The dean and chapter! How pleasantly the words sound on the tongue of a reverent verger! The chapters, I fear, are terribly shorn of their old glory, and each chapter must look at itself, when it meets, with something of wistful woe in its half-extinguished old eyes. And why does a chapter meet? Its highest duty is a congé d’élire,--permission to choose its own bishop. Permission is sent down from the Prime Minister to the chapter to choose Dr. Smith,--a very worthy evangelical gentleman, whose name stinks in the nostrils of the old high and dry canons and prebendaries who still hang round the towers of the cathedral; and,--under certain terrible penalties,--they exercise their functions, and unanimously elect Dr. Smith as the bishop of that diocese. There must be something melancholy in such moments to a reflective dean and chapter. We may suppose that the number of clerical gentlemen who really meet together to carry on the business of the election is not great. It is as small, probably, as may be; but something of a chapter must be held. The ignorant layman, as he thinks of it, wonders whether the work is really done in that cold unfurnished octagonal stone building, which has just been so beautifully repaired at the expense of the devout maiden ladies. How English, how absurd, how picturesque it all is!--and, we may add, how traditionally useful! The Queen is the head of the Church, and therefore sends down word to a chapter, which in truth as a chapter no longer exists, that it has permission to choose its bishop, the bishop having been already appointed by the Prime Minister, who is the nominee of the House of Commons! The chapter makes its choice accordingly, and the whole thing goes on as though the machine were kept in motion by forces as obedient to reason and the laws of nature as those operating on a steam engine. We are often led to express our dismay, and sometimes our scorn, at the ignorance shown by foreigners as to our institutions; but when we ourselves consider their complications and irrationalistic modes of procedure, the wonder is that any one not to the manner born should be able to fathom aught of their significance. Deans and chapters, though they exist with a mutilated grandeur, for the present are safe; and long may they remain so! IV. THE ARCHDEACON.