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    versial sermon j our names are then called over ; we tand before the communion rails , within which the Bishop sits ; he , from his chair , proceeds to read along essay on church matters in general , his own views regarding them , and the particular legal measures on church matters which have been passed since the last visitation ; or which may he expected before the next . We receive his blessing , and disperse—until the hour of dinner . "

    The dinner is pictured as a dull affair , which " poor curates" cannot , and " indifferent rectors " do not attend ; and whereat there is " small ecclesiastical talk at the episcopal end of the table , and some good stories from the secretary at his end . " The Bishop bows , and goes away for another three years . The Reverend Sidney Godolphin Osborne thus comments on the departure of his brethren : —

    " The clergy get into their ' four-wheels , ' and go home . Rural Dean Rubricus tells Mrs . R ., ' The Charge was able , but evasive . He wants courage , my dear , to speak all he feels about our need of Convocation . The sermon was a sad exposure ; a Dissenter might have preached it . ' The Rev . C . Lowvein , l'ector of Gorhamville , tells Mrs . L ., with a sigh , « The Charge was able ; his Lordship is very clever , but it was very unsound . It is evident lie leans towards Exeter . But ,

    my dear , we cannot be too thankful ; Octavius Freeson preached the truth as boldly as if he was on the platform of a C . M . meeting : we have asked him to print it . ' Dr . Oldtime , the aged rector of Slowstir , tells his curate the next day , ' It was a slow , dull business ; the Bishop prosed , the preacher ranted , the Red Lion sherry has given jne a headache . ' " We need add nothing . But if this be true , what becomes of the awful pretensions of the Church of England ? What becomes of the arguments against Convocation ? and a proper setting of these things to rights ? Hapless the land whose children tolerate such spiritual pastors , and woe unto those who make them their guides unto salvation !

    Here is another incidental sketch of a piece of Church service : — " The next episcopal appearance among the clergy is at the confirmations . This is a hurried affair ; eleven o ' clock at Pumpford , three o ' clock at Market Minster , and so on for a week or two in each year ; travelling some twanty-five miles a-day , being so hurried that he is forced to transgress the rubric by saying that to four children at a time which he is ordered to say to each one : it is no wonder that his clergy see but little of him on these occasions . Some few may meet him at dinner , wherever he may stay to dine and sleep , but they find him fatigued , and ho has to play the guest to his host ' s family ; he could hardly be expected to do more . "

    Comment is superfluous . These are sketches of " an ordinary dioce * s , with an ordinary bishop . " There is something more behind : — " In an extraordinary diocess , with an ultra Anglo-Ciitholie ritualistic bishop , there would be some alteration in the details . A communion at the church ; a sermon on symbolical architecture or consubstantiation ; a charge full of invective against lutitudinarianisin , i . e ., everything winch i « not Church first ; a deploring of the degeneracy of the day , and imploring the accession of H time when the Church should be purged of untnisting children , have her own convocation , and by her Nynodical action repress Hchism and advance her Pure apostolical system , &o . At the dinner the clergy would l ) o dressed like Koman Catholic priests ; tho waiters like orthodox Protestant parsons . So far as

    any real useful end being answered by the occasion , there would bo little ditterence between the two visitations . " Yet , both , wo suppose , are sanctioned by tho Ohureh of England ! -I ho Hishop , if , is admitted , is too worldly ; liore is too much of tlio " spiritual peer" about * »; curates aro not at ease in bin presence ; he would bo more useful " were he a less great num . ClainiH for political service bnvo been ' most powerfully acknowledged in the appointment of bishops / ' " Tho Bench , even of Into , has Known in Homo of her members a deplorably | 'H ! reenary spirit . " " Nepotism has at times been very rifo . " Ami tho remedy is— " more biN hopn , lmfc of a ver y diflV > rent worldly position . " Ih <^ clergy play " unties in out-of-the-way pliie es . " « Tho state of tho Churches is shameful . " " Ih not thiH a diiinty dish To wet before a king . " Mr . Otiborno has a remedy , of course—more l > » sno ]> H , aa wo have said—in fuel , " gig-bishops . "

