MY DEAR GRANDMOTHER,--We’re all safe for a time; the Pope hasn’t quite got hold of us yet. You recollect when I was a boy, how I would fling stones, and call names, and go among other boys pelting ’em right and left, and swearing I didn’t mean to hurt ’em, but played off my pranks only for their good? And then, when I used to get into a terrible fight, you remember how you used to come in at the last minute, and carry me off home just as I was nearly giving in? And then, how afterwards I used to brag that if grandmother hadn’t taken me away, I’d have licked twenty boys; one down, another come on! Well, well; the more I see of life, the more I’m sure men only play over their boys’ tricks; only they do it with graver faces and worse words. What you did for me, the Archbishop of Canterbury has done for the Bishop of Exeter. Almost at the last minute he has wrapped his apron about the Bishop and carried him out of the squabble. And now the Bishop writes a letter as long as a church bell-rope, in which he says he only gives up fighting to show that he’s obedient--more than hinting, that if he’d been allowed to go on, he’d have beaten all comers, with one hand tied behind him. At all events, he’s very glad there’s been a rumpus, as it proves there’s pluck on both sides. Yes; he says, “Whatever may have been the temporary results, _I do not and cannot regret_ that I deemed it necessary publicly to assert those principles of Church authority, which it is alike the duty of all of us to recognise and to inculcate. The very vehemence with which the assertion of them has been resisted _proves_, if proof were necessary, _the necessity of their being asserted_, and of our never suffering them to fall into oblivion.” If this isn’t talking in the dark, I don’t know what a rushlight is. You might as well say that the “vehemence” with which a man resists a kicking, “proves the necessity” of kicking him. Because folks wouldn’t at any price have surplices forced down their throats, and offertory-bags poked into their pews, why, that’s the very reason you should try to push both surplice and bag upon ’em. As I say, it shows there’s blood on both sides; and it’s a comfort to know that both parties are ready for a tussle. Well, I’ve heard this sort of preaching from a Tipperary cabman, and never wondered; but it _does_ sound droll from a bishop. I’ve read something somewhere about the thunder of the Church, and have now no doubt that it must be very serviceable; it must so clear the air after a certain time. Here, for months, has Exeter been thundering in the newspapers--crack, crack, crack! it’s gone almost every morning, till people wondered if the steeple of their own parish church was safe; and now, at last, he sits himself down, and smiling as if his face was smeared with honey, folds his hands and softly says, “Thank heaven! we’ve had a lovely storm.” Talking about thunder, I once read a poem--one of those strange, odd