560 Notes of' the Month on Affairs in General. |[Nov. 



scufity, struggling upon the basest outskirts of literature, exiles in 

 foreign lands, or begging their bread in their own. 



The populace everywhere are furious against the bishops. Lord 

 Plunket's old almanac is not so obsolete after all. The same outcry 

 began that brilliant epoch of our history, which finished its first act in 

 1648. The Bishop of Cork is thus belaboured in the Irish papers: — 

 " So, his Right Reverence the Lord Bishop of Cork — he who made so 

 many professions of sincere attachment to the Reforming Government — 

 he who, when soliciting the vacant mitre, was so constant in dancing 

 attendance at the chamber of Sir Wm. Gossett and Baron Tuyle — who 

 entered with those gentlemen into such long-winded explanations of his 

 conduct, when his Excellency was leaving this country, in 1829, and 

 who assured the Lord Lieutenant himself that he approved of the mea- 

 sures of the Reforming Government, and would be their steady sup- 

 porter — so, this gentleman having, as we always thought, most foolishly 

 been made a bishop of — turns round, on the very first occasion that 

 offers, and votes plumply against the ministry who made him." 



If the bishop vowed all those things, let the Irish papers smite him 

 as they will. No man can serve two masters ; and if he professed 

 " Reform" before putting on his mitre, and turned his back upon it 

 afterwards, why, let justice take its course. We have nothing to do 

 between him and his tormentors. It is for him to deny the statement, 

 which, it is perfectly probable, contains not a syllable of verity. 



A burlesque circumstance, however, occurred in Bath. The popish 

 priest who calls himself Bishop of Cork, in defiance, be it observed, of 

 the grand, saving, single " security," of the Wellington healing measure, 

 was mistaken, in his transit through the city of Bladud, for the Pro- 

 testant dignitary, was dragged from the coach, and, by report, nearly 

 extinguished in the mire. Two chairmen rescued him, and the Bath 

 journals were very epigrammatic upon his giving his preservers only 

 sixpence between them. Here was " the portly dignitary, the vast plu- 

 ralist, the purple son of mother chm-ch," &c., while it turned out that 

 the subject of this remorseless pleasantry was their " friend and brother, 

 their protegee, their companion in the struggle for liberty," &c. after all. 



But an affair equally gross has but just occurred among ourselves : — 

 *' The Bishop of London was to have preached at St. Anne's, Westmin- 

 ster. The churchwardens put forth the following announcement : — ' The 

 parishioners are respectfully informed, that the Rev. Dr. Macleod, the 

 rector, has received a letter from the Lord Bishop of London, stating, 

 that his lordship is unavoidably prevented from preaching in this church 

 in the morning of Sunday next.' 



" Eleven hundred parishioners had agreed to mark their sense of the 

 reverend prelate's opinions, by leaving the church in a body, the moment 

 he entered the pulpit. The bishop, it is presumed, heard of what was 

 intended, and thought it," the papers say, " prudent to retreat." 



We say, thought it proper to preserve the church from so scandalous a 

 scene, the Liturgy from so vile an insult, and the parishioners who me- 

 ditated such conduct, from the sorrow and shame which they must have 

 felt, on a moment's reflection. 



