I am surprised that your correspondent T. W. should find any difficulty in the passage he quotes from _Childe Harold_: "Thy waters wasted them while they were free, And many a tyrant (_has wasted them_) since." This mode of expression is only faulty when ambiguous; but here of ambiguity there is none. SAMUEL HICKSON. THE THREE ESTATES OF THE REALM. (Vol. iv., pp. 115. 196.) As CANONICUS EBORACENSIS considers that I have "not exactly hit the mark" in inferring that "the Lords, the Clergy _in Convocation_, and the Commons" are the "Three Estates of England" named in the Gunpowder Treason Service, I would claim, being not yet altogether convinced by CANON. EBOR.'S arguments that such is the case, a share of your space for discussing a question which must certainly be interesting to all who uphold "our Constitution in Church and State." My apology for prolixity must be, that having but just received "NOTES AND QUERIES" I have not had time to study brevity. The passages, which contain the expressions referred to in the Service, are as under:-- "We yield Thee our unfeigned thanks and praise for the wonderful and mighty deliverance of our gracious Sovereign King James the First, the Queen, the Prince, and all the royal branches, _with the Nobility, Clergy, and Commons of England_, then assembled in Parliament, by popish treachery appointed as sheep to the slaughter, in a most barbarous and savage manner, beyond the examples of former ages."--The First Collect at Morning Prayer. "By discovering and confounding their horrible and wicked enterprise, plotted and intended this day to have been executed against the King _and the whole State of England_, for the subversion of the government and religion established among us."--The Litany. "Acknowledging Thy power, wisdom, and goodness in preserving the King, _and the Three Estates of the Realm of England_, assembled in Parliament, from the destruction this day intended against them."--The Communion Service. "Who on this day didst miraculously preserve _our Church and State_ from the secret contrivance and hellish malice of popish conspirators."--After the Prayer for the Church Militant. CANON. EBOR. asserts that these Three Estates (the word "estates" being used of course in its second intention, as meaning the representatives, and not the orders _en masse_) are "the Lords Spiritual," "the Lords Temporal," and "the Commons," representing severally the clergy, the nobility, and the commonality. As "the Lords Spiritual" are always placed before "the Lords Temporal," he is obliged to rank _the clergy_ before _the nobility_ in spite of the order of precedency observed in the Collect. This seems to show that the clergy are not represented by the bishops. And in the Coronation Oath they are separately specified: