the Crown is much greater in the New Foundations than in the Old. Their Deans have always been appointed by the Crown, and in several of them the Canons also are appointed either by the Crown or by the Lord Chancellor. In the Old Foundations the Dignitaries and other Canons, except the Dean, have always been appointed by the Bishop. In the Welsh churches the Deans also have always been, and still are, appointed by the Bishops.[12] In the others the Canons elected their own Dean, but a custom gradually came in by which the Crown recommended a person, who was always chosen. But within the reign of the present Queen, there chanced to be some legal objection to the person recommended by the Crown to the Chapter of Exeter, so that the Canons freely elected their own Dean, who held his place till his death; only meanwhile an Act of Parliament was passed, vesting in the Crown the appointment to the Old Deaneries as well as to the New. You will see easily that, though the connexion between the Bishop and his Chapter is everywhere much weakened from what it once was and from what it ought to be, it still is much closer in the churches of the Old Foundation than in those of the New. It is to the wise and careful gradation of officers, each with his special function, in our own church and in the other churches of the Old Foundation, that I wish specially to call your attention. I assume of course that all are constantly resident, as constantly resident as a parish clergyman is on his living. I assume of course that none of them holds any preferment besides his cathedral office. These two conditions are necessary to the effective carrying out of the ancient scheme; it is owing to the breach of them, a breach which is no new thing, but which began almost from the beginning, that a most wisely and beautifully ordered system has gradually become a mere name. When offices whose duties require the constant presence of their holders on the spot are held by men who are resident for three months only or not resident at all; when there is not even any provision for the proper discharge of their duties by deputy, the whole scheme of those offices fails, and their mere empty titles become mockeries. The great offices of the cathedral, those of Dean, Precentor, Chancellor, and Treasurer, are sinecures in the legal sense, as being without cure of souls;[13] but they were certainly not meant to be sinecures in any other sense. They are offices any one of which would afford ample occupation for a studious and thoughtful man, whose soul was in his work and who loved the institution of which he was a member. The Dean is the President of the Chapter, the general superintendent of the whole institution. I can say from the examples of men alike dead and living, that when that important post is held by a man who understands its duties, it is anything but a sinecure, anything but useless. A man of ability and zeal, to whom the cathedral and everything about it supplies some