There is something charming to the English ear in the name of the Dean and Chapter. None of us quite know what it means, and yet we love it. When we visit our ancient cathedrals, and are taken into a handsome but manifestly useless octagonal stone outhouse, we are delighted to find that the chapter-house is being repaired at an expense of, say, four thousand pounds, subscribed by the maiden ladies of the diocese; or if we find the said outhouse to be in ruins,--in which case the afflicted verger will not show it if we allow him to pass easily through our hands,--we feel a keen regret as though all things good were going from us. That there should be a chapter-house attached to the cathedral, simply because a chapter-house was needed in former days, is all the reason that we can give for our affection; and we think that the old ladies have spent their money well in preserving the relic. We also think that the Ecclesiastical Commission spends its money well in preserving the chapter, and should feel infinite regret in finding that any diocese had none belonging to it. We are often told that ours is a utilitarian age, but this utilitarian spirit is so closely mingled with a veneration for things old and beautiful from age that we love our old follies infinitely better than our new virtues. Though it is difficult to define the duties of a modern dean, we all of us know what are the qualities and what the acquirements which lead to deaneries in these days; and most of us respect them. As it is now necessary that a man shall have been an active parish parson before he is thought fit to be a bishop, so it is required that a clergyman shall have shown a taste for literature in some one of its branches before he can be regarded among the candidates proper for a deanery. The normal dean of this age is a gentleman who would probably not have taken orders unless the circumstances of his life had placed orders very clearly in his path. He is not a man who has been urged strongly in early youth by a vocation for clerical duties, or who has subsequently devoted himself to what may be called clerical administrations proper. He has taken kindly to literature, having been biassed in his choice of the branch which he has assumed by the fact of the word “Reverend” which has attached itself to his name. He has done well at the university, and has been a fellow, and perhaps a tutor, of his college. He has written a book or two, and has not impossibly shown himself to be too liberal for the bench; for it is given to deans to speak their thoughts more openly than bishops are allowed to do. Indeed, this is so well acknowledged a principle in the arrangement of church patronage, that it has struck many of us with wonder that the Government has not escaped from its difficulty in regard to the Bishop of Natal by making him a dean in England.