While the great issues at stake in the first Reform Bill were filling the thoughts of all, only one Bishop, Dr. Philpotts of Exeter, voted (I believe) in favour of the Bill. The consequence was that the whole bench of Bishops was for a time overwhelmed with national hatred. The late genial and kind-hearted Duke of Buccleuch told me that he had been severely hurt in an attempt to protect the Bishops from popular insult as they came out of the House of Lords. The Bishops had to sign a common protest that they were no longer able to carry out their legislative duties because they could not attend the House of Lords with safety. Even in Canterbury, when the kindly Archbishop Howley visited his metro-political city, he was assaulted by the mob in the streets, pelted with mud and dead cats, prevented from dining at the Guildhall, and was only saved by two or three courageous gentlemen from being dragged out of his carriage and brutally ill-treated. Lord Macaulay's celebrated description of the scene which took place in the House of Commons when the Bill was passed by a very small majority proves how much less inflammable is the present state of the political atmosphere. [Illustration: ARCHBISHOP HOWLEY ASSAULTED BY THE MOB.] He tells us that not only did the members who attached supreme importance to the passing of the Bill clasp each other by the hand with tears, but that, with unprecedented disregard of the decorous traditions of Parliament, they leapt upon the benches, and stood there waving their hats, and cheering themselves hoarse. Take again the scene which the House witnessed during a memorably eloquent speech of Mr. Bright. He was addressing a House which in those days all but unanimously rejected his opinions, though time has since then shown how well deserving they were of consideration; and yet he moved many to tears who were little accustomed to give open signs of their emotion. He always spoke in a style of nervous Saxon English, and his words on that occasion were a singular mixture of unconventional homeliness and profound pathos. [Illustration: JOHN BRIGHT SPEAKING IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.] He mentioned that he had met Colonel Boyle, a well-known member of the House--"at Mr. Westerton's, the bookseller's I think it was, at the corner of Hyde Park"--and had asked him whether he was going out to the Crimea. He answered that he was afraid he was. "It was not fear for himself; he knew not that. 'But,' he said, 'to go out to the war is a serious thing for a man who has a wife and five children.' The stormy Euxine is his grave; his wife is a widow; his children are fatherless." And then, after alluding to other well-known members who had perished in the Crimean War, he added, "The Angel of Death has been among us; we may almost hear the beating of his wings." [Illustration: BRIGHT RECITING HIS SPEECH TO HIS FRIENDS.]