not choose to be a party to such a transaction as would result in passing on a clerical scamp or incompetent from one cure to another. But in any case it by no means follows that, because I have presented a parson to a cure of souls, I should therefore give him the next presentation too, if he happens to be tired of his cure and anxious to go elsewhere. The result is that, as a rule, a beneficed clergyman, when once he finds himself, irremovable, in his cure, gives up all thought of leaving it. It is “a certainty,” and gradually he gets to look for nothing better; he goes through his duties as best he can, however mournfully conscious that he has lost the old fire and force and efficiency; he takes comfort in the thought that he has worked his parish while he could, and that he is entitled to take it easily now; and, indeed, in the eyes of those about him, he grows more and more picturesque and venerable, just as the old church tower does--but it is not safe to ring the bells up there when so much restoration is wanted._ _I have dealt with this subject in some detail in the Fourth Paper in this volume. At the time it appeared, the public mind was much occupied with and disturbed by certain political questions then in the ascendant, and the essay fell dead, attracted little or no attention and, in fact, was read by few. It often happens that a book proves an utter failure by being published at the wrong time--a month too soon or a month too late. The favour of the reading public is very capricious, not always awarded to the most deserving, sometimes given with a kind of fury of acclamation to a lucky literary adventurer whose reputation “rushes up like the rocket and comes down like the stick.” Moreover the essay laboured under one rather serious defect, which I have not yet set myself to remedy by appending an almost necessary supplement. For it may be asked, and it has indeed been objected, “If every beneficed clergyman were to hold his appointment subject to removal, ought not some provision to be made for his retirement in old age or when physically or mentally unfit for the discharge of his sacred functions?” Yes! By all means. But why only the_ beneficed _clergy? Why not all who are admitted to the sacred office? Surely it would not be difficult to elaborate a scheme whereby every officiating clergyman should be compelled to make provision for his family, or for his own retirement, by the simple expedient of stopping a certain percentage of his income and investing it in his name--much in the same way that the Clive fund is managed in India, or as the compulsory insurance of railway servants is enforced by some of the great companies. Until something of this sort is carried out, we shall continue to be pained by those distressing appeals for clergymen’s families reduced to beggary by the death of the bread-winner, which come to us all with increasing frequency, and which, as matters now look, are not likely to be fewer in the near future._