I search my memory for any parallel publication. The nearest that I can discover is a Cricket Directory, which I saw perhaps forty years ago: I quote from memory fertilised by imagination: A. B. is a promising run-getter, but he too often forgets that a straight bat is a rudimentary necessity: his fielding is improving: as a bowler he has not been successful this year: his average is x. C. D. bowled x overs for y runs last season, and took z wickets: this is his best record so far, and makes him a valuable acquisition to a county team. As a batsman he has still much to learn: his average last year was z. These are complimentary compared with some of the school reports that lie on my table. But when I read them, or rather their prototypes, in that remote period, I was sorry for A. B. and C. D. Yet the writers were subject to the law of libel, and H.M.I., if not malicious, is privileged. “Others abide our question: thou art free,” the Law Courts may say. Stern critics sit in Whitehall and weed out all that seems perilous: when the sieve has done its duty there is little left for the lawyers. I meditate on the extension of the expression of free opinion. How would it work on Sundays? The preacher has a pulpit, and in that inviolable recess has a free tongue for half an hour, with a merciful leaning towards twenty minutes. The organist is a greater libertine. The architect and builder ill-use us, and for the most part we suffer silently. Would the bench of bishops send me about the country to report on church services, and to recommend deductions from the incomes of the incompetent? Of course one would begin with cathedrals and proceed with more lenient rule to parish churches. Probably at least one inspector would be required in each diocese, and as these officials, like school inspectors, would be men of diverse minds, it would be the most racy Bluebook of the year that reproduced their varied views. Let us make some samples: Norchester Cathedral. Visited on April 1 by Mr. Mendelssohn Brown. The condition of this cathedral is far from satisfactory. The singing, which is the main object of interest to the greater part of the congregation, is even worse than at last year’s inspection. Of the eight men several should be contemplating acceptance of a retiring pension. The boys are ill-behaved, and their musical capacity is on a level with their behaviour: in the Psalms there was no verse in which they did not make one or more mistakes. The Services were ill-chosen and incorrectly rendered: the Anthem was a pretentious failure. The merely literary part of the service was satisfactory, but it is not desirable to attach too much importance to these rudiments. Remarks: My Lords will require a more favourable report on the singing as a condition of an unreduced grant. Westchester Cathedral. Visited on March 7 by Mr. Simeon Jones.