On the whole, I found myself too much of an American Churchman to relish this meeting. It was humiliating to see the venerable Archbishop paying such deference to one who, though so nearly allied to the throne, is in no wise entitled to especial homage from so august a personage as the Primate of all England: and I considered it insufferable that such official personages as Lord John Russell, and Earl Grey, should be chief speakers, merely because of their position, although flagrant enemies of the Church’s holiest principles. A more turgid piece of bombast than the former delivered, I have never chanced to hear, and his whole appearance was, to me, ludicrously revolting. It must not be supposed, however, that the meeting went off without effect. It was nobly redeemed by admirable speeches from Sydney Herbert, the Duke of Newcastle, Sir Robert Inglis, and the Earl of Harrowby, as well as from the Bishops of Oxford and London. Lord Harrowby, in particular, reflecting on the Walpoles and the Graftons of former ministerial epochs with just severity, gave Lord John some wise counsels, while apparently congratulating him on his widely different policy, in patronizing Missions! Mr. Sydney Herbert was truly eloquent, and threw out several sparkling abstractions, which greatly raised my estimate of his mental power; but the natural orator, among them all, was the Bishop of Oxford, whose delightful voice, pleading for the creation of a staff of native Missionaries in Africa, India, and China, infused a thrill of feeling through every heart, as he wound up with the scriptural example of those whose first transports, in receiving the Gospel, found vent in the expression—“We do hear them speak, _in our tongues_, the wonderful works of God.”