High Church has been recently reading lectures to Her Majesty the Queen in the shape of two sermons preached at the Chapel Royal by Mr. Perceval and Mr. Hook.[18] The Bishop of London was cognizant of Mr. Perceval's intention, and he preached himself for several Sundays, probably for the purpose of keeping him out of the pulpit; but, the Bishop having had a fall from his horse and broken his collar-bone, Mr. Perceval found his opportunity. The Bishop, however, previously warned the Queen that she must expect a very _strong_ sermon, which naturally excited her curiosity, and when she heard it it did not appear to her so strong as she had expected. The Bishop's advice or his own reflexion may have induced Mr. Perceval to soften it. He made an attack upon Peel (that is, upon somebody whom they concluded to be Peel), reproaching him with sacrificing his conscience to political objects in consenting to Catholic emancipation, not _totidem verbis_, but in words to this effect. Hook's sermon appears to have been the stronger of the two. He told the Queen that the Church would endure let what would happen to the throne. On her return to Buckingham House, Normanby, who had been at the chapel, said to her, 'Did not your Majesty find it very hot?' She said, 'Yes, and the sermon was very hot too.' [18] [Afterwards Dean of Chichester, and author of the 'Lives of the Archbishops.'] July 28th, 1838 {p.117} The letters between Lord Palmerston and Mr. Urquhart which appeared two days ago in the 'Times,' have made a very great sensation, and thrown the friends of the former into great alarm. Urquhart's letter is so enormously long, so overlaid with matter, and so stuffed with acrimonious abuse, that it is difficult to seize the points of it; but that to which general attention is directed is the positive assertion of Lord Palmerston that he had nothing to do with the 'Portfolio,' and the announcement of Urquhart that in consequence of such denegation he will demonstrate that Palmerston had everything to do with it. He is said to make exceedingly light of it, and asserts that he can clear himself of all the imputations Mr. Urquhart seeks to cast upon him. He has, however, committed a great blunder in entering into a paper war at all. In his letter he correctly lays down the principle of the irresponsibility and omnipotence of a Secretary of State in relation to his agents, and there he ought to have stopped, and, acting on that principle, have declined any controversy; but he entered into it, and descended from his pedestal; and, though his letter is clever and well written, there are some very weak points in it, and some things which incline one to doubt his veracity. Who, for example, can believe that when Strangways[19] gave him a letter from Urquhart containing (as he informed him) a statement of his conduct, which conduct he thought so reprehensible that he had desired Strangways to admonish and caution him, he should have put this