I continue extracts from the diary and selected letters, the cares and labours of the bishop will appear mingled with the pursuits, tastes, and feelings of the private individual; nor will I hazard any loss of freshness and vivid impression by attempting to weld the original material into a continuous narrative of my own.

'Nov. 6,1828. My father and mother arrived from Exeter, both in good health-one near eighty, the other eightytwo.'

'Sunday, Nov. 9. My father and his grandson John served the church in the morning: my brother read prayers and I preached in the afternoon. This remarkable union of three generations in my native place, made a strong impression upon us all, and upon the whole parish. Only two individuals of the congregation were there, whom my father found at his first coming to Offwell, in 1774.'

'Jan. 8, 1829. Dined at Fulham. The bishop had all his near relations there except his brother, viz., his father, mother, and two sisters. It is remarkable that this family coincides nearly with my own, viz., a father, mother, and two sisters, and we are the only bishops on the bench whose fathers are living.

April 9 and 10. Debate on the third reading of the Catholic Relief Bill. The house impatient, otherwise I intended to speak as to Lord Eldon's objection about the oath of supremacy, as if it bound us not to admit those who would not take it into parliament. I meant to have asked him whether he thought all the bishops and all the peers, from 5 Elizabeth down to 30 Charles the Second, had no consciences, for they were all precisely in the same predicament, which, according to him, precluded us from voting for this bill.

This week I was elected a member of the Literary Club,

in the room of Dr. Howley, who resigned upon being promoted to the archbishopric of Canterbury.

'May 13.-Dined at Dr. Blomberg's. The Duke of Cumberland and a small party. The duke affable, and apparently much pleased with his entertainment. Mr. Sadler, the member for Newark, there, with whom I had much talk about the principle of population, free trade, &c., in the course of which he maintained many paradoxes, but said he could demonstrate them by the surest evidence of facts. The duke joined us in the drawing-room, and entered very particularly with me into the Catholic Relief Bill, and his renunciation of the Duke of Wellington. Upon this subject he was unusually explicit. Upon my observing that the king's speech was a sufficient indication that the king's consent to the measure had been obtained, he said, 'Not a bit of it. The king never gave his consent, nor does he now approve of what they have done. He has been deceived by them. I arrived in England on the 14th, and the next day waited on the king, and took the liberty of expressing my regret that I must vote against Catholic Emancipation, which he, the king, had sanctioned. The king replied sharply, I have sanctioned no such thing. They have never proposed it to me. The laws affecting the Roman Catholics are to be reviewed, but that is not Catholic Emancipation." All this the duke amplified and reiterated with great earnestness, telling me that the ministry were at one time on the point of being dismissed, so much did the king resent this duplicity. He then took his leave very graciously.'

In connexion with the subject of this last extract, I insert a letter to the Rev. J. M. Traherne, who, it will be seen, had kindly taken upon himself the defence of his bishop, attacked in the public papers. The letter contains some valuable remarks

with reference to the Chester sermon, 5th November, 1826.

My dear Sir,

Deanery, St. Paul's, May 5, 1829.

You have acted a very kind and friendly part, and one which calls for my warm acknowledgments, in sending a vindication of your diocesan's character to the Cambrian. It is not about opinions or arguments that I am concerned; they may be weak, or mistaken, or absurd, and I am far from wishing any mercy to be shown in the discussion of their merits. But in a matter of fact, when one's character is attacked, I hold it to be a duty to repel the accusation. And if one is precluded by station from coming forward in one's own person, there cannot be a more friendly, or, as I think, a more becoming act, than to take that part for another, who is so shut out from vindicating himself, as you have done. If there had been a single sentiment or position in my sermon, or its notes, at variance with my parliamentary conduct, I should deservedly sink in the estimation of my friends, as well as of indifferent people. But, unless a man who held the opinions contained in that publication of 1826 had supported the present measure, it must have been an inconsistency as great as any which has been imputed to me for defending it. Having always placed the question upon the issue of expediency, and having denied that it was one of religious belief or religious obligation, surely the case laid before parliament by the king's government ought to determine it that way.

I still maintain, as I ever did, that it is not a claim of right on the part of the catholics, and I reject all the sophistical reasoning by which their advocates endeavour to prove that their church is not essentially intolerant, and has never authorized persecution from the same quarter in which they say her infallibility resides. From the proof

K

of the reverse, I deduce consolatory conclusions. I think candid and enlightened men will see that the claim of infallibility must therefore be unfounded, and if once that drops, a world of errors and corruptions fall with it. I hold it, therefore, to be of the highest importance, in a religious point of view, to establish that position, that the church of Rome has given the sanction of assumed infallibility to the persecution of heretics. If you have time and inclination. to peruse that note with attention (a note which cost me more thought and research than the whole sermon) you will, I think, agree with me, that the point was worthy of the pains bestowed upon it. It draws the controversy to a narrow compass, and it presents a view of the question, which, however conclusive, does not appear to me to have been taken by other writers. How Faber and others could imagine that such men as Sanderson, (who wrote not only cases of conscience with the most rigorous strictness, but a treatise De juramento, still held to be the best interpretation of the nature of an oath extant,) how he and Jeremy Taylor and Lloyd, and twenty more who might be named, could sit in parliament with Roman Catholics, and yet that it must be a violation of conscience and religious obligation in us to do so, is past my comprehension. But I will not enter into the general argument. If it is not settled almost in a moment, it is endless. As to Arnold, I am Some of the general

not one of his greatest admirers. reasoning and general views in the opening I could not approve. They appeared to me rash and dangerous.

I must now answer your inquiry about the confirmation. I have resolved not to hold my primary visitation this year, but I hope to visit several parts of the diocese, if not all the principal towns, for the purpose of confirmation. Llandaff, of course, will be one. You shall have the earliest information I can give.

Once more, let me thank you for your kind services, and

entreat you to correct the notion, if ever you hear it, that I sent my speech to anybody with a view to affect his opinions on the main question, but merely to put him in possession of the truth as to what I had myself said, and so to enable him not only to appreciate, but to justify, his diocesan's character against calumny.

I am, my dear Sir,

Ever yours sincerely,

E. LLANDAFF.

The following, to his friend Mr. John Duncan, is upon a different subject and in a different vein. I give it a place according to its date.

My dear Duncan,

Offwell, 24th Nov. 1829.

Some acknowledgment is due to the kind postscript you added to Philip's letter, but still more to the letter I received after your tour in July, and which has remained a burden upon my conscience ever since. You and Mrs. Duncan did me, I know, the honour of calling at Llansanfraed. Next summer I hope to receive you there, and to introduce you to some of the quiet and unobtrusive beauties of that neighbourhood. The whole of Monmouthshire is interesting. Last week I employed in exploring the southern part of it, making unexpected parochial visitations (which I take to be much more useful than formal ones), and examining the state of churches and schools. The churches are many of them in a state of squalid neglect-the ancient character suffered to be lost, and a mean sort of patchwork substituted for decayed mullions and windows. In one particular I have been inexorably severe-the destruction of ivy and other vegetation in towers and the walls of churches. There are quite ruins enough in Monmouthshire to serve for young ladies' sketch-books, without making a building destined for