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    Don't think he means Gigmanity in lawn and mitre . Nothing of the kind . He proposes the appointment of a set of sensible hard-working gentlemen , at a salary of fifteen hundred a-year , who shall travel round and round their little dominions like spiritual poor-law inspectors , to advise , admonish , preach for , pray with , and dine -with curate and rector—all to be done " without fuss . " Really a very sensible scheme —if it would work . But how it would " get rid of the scandals which attach to the Bench , " also of " plotting Church unions , " and " useless archdeacons , " we cannot see . How the scandalous divisions in the Church would be cemented is a

    puzzle . Mr . Osborne , indeed , states the evil to be remedied by the simple establishment of a staff of " gig-bishops , " more forcibly than we can ; for he speaks from within , we from without the clerical camp : — " At present few clergymen really know or are known to their Bishop , except as mere acquaintances , unless , indeed , they are active agitators . The laity are left to the mercy of endless , ever-changing forms , ceremonies , and rules for divine service . They see large sections of the clergy meeting at clerical societies ,

    some to conspire to exalt the forms of the Church far above her spiritual teaching , others to throw contempt on all form and decent order by their neglect of it . They hear brother rail at brother—they know not which way to turn ; there is no quiet , no peace . They hear of a bishop ' s riches , » md the fallacies of episcopal accounts ; but they seldom ever hear of or see a bishop acting as a friend among his clergy , treating all in a spirit of love , trying to reconcile their differences , and improve their practice . "

    Does not that paragraph contain a pretty closely packed array of reasons , not for more bishops , to be drawn from the ranks of these unfraternal persons , but for a free assembly of the Church ? Strangely enough , the writer thinks not . like Mr . Micawber , he lives ' on the hope that " something will turn up "—a " coup d ' etat !' at Westminster , or the like , with the laity as the Lewis Bonaparte saving the Church . No doubt , a " spirit of love" dictated these words : —

    " I am satisfied , Sir , that within these next two months the C hurch will shake off many a rotten branch . Rome ' s priests will pick them up , —I would they had had them sooner ; but far worse will follow , unless some means are taken to show the laity that unprotestantizing bishops cannot be borne in a Protestant church . We are saved from a convocation which would have made our sores y et more public ; let us now hope that the good sense of the country may look for measures which shall heal , not aggravate those sores . "

    Mr . Osborne would make an excellent surgeon . When be had patients , he would cure their sores by covering them up ; drive round in a " gig" to see that the wrappages were all right ; and to prevent a further spread of the disorder , call in , say a railway engineer to prescribe . The sores will exist , even if Convocation he instantaneously prorogued next week by " J . B . Cantuar ; " and the laity are about as likely to heal them , as likely to eject unprotestantizing bishops , as the railway engineer or other inappropriate person to prevent the spread of leprosy . " Let who will proceed to the work , Church reform must be worked by lay aid , mid the less the Bench have to do with it the better ; all mistrust them . " Wo are not directly concerned about the consequences which How ' from his dictum ; but does not Mr . Osborne see tlmt he calls in question the utility—nay . the alleged divine origin of the episcopal and clerical onions when ho falls back for Church legislation upon the laity , who , in the Legislature , which would have to enact the remedy , count up no insignificant number having no belief in the Church , nor in her monopol y ^ the national curer of souls . 11 is proposition isthat tho laity are wiser than the clergy ; if ho , whence the ' necessity for the existence of the latter ; and chief among them , of the Reverend { Sidney Godolphin Osborne P it is he who has proposed Mio query—it is the nation who will respond . jlowover that may be , we trust we havoplueed before our readers what we nroinised at tho outlet- —" a clerical witness to Church anarchy . "

