head and father. All this was there already; that is, everything had been done which was needful for the practical perfection of a cathedral church, though something might still be needed to give the fabric its ideal perfection as a work of art. And as with the fabric of the church, so with its constitution. The relations of the original centre of the diocese with its sister or rival churches, in one sense more ancient, in another newer than itself,[54] had been finally and peacefully settled. The relations between the Bishop and his Chapter, between the Chapter and its subordinate officers, had been definitely settled also. All the great offices of the church which still exist had been already founded, and those duties had been attached to them which, however much they have been forgotten, still remain the duties of their holders as much now as they were then. In short, the church of Wells, alike in its fabric and in its constitution, was already perfect. The thirteenth century had done its great creative work, and had left to future ages only to improve and develope according to the principles which the thirteenth century had laid down. That is to say, the thirteenth century had done for the local church of Wells what it did for England, what it did for Europe and for the world. It is well to mark how exactly the most striking periods in our local history fall in with the great and decisive epochs in the general history of our country. The church of Wells first arose at the bidding of the first great West-Saxon lawgiver, the prince whose reign fixed for ever that the south-western peninsula of Britain should be, in speech and allegiance, if not wholly in blood, a Teutonic and not a Celtic land. The church received its Bishop at the hands of the great West-Saxon conqueror, at the moment when Wessex finally grew into England, and the first endowment of the Bishoprick of Somersetshire was a gift from the hand of the prince to whom the Northumbrian, the Scot, and the Briton bowed as their father and their lord. The old dynasty passed away and strangers sat on the throne of England; that was the time when a stranger prelate first brought into our church the foreign and novel discipline which he had learned in his own land beyond the sea. And yet, with strangers alike on the royal throne of England and in the episcopal chair of Wells, the ancient fabric, the church of native Kings and saints and heroes, still lived on. Through the reigns of the Norman and the Angevin the ancient fabric still survived as a witness that England and her Church, conquered as they were, still preserved their national being, and would one day arise to wrest their ancient freedom from the hands of their conquerors. That ancient fabric still lived on into days when its witness was no longer needed, to days when England had won her conquerors to her heart, and had changed the sons of her oppressors into the foremost champions of her freedom. A Prelate