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their babyhood felt “the care of all the Churches” upon them; the masters all moulded and impressed by Arnold’s hand,—must have been as difficult a charge as ever man undertook. And Tait had at once to exalt and to modify that superstition. “There was truth as well as humour,” says Dean Bradley, speaking of him some years later, “in his remark (to which I cordially assented) that we had other things to do at Rugby besides exalting the Arnold tradition.” As it happened, however, that access to the hearts of his difficult charge which the conscientious work of years had but partially attained was secured to Tait, by a terrible illness which brought him to the very verge of the grave. Of no man could it be more truly said that his greatest misfortunes had emphatically served him in his progress in life. That illness helped him to the Deanery of Carlisle; and the dreadful calamity which overwhelmed him in that town, and which touched the heart of the whole country, had no doubt a great share in determining his elevation (at that time) to the See of London—or let us say, rather, to a See. Neither Queen nor people could brook that the desolate father and mother should go back to the home so full of the echoes of dear voices silenced. That it was the bishopric of London which was given him, one of the most important posts in the Church, was no doubt due to his own merits, and the excellent instinct of the Minister who appointed him. But he could scarcely have attained that elevation so soon but for the Innocents—the little band of angelic sufferers, five little daughters, of whom he was deprived in one fortnight. Such an affliction impresses the most indifferent. The present writer recollects seeing the Bishop of London very soon after his appointment, and being touched and awed beyond expression by the lines of sorrow and patience, the look of a man barely escaped with his life from an overwhelming catastrophe, which was in his face.

His career in London is one of which there could scarcely be two opinions. He penetrated the whole vast diocese with a swift and thorough organisation; and though no man has yet solved the tremendous problem of how to convert such a seething world of human trouble, restlessness, and suffering, into the harmony of a dutiful and religious life, his exertions made, the utmost that man could say, such a difference for the better as was not only highly perceptible during his lifetime, but has remained after him. The Bishop of London’s Fund is in itself a great thing; but greater still is the enormous stimulation of parochial work, and the great number, energy, and zeal of lay workers, which has so entirely changed the face of things within the last quarter of a century. Much of this is no doubt owing to the additional earnestness, which is the happy result both of the Ritualistic movement in the Church and of that opposed to it. It is not often that religious controversy of the hottest and most impassioned kind is attended by such a fortunate accompaniment; and it is but a due recognition of the real piety and burning zeal of the High Church party to allow that their movement, which is concerned about so many trivial things, and which elevates vestments and candlesticks into matters of moral and religious importance, has at the same time been the source of most thorough missionary work, and the highest philanthropic exertions for the good of the poor. While acknowledging this, how-