By the terms of a new Appellate Jurisdiction Act, recently passed in both Houses of Parliament, the jurisdiction of the Privy Council has been transferred to a new Court of Appeal. It was then provided that episcopal assessors should in future sit on the bench with the lay judges; and though it is by the latter that the judgment is pronounced, the bishops are allowed to make remarks on what is passing. They are to sit in rotation in the new court. The two archbishops and the Bishop of London are also to sit in turn, _ex officio_, and the rest in quarternions, beginning with the junior four (Chichester, St. Asaph, Ely, and St. David’s). It is impossible to say what may be the results of this equivocal assessorship, with regard to which the London _Morning Post_ disrespectfully observes that “the plan offers no security whatever that the assessors shall be fit for their office beyond the fact that they are bishops”; calmly adding that “since the purpose for which their presence is required is the imparting to the judges of a certain kind and quality of information when desired, it is a serious defect to the scheme that it provides no guarantee that the prelates who sit shall possess any proper aptitude for their position.”[21] Footnote 21: The following from the London _Weekly Register_ may tend to show whether this doubt is reasonable or otherwise: “The vicar of St. Barnabas, Leeds, is fatigued with parochial work and wishes to take a little rest. He asks his Lordship of Ripon to let him name a clergyman who shall take his duties for a few weeks or months. His lordship replies that he cannot do so, because—but the language is too episcopal to be misquoted: 'If there is truth in the reports which, from time to time, appear in the public papers, you are in the habit of breaking what you must know to be the law.’ His Lordship of Ripon reads the papers, and, finding it inconvenient to leave his palace at Ripon and make a call upon a clergyman in Leeds, he refuses leave of absence to that clergyman, on account of newspaper reports.” The church-wardens take up their vicar’s cause, and, in a very proper “memorial,” represent the needs of his case to his paternal diocesan. But all is useless. “The law, the law,” says the bishop, and remains comfortably in his palace, while he forbids his hard-working vicar to take a holiday, though he does not even condescend to specify his offence. And yet the Anglican bishops do not apparently object to a due amount of repose for themselves, if we may judge from the fact that at the very time we write there are no fewer than fifteen of the “missionary bishops” of the Establishment who, after a few years of absence, and even these years agreeably diversified with visits to their friends in England, have returned thither “for good,” and are now settled with their wives and families in comfortable rectories at