newspapers discover that the Warden is overpaid for his nominal work at the hospital, the old men, who are well lodged, fed, and cared for, are told that they ought to share in his stipend. A busy lawyer in the cathedral city takes up the case and the great London paper, the _Thunderer_, has leading articles denouncing the abuses of the church in general and the Warden’s position in particular. Finally a novel appears with a thinly veiled attack on the administration of the Barchester Hospital for old men. Then the Warden shows himself to have all the firmness of a man, gentle by nature, but of the highest principles. He retires to a life of poverty rather than bear the reproach of being in a false position. The Archdeacon storms, accuses his father-in-law of culpable weakness in deserting his post, and the Bishop for allowing him to do so. And then the old Bishop rallies to his friend’s support. Terribly afraid of his masterful son, he will not allow the Warden to be bullied out of doing what he thinks right. So the Warden leaves his comfortable house and takes apartments in the city, the Bishop gives him a tiny parish; and Mr. Harding, for that is the Warden’s name, lives in honourable poverty, directing the cathedral music as precentor and ministering in his little church in the old city; and he and his old friend, the Bishop, have peace in their latter days. Thus we pass from “The Warden” to “Barchester Towers,” and find old Dr. Grantley dying peacefully and his son, the Archdeacon, hoping to succeed his father. Another man is, however, given the bishopric, and Trollope introduces his greatest characters, Bishop and Mrs. Proudie. The new Bishop is a fairly easy-going man, but his wife is determined to bring things in Barchester into order. Her régime has for its watchword efficiency. In it there is no room for kindly bishops and retiring scholars, like Mr. Harding. What is required is awakening preachers, zealous reformers, capable administrators. The old sleepy cathedral must become a centre of vigorous life and action, in which even clergy like Archdeacon Grantley, with their aristocratic notions, could have no place. Mrs. Proudie is herself a lady of high birth; but vulgar people have a good deal of influence over her, because they flatter her vanity. Accordingly she takes up with a clergyman named Slope, who lets her in for a good deal of trouble by his officiousness and want of judgment and good feeling. But who am I, that in a brief lecture I should attempt to describe Mrs. Proudie? Let us turn to a very typical character in old cathedral life. Dr. Stanhope, one of the canons of Barchester, would be impossible now, but is easily conceived in the “fifties.” I should say that he was the sort of man who had become a clergyman because his family was able to advance him; and had never had any real vocation for his calling. His wife and children were a great expense to him; and he had lived long abroad in order