Manchester was in the diocese of Lichfield until 1541, when it was transferred to Chester; but since 1847 it has been an independent see. Manchester people have had amply sufficient time to realise this added dignity, but the stranger fails altogether to assimilate the idea, and although he perceives the Bishop to be full-fledged—except that he is a “Lord” Bishop only by election—cannot help observing that his Cathedral is but a suffragan. It would be an imposing building in a smaller place, but here it is dwarfed by the neighbouring railway stations and the towering piles of warehouses. It looks, as already remarked, nothing more than a parish church, and a very black parish church, too. It is chiefly of Perpendicular Gothic, but little of the exterior is really old, the tower having been rebuilt in 1868, and many features added since. The beauty of the church is chiefly within. It is a dark interior, but the nave, with its tall slender columns of red sandstone, is particularly graceful. This is no place for an architectural history of the structure, but at least the ancient carved miserere seats may be mentioned, particularly as they are among the finest in the country, for craftsmanship and fertility of invention. Like—yet how unlike!—the pictorial advertisements of a patent medicine which here shall be nameless, “every picture tells a story,” and much entertainment may be derived from these quaintly humorous designs. The three legs of Man, shown upon one, allude to the connection of the Stanleys, Earls of Derby (who were Kings of Man), with the “old church,” as Manchester men still affectionately style the Cathedral. An elephant with a castle on his back is seen on another, but the elephant’s legs are jointed like those of a horse, and obviously the designer knew little of the structure of elephants. Another subject is that of the fox walking off with a goose. Two others display the twin sports of bull-and bear-baiting. A very humorous example displays a pedlar, fallen asleep by the way, robbed by monkeys, who are taking the trinkets and clothing out of his pack, and trying them on, while one other is busily searching in his hair for the usual game that monkeys in the Zoological Gardens may any day be observed seeking. Another very elaborate carving represents a sow playing the bagpipes, and a group of little pigs dancing to the music. A pilgrim engaged in drinking and accidentally letting fall the jug, is a scene unfortunately mutilated. A game of backgammon in an inn; the execution of the fox by owls and rooks; the hare’s revenge, where the hare is seen to be roasting the hunter on a spit; and a stag-hunting scene complete the set. In this last, the hunt is represented as at an end, or “done”; and probably is intended as a pun upon the name of the first Warden of the College, Huntingdon. III