dispatch of the message he heard that the Earl of ---- had consented
to undertake the formation of a ministry, and from that moment he
knew that his chance was over. Many will think that he was wicked to
grieve for the loss of episcopal power, wicked to have coveted it,
nay, wicked even to have thought about it, in the way and at the
moments he had done so.

With such censures I cannot profess that I completely agree. The
_nolo episcopari_, though still in use, is so directly at variance
with the tendency of all human wishes, that it cannot be thought
to express the true aspirations of rising priests in the Church
of England. A lawyer does not sin in seeking to be a judge, or in
compassing his wishes by all honest means. A young diplomat entertains
a fair ambition when he looks forward to be the lord of a first-rate
embassy; and a poor novelist, when he attempts to rival Dickens or
rise above Fitzjeames, commits no fault, though he may be foolish.
Sydney Smith truly said that in these recreant days we cannot expect
to find the majesty of St. Paul beneath the cassock of a curate. If
we look to our clergymen to be more than men, we shall probably teach
ourselves to think that they are less, and can hardly hope to raise
the character of the pastor by denying to him the right to entertain
the aspirations of a man.

Our archdeacon was worldly--who among us is not so? He was
ambitious--who among us is ashamed to own that "last infirmity of
noble minds!" He was avaricious, my readers will say. No;--it was
for no love of lucre that he wished to be Bishop of Barchester.
He was his father's only child, and his father had left him great
wealth. His preferment brought him in nearly three thousand a year.
The bishopric, as cut down by the Ecclesiastical Commission, was only