We have no patience with your innovators, whether in matters of Church or State. We do not deny, indeed, that certain innovations may be sometimes permissible, even if not absolutely necessary, that by their adoption things may be done more decently and in order; nor do we object even to a radical change in a given direction, when such a change has by common consent become imperative. We believe, in fact, in development and progress; only let that progress and development be slow and sure, that they may be lasting; gradual, that they may be graceful, and fall easily into their place, without unnecessary jostling or disturbance of the established order of things. Festina lente--hasten slowly--was the motto of the learned Erasmus, and quoad hoc it is ours also; and, if you care to know it, is our creed in affairs political and ecclesiastical. Some people, however, seem born to be innovators and nothing else, and the innovator, pure et simple, is surely a pest. He seems to have been born never to know peace himself, and never, as much as in him lies, to permit others a moment's rest or peace, or quiet either. Your thoroughbred, full-blooded innovator always reminds us of our first housekeeper--a very good woman in her way, too, but who had a perfect craze for shifting and reshifting, adjusting and readjusting, as well as dusting and redusting every article of furniture throughout the house, at all sorts of unseasonable hours, and when to ordinary mortals such labour seemed utterly uncalled for. When we were at home she went "at it" in out-of-the-way closets and bedrooms as much and as often as the immediate calls of the moment permitted. But when she got us away from home for a day or two, how she did enjoy it! How she did luxuriate in the power to innovate "at her own sweet will"--the quotation, by the way, is rather inapt, for her temper was somewhat of the sourest. Sometimes when we came back after a day or two's absence, we could hardly believe it to be the same house, so great was the change in the place and position of everything. At last the thing became unbearable. One evening, on our return from a walk, we found our writing-table, at which we had been employed during the day, carefully placed in the darkest corner of the room, with its drawers, containing letters, paper, pens, &c., jammed up hard and fast against the wall, while books and manuscripts were most artistically arranged in pyramidal form, the ink-bottle representing the graceful entablature on the top of a book-case, where it must have cost her no small pains, and a great deal of stretching on tip-toe, even with the aid of a chair, to place them. The thing was too absurd for any one to be really angry; but we pretended to be so, and at last peace was proclaimed, under a sort of compromise that she should arrange and readjust all the rest of the house at her pleasure, as often and as radically as she chose, but that that particular room,