advantage over his antagonists. We remember to have seen protests, in the writings of a modern school of English Churchmen, against what they are pleased to term “the gentleman heresy;” representing it as dangerous to the best interests of both priests and people, that the former should attempt to combine with their sacred office the manners, the habits, and the social position of the gentleman. Without entering here into the serious question whether a special clerical caste, as it were, standing between the lower ranks and the higher of the laity, distinct from both, and having its separate habits and position, is a desirable institution to recommend; without discussing the other equally important question, whether the aristocracy of a Christian nation have not also _their_ religious needs, and whether these also have not a right to be consulted, and whether they will bear to be handed over to a priesthood which, if not plebeian itself, is to have at least no common interests or feelings with the higher classes—a question, this latter, to which history will give us a pretty decided answer;—it is quite enough to say that the working-classes themselves would be the foremost to demand—if the case were put before them fairly—that the ministers of religion should be “gentlemen” in every sense of the word. They will listen, no doubt, with gaping mouths and open ears, to a flow of rhodomontade declamation from an uneducated preacher: an inspired tinker will fill a chapel or a village-green, while the quiet rector goes through the service to a half-empty church. But inspired tinkers are rare in any age; and it is not excitement or declamation which go to form the really religious life of England. This—which we must not be supposed to confine within the limits of any Church establishment—depends for its support on sources that lie deeper and quieter than these. In trouble, in sickness, in temptation, these things miserably fail. And the dealing of “a gentleman” with these cases—a gentleman in manners, in thoughts, in feeling, in respect for the feelings of others—is as distinct in kind and in effect, as the firm but delicate handling of the educated surgeon (who goes to the bottom of the matter nevertheless) differs from the well-meant but bungling axe-and-cautery system of our forefathers. The poor understand this well. They know a gentleman, and respect him; and they will excuse in their parish minister the absence of some other very desirable qualities sooner than this. The structure of English society must change—its gentry must forfeit their character as a body, as they never have done yet—before this feeling can change. When you officer your regiments from any other class than their natural superiors, then you may begin to officer your national Church with a plebeian clergy.