THE BISHOP (_to his youngest and favourite son_): "Now, why shouldn't you adopt the _stage_ as a profession, Theodore? Lord Ronald Beaumanoir, who's a year younger than yourself, is already getting _sixteen guineas a week_ for low comedy parts at the Criterion! The duchess told me so herself only yesterday!"] _Punch_ appends an extract from a speech by Mr. Chamberlain expressing his incredulity of any settlement of this question being arrived at in the Parliament about to assemble. This view is further developed in a burlesque forecast, "The Disestablisher's Diary," with sensational and circumstantial details of the passing of Disestablishment, the conversion of Westminster Abbey into a Coffee Hall, bishops begging in the streets, riots of country clergy, etc. In 1887 the scheme of the late Dean, then Archdeacon or "Harsh Deacon" Farrar (as _Punch_ called him), for a Church House as a Jubilee memorial roused _Punch's_ violent animosity. It was giving a stone to those who needed bread--the poor clergy. In the cartoon on "Mammon the mendicant," who was sending round the hat, John Bull declines to give anything to the seedy cleric for the Church House: "I'd rather put it into your own [hat]." A long article is devoted in 1890 to the trial of Bishop King of Lincoln, but beyond facetious descriptions of the eminent counsel engaged the only point made is that the bishop never came near the place. In the same year another bishop, Dr. Jayne of Chester, earned _Punch's_ unstinted approval for encouraging dancing among the working classes. At a conference of the Girls' Friendly Society the bishop had remarked that, "until they were prepared to introduce basket-making into London Society as a substitute for quadrilles and waltzes he was not disposed to accept it as an equivalent for balls and dances among girls of other classes." This liberality of view prompted _Punch_ to cut a series of ecstatic capers over the pluck and common sense of "my pithy Jayne." In agreeable contrast to these punning comments on Church matters are the tributes to two remarkable men, widely sundered in temperament, physique and doctrine, who both passed away in January, 1892. The memorial lines on Cardinal Manning insist that he was much more than A great priest, shrewd marshaller of men, Subtle in verbal fence with tongue or pen, Ascetic of the cell-- He is extolled as the friend of the poor, the struggling weak, the toiler for temperance, the hastener on of light:-- In many a fray when Right's at odds with Might, Might's foes will miss their friend. [Sidenote: _Homage to Spurgeon_] It should be remembered that _Punch_ did not easily applaud Temperance advocates in this period, when he avowed himself as "capable of special sympathy with the publicans." _Punch_ owed an _amende_ to Spurgeon as well as to Manning, and made it handsomely. He recognizes Spurgeon's sturdiness and geniality:--