A rumour, traceable in part to that faithