But, alas, in losing our fainéant bishops we have lost the great priest lords whom we used to venerate. A bishop now has no domain, but is paid his simple salary of 5,000_l._ a year,--quarterly, we suppose,--and knows not and recks not of leases. He is paid 5,000_l._ a year if his see was in former days worth as much, or less if the see of old was worth less. London, Durham, and Winchester are more gorgeous than their brethren, but even London and Durham have simple salaries, and Winchester, on the next vacancy, will be reduced to the same humble footing. It is a great fall in worldly state, and consequently bishops may be now seen,--as bishops never were seen of yore,--sitting in cabs, trusting themselves to open one-horse chaises, talking in the market-places, and walking home after an ordination. These ears have heard and these eyes have seen a modern bishop hallooing from the top of his provincial High-street to a groom who was at the bottom of it, brandishing his episcopal arms the while with an energy which might have been spared. It is so with all things. In seeking for the useful, we are compelled to abandon the picturesque. Our lanes and hedgerows and green commons are all going; and the graceful dignity of the old bishop is a thing of the past. There still, however, remains to the bench one privilege, which, though shorn of its ancient grandeur of injustice, has in it still much of the sweet mediæval flavour of old English corruption. The patronage of the bishops is as extensive almost as ever; and though its exercise is now hemmed in by certain new stringencies of ecclesiastical law,--as in regard to pluralities, and is also subject to the scrutiny of public opinion, so that decency must at least be respected,--nevertheless patronage remains, as the private property of the bishop. A bishop is not bound, even in theory as the theory at present exists, to bestow his patronage as may be best for the diocese over which he presides. He still gives, and is supposed to give, his best livings to his own friends. A deserving curate has no claim on a bishop for a living as a reward for the work he has done. The peculiarly strong case of a Mr. Cheese may, here and there, give rise to comment; but unless the nepotism is too glaring, nepotism in bishops is allowed;--nay, it is expected. A bishop’s daughter is supposed to offer one of the fairest steps to promotion which the Church of England affords.