another question: I am thoroughly convinced that enough has been done for the present.

Viscount Melbourne declared himself quite satisfied with the Church as it is; but if the public had any desire to alter it, they might do as they pleased. He might have said the same thing of the Monarchy, or of any other of our institutions; and there is in the declaration a permissiveness and good humour which in public men has seldom been exceeded. Carelessness, however, is but a poor imitation of genius, and the formation of a wise and well-reflected plan of Reform conduces more to the lasting fame of a Minister than that affected contempt of duty which every man sees to be mere vanity, and a vanity of no very high description.

But if the truth must be told, our Viscount is somewhat of an impostor. Every thing about him seems to betoken careless desolation: any one would suppose from his manner that he was playing at chuck-farthing with human happiness; that he was always on the heel of pastime; that he would giggle away the Great Charter, and decide by the method of tee-totum whether my Lords the Bishops should or should not retain their seats

in the House of Lords. All this is the mere vanity of surprising, and making us believe that he can play with kingdoms as other men can with nine-pins. Instead of this lofty nebulo, this miracle of moral and intellectual felicities, he is nothing more than a sensible honest man, who means to do his duty to the Sovereign and to the Country: instead of being the ignorant man he pretends to be, before he meets the deputation of Tallow-Chandlers in the morning, he sits up half the night talking with Thomas Young about melting and skimming, and then, though he has acquired knowlege enough to work off a whole vat of prime Leicester tallow, he pretends next morning not to know the difference between a dip and a mould. In the same way, when he has been employed in reading Acts of Parliament, he would persuade you that he has been reading Cleghorn on the Beatitudes, or Pickler on the Nine Difficult Points. Neither can I allow to this Minister (however he may be irritated by the denial) the extreme merit of indifference to the consequences of his measures. I believe him to be conscientiously alive to the good or evil that he is doing, and that his caution has more than once arrested the gigantic projects of the Lycurgus of the Lower House. I am sorry to hurt any man's feelings, and to brush away the magnificent fabric of levity and gaiety he has reared; but I accuse our Minister of honesty and diligence: I deny that he is careless or rash: he is nothing more than a man of good understanding, and good principle, disguised in the eternal and somewhat wearisome affectation of a political Roué.

One of the most foolish circumstances attending this destruction of Cathedral property is the great sacrifice of the patronage of the Crown: the Crown gives up eight Prebends of Westminster, two at Worcester, 1500l. per annum at St. Paul's, two Prebends at Bristol, and a great deal of other preferment all over the kingdom; and this at a moment when such extraordinary power has been suddenly conferred upon the people, and when every atom of power and patronage ought to be husbanded for the Crown. A Prebend of

Westminster for my second son would soften the Catos of Cornhill, and lull the Gracchi of the Metropolitan Boroughs. Lives there a man so absurd, as to suppose that Government can be carried on without those gentle allurements? You may as well attempt to poultice off the humps of a camel's back as to cure mankind of these little corruptions.

I am terribly alarmed by a committee of Cathedrals now sitting in London, and planning a petition to the Legislature to be heard by counsel. They will take such high ground, and talk a language so utterly at variance with the feelings of the age about Church Property, that I am much afraid they will do more harm than good. In the time of Lord George Gordon's riots, the Guards said they did not care for the mob, if the Gentlemen Volunteers behind would be so good as not to hold their muskets in such a dangerous manner. I don't care for popular clamour, and think it might now be defied; but I confess the Gentlemen Volunteers alarm me. They have unfortunately, too, collected their addresses, and published them in a single volume!!!

I should like to know how many of our institutions at this moment, besides the Cathedrals, are under notice of destruction. I will, before I finish my letter, endeavour to procure a list: in the mean time I will give you the bill of fare with which the last Session opened, and I think that of 1838 will not be less copious. But at the opening of the Session of 1837, when I addressed my first letter to you, this was the state of our intended changes:-The Law of Copyright was to be re-created by Serjeant Talfourd; Church Rates abolished by Lord John Russell, and Imprisonment for Debt by the Attorney-General: the Archbishop of Canterbury kindly undertook to destroy all the Cathedrals, and Mr. Grote was to arrange our Voting by Ballot; the Septennial Act was to be repealed by Mr. Williams, Corn Laws abolished by Mr. Clay, and the House of Lords reformed by Mr. Ward; Mr. Hume remodelled County Rates, Mr. Ewart put an end to Primogeniture, and Mr. Tooke took away the Exclusive Privileges of Dublin, Oxford,

and Cambridge; Thomas Duncombe was to put an end to the Proxies of the Lords, and Serjeant Prime to turn the Universities topsy-turvy. Well may it be said that

"Man never continueth in one stay."

See how men accustom themselves to large and perilous changes. Ten years ago, if a cassock or a hassock had been taken from the Establishment, the current of human affairs would have been stopped till restitution had been made. In a fortnight's time, Lord John Russell is to take possession of, and to re-partition all the Cathedrals in England; and what a prelude for the young Queen's coronation! what a medal for the august ceremony! the fallen Gothic buildings on one side of the gold, the young Protestant Queen on the other:

Victoria Ecclesiæ Victrix,

And then, when she is full of noble devices, and of all sorts enchantingly beloved, and amid the solemn swell of music, when her heart beats happily, and her eyes look Majesty, she turns them on the degraded Ministers of the Gospel, and shudders to see she is stalking to the throne of her Protestant ancestors over the broken altars of God.

Now, remember, I hate to overstate my case. I do not say that the destruction of Cathedrals will put an end to railroads: I believe that good mustard and cress, sown after Lord John's Bill is passed, will, if duly watered, continue to grow. I do not say that the country has no right, after the death of individual incumbents, to do what they propose to do; - I merely say that it is inexpedient, uncalled for, and mischievous-that the lower Clergy, for whose sake it is proposed to be done, do not desire it—that the Bishop Commissioners, who proposed it, would be heartily glad if it were put an end to that it will lower the character of those who enter into the Church, and accustom the English people to large and dangerous confiscations: and I would not have gentlemen of the money-bags, and of wheat and bean land, forget that the Church means many other