having their quivers full of them, and Celibates wedded to the Church alone; all these men were racked by ambitious hopes. In the meanwhile the Prime Minister was occupied in putting salt on his sparrow's tail: that rare clerical bird so fast becoming extinct in the present day, _rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno_, who should be willing to reply to him _nolo episcopari_. The Prime Minister was looking round for a man of straw, and after some search he found him in the person of the Reverend John Dodd. The _Thunderer_ had said that "the little leaven that was needed in the hierarchy of the Church of England, that it might leaven the whole lump, was a parochial clergyman who had unostentatiously laboured in the clerical vineyard, a man who could rule his see as he had ruled his parish," and after a long diatribe, the article concluded with these pregnant words: "Such a man the noble lord at the head of affairs has found in the well-known vicar of King's Warren, the Reverend John Dodd." And then it compared the Reverend John Dodd to the "Man of Ross," in its usual graceful and pointed manner. Verbal communications, like dead men, tell no tales. The Prime Minister didn't write a letter to the Reverend John Dodd, he didn't even send him a halfpenny post-card, offering him the bishopric; but he did dispatch a trusted emissary. We must remember that the Minister had been credibly informed that the Reverend John Dodd was absolutely the only respectable clergyman in the Church of England, in the full possession of his mental faculties, who would be certain to decline the honours of consecration. Certain Roman emperors have earned our respect by refusing to accept divine honours, and the Prime Minister heard with delight that the Reverend John Dodd was a man of the same heroic kidney. We have met the emissary before, it was the same old clerical friend of the Reverend John's, who had on a previous occasion, as his archdeacon, warned him to set his house in order on the appointment of a new bishop, a king who knew not Joseph. He it was, who had recommended to his friend Dodd that eminently reliable clerical charwoman, the Reverend Barnes Puffin. The Reverend Barnes Puffin had done his work well, things had gone on smoothly ever since in the parish of King's Warren; and many a time and oft had the stout vicar, like the mask'd Arabian maid in the "Light of the Harem," exclaimed, "Oh, if there be an Elysium on earth, it is this, it is this." I don't believe that the vicar of King's Warren would have changed places with the Mikado of Japan. The two clergymen had their interview; at which Mrs. Dodd, to her great indignation, did not assist. Never before in his life had the Reverend John kept a secret so long from the knowledge of the wife of his bosom, the fair Cecilia; until the next morning at breakfast, he may be said to have continuously wrestled with her in the spirit. In vain did Mrs. Dodd alternately beg, command, and even entreat