Is it not singular that it should be so,--that the idea of giving the fitting reward to the most deserving servant should have to reach the Church the last of all professions and of all trades? Sinecures and the promotion of young favourites used to be common in the Civil Service; but the public would not endure it, and the Civil Service has cleansed itself. The army and navy have been subjected to searching reforms. A great law officer has been made to vanish into space because he was too keen in appropriating patronage to family uses. Bankers and brewers will no longer have men about their premises who do not work; and yet bankers and brewers may do what they like with their own. But the bishop, in whose hands patronage has been placed, that he might use it in the holiest way for the highest purpose, still exercises it daily with the undeniable and acknowledged view of benefiting private friends! And in doing so he does not even know that he is doing amiss. It may be doubted whether the bishop has yet breathed beneath an apron who has doubted that his patronage was as much his own as the silver in his breeches-pocket. The bishop’s feeling in the matter is not singular, but it is singular that bishops should not before this have been enlightened on the subject of Church patronage by the voice of the laity whom they serve. III. THE NORMAL DEAN OF THE PRESENT DAY. If there be any man, who is not or has not been a Dean himself, who can distinctly define the duties of a Dean of the Church of England, he must be one who has studied ecclesiastical subjects very deeply. When cathedral services were kept up for the honour of God rather than for the welfare of the worshippers, with an understanding faintly felt by the indifferent, but strongly realized by the pious, that recompence would be given by the Almighty for the honour done to Him,--as cathedrals were originally built and adorned with that object,--it was natural enough that there should be placed at the head of those who served in the choir a high dignitary who, by the weight of his presence and the grace of his rank, should give an increased flavour of ecclesiastical excellence to those services. The dean then was the head, as it were, of a college, and he fitly did his work if he looked after the ceremonies of his cathedral, saw that canons, precentor, minor canons and choristers, did their ministrations with creditable grace, took care that the building was, if possible, kept in good repair,--and thus properly took the lead in the chapter over which he presided. But the idea of honouring our Creator by the excellence of our church services,--though it remains firmly fixed enough in the minds of some of us,--is no longer a national idea; and we may say that deans are not selected by those who have the appointment of deans with any such view. We use our cathedrals in these days as big churches, in which multitudes may worship, so that, if possible, they may learn to live Christian