49 



THE RUINS OF THE CHURCH ESTABLISHMENT. 



" Where my high steeples whilom used to stand, 

 On which the lordly falcon wont to tower, 

 There now is but an heap of lime and sand, 

 For the skriech-owl to build her baleful bower." 



SPENSER. 



THE present generation will walk amongst the ruins of the church es- 

 tablishment. To the next, or the ensuing, it is probable that institution, 

 " with all that it inherits," will be a subject of antiquarian research and 

 speculation. The mitre, no doubt, has been too acutely felt not to be 

 long recollected ; but the time will come when even the remembrance of 

 the mitre shall be faint, and that cloven emblem of sacerdotal duplicity 

 shall be in as much request amongst virtuosos, as a Roman pavement, or 

 a sword that had been hacked at Hastings. In some of the ten thousand 

 newspapers that will circulate through England in the year 1932, let us 

 suppose it to be announced, that one of these barbarous baubles has been 

 found by some labourers at Exeter or Fulham : what a coil amongst all 

 the Oldbucks in the three kingdoms ; what bidding and outbidding, what 

 spite and chagrin on the part of the losers; what exultation and triumph 

 in the visage of the favourite of fortune, who has possibly mortgaged the 

 bulk of his property to secure the prize ! Let us carry our imaginations 

 further, and conceive the contests that may naturally be supposed to 

 arise amongst the learned as to the purpose for which this ecclesiastical 

 relic was designed. " Quot hominum tot sententiae ;" every antiquarian 

 will have his theory : one will maintain the mitre to have been an instru- 

 ment of torture ; a second will assert that it was meant for a kind of 

 foolscap ; a third will perhaps avow his opinion that it was not destined 

 for the head at all, but was in fact an idol, intended to represent the 

 jaws of some voracious monster, and the object of national worship in 

 the British empire; until that great event, known by the name of the 

 dissolution of the alliance of church and state, led to the introduction of 

 Christianity. 



Of course, each of these conflicting hypotheses will be defended with 

 incredible erudition and acumen. In support of the first that the mitre 

 was an instrument of torture we may conceive it to be urged, that by 

 reference to ancient chronicles it appears, that in a great variety of 

 instances the individuals, who are stated to have had it applied to their 

 brows, are immediately found making declarations or confessions at such 

 total variance with their previous recorded opinions and principles, that 

 it is utterly impossible to account for a mental revolution so sudden and 

 complete, except on the supposition of some extreme bodily torment, 

 intense enough to shake the consistency of an American Indian. As an 

 analogous description of torture, " Luke's iron crown" will be referred 

 to ; and it will hardly fail to be remarked how strikingly this hypothesis 

 agrees with the exclamation of " Nolo episcopari," which all authorities 

 agree was the usual cry or plaint of the wretched persons condemned in 

 those rude times to the infliction of the mitre ; which indeed appears to 

 have been a punishment of such a horrible nature, that the very prospect 

 of it was enough to make many individuals say and do any thing, how 

 base or unprincipled soever, that the Phalaris of the day enjoined them. 

 Torture was, moreover, a common practice in the eighteenth and nine- 

 teenth centuries. Under the pretence of preserving discipline in their 

 M.M. New Series. -Vol. XIV. No. 79. E 