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    A SCRKYV FOR PUBLIC 1 IKALTII OFFICIOU S " Tun Chinese liavo a practice of engaging a medical man to koop a certain number of human

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    SANITARY ( JOVKItNMKNT . So vicious has been tho old system of " purifying" our towns , that the path of tho working reformer ' s cutting new drains is one of danger . This wook we have reports of two men killed by excavating too near an old sower . Thus tho

    means intended for preserving life become mortal , through neglect of a science positive enough in all conscience , and clear enough to the understanding . But while insidious poison is tolerated , medicine , which is too obvious , irritates the fastidious sense . "A Sufferer" recentl y complained to the Times that " Mr . Mechi is pumping a solution of dead animals , from a horse to" a pig , "with animal and vegetable manure , and every kind of decayed vegetable and offal , " over his fields , and the writer seemed to imagine that the process is a direct diffusion of cholera . The Sufferer only

    represents the intelligence of the public at large , which tolerates condensation of decayed vegetable and animal matter in towns where it cannot be reconverted into living organism ; and he is terrified at it in the fields , where it becomes more obvious , but is immediately converted from death-bearing poison to life-giving nutriment . " Dirt is only matter in the wrong place . " Under the microscope of science , the most revolting substance becomes an object of wonder and admiration , for the working of those vast laws to which it is subjected , in common w ith other substances which human wisdom calls " higher . "

    The most revolting of substances , no longer placed where it impedes the operation of those laws , stored to poison the atmosphere of towns , or intruded upon the presence of life , but , conveyed to the place where it is wanted , totally changes its character , and falls in with the general circle of convertibilities , — the true poetical metamorphoses of nature , —and re-appears as grass or as vegetables , the food of beast

    and man . It is not in perceiving the natural odour of such substances that the mischief arises . The mischief is not in the scent , but in the permanent proportion of gases not available for respiration ; and , where the conversion is rapid , as it is amongst the vegetation that requires nutriment , that poisoning of the air does not take place . As Mr . Mechi replied in the Times , " A Sufferer does not reflect . Horses , pigs , and other animals will die : what becomes of them now ?"

    Farmers make dung heaps , and spread them over the country , strewing abroad unpleasant substances , which less manifestly scent the air , but which remain much longer to give forth their noxious gases . In fact , exactly the same process as that to which the Sufferer so strongly objects ,

    is employed at present , only that the conversion is much less rapid and much less complete-Seeing is believing . Smelling is the raw material of faith ; and the uneducated man , like "A Sufferer , " believes in proportion to his powers of smelling . The deadened sense of towns is content to feed the lungs with tho diffused matter of refuse and corpses , but a transient breeze from a recently manured field causes a nervous faintness . This want of real intelligence is the grand obstacle to sanitary reform ; it makes the public indifferent ; it makes tho official executive really inclined to defeat that which it pretends to further .

    By degrees , however , a progress is made , and the multiplication of experiments will gradually make the English public ; understand , by the only process intelligible to the English public , that of tangible proof , how the circle of conversion is to be kept up . In several new towns , Tottenham being the nearest to tho metropolis , plans have been adopted , under the Public Health Act , for establishing a system of house drainage with tubular drains , and a constant supply of water , by which the refuse is sluiced rapidly away , or converted into liquified manure , available at once . About fifty towns have undertaken an expenditure amounting , in the aggregate , to

    nearly < liO ( ) , O ( M )/ ., in order to establish this system of drainage on a . greater or smalh . tr scale . Those towns will become models for other places ; and , if the agriculturists in the neighbourhood were to aid in the work , they would derive a considerable profit to themselves , while they would be performing a service to their country . As usual , in this , too , human wisdom consists in following as closely and diligently as possible the divine laws that regulate the life of the Universe : those who expedite tho conversion of refuse into living and life-giving organisms , are practical " ministers" of tho Divino jveriirnoiit .

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    November 6 , 1852 . ] THE LEADER . 1 <> 65

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Nov. 6, 1852, page 1065, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1959/page/13/