least would-be practical statesman, dealing no longer with points of
doctrine but with the affairs of the Church as a political body. The
circumstances of the first--the address delivered at Sion College--had
a certain piquancy: whether they had also sweet reasonableness and an
entire accordance with the fitness of things is a question no doubt
capable of being debated. Me the situation strikes, I must confess, as
a little grotesque. The layman in the wide sense, the amateur, always
occupies a rather equivocal position when he addresses experts and the
profession; but his position is never so equivocal as when he doubles
the part of non-expert with that of candid friend. How Mr Arnold
succeeded in this exceedingly delicate attempt I do not propose to
examine at any length. He thought himself that he had "sufficiently
marked the way in which the new world was to be reached." Paths to new
worlds are always interesting, but in reading, or rather re-reading,
the sailing directions of this Columbus twenty years after date, one
may be a little disappointed. The sum appears to be a somewhat
Tootsian declaration that things of general are of no consequence. The
Church is better than Dissent; at least she would be so if she dropped
all her dogma, the greater part of her superstitions about the rights
of property and "my duty to my neighbour," and as much as possible of
the barriers which separate her from Dissent itself. A most moderate
eirenicon. Still less need be said of the Burials Bill paper, which is
a sort of appendix or corollary to the Sion speech, at the end of
which the subject had been referred to. The particular question, in
this phase of it, has long ceased to burn, and one need not disturb
the ashes.

We must now turn to the incursions of this time into politics, which,
if not much happier, were more amusing. The chief monument of them is
the long unreprinted _Friendship's Garland_, which has always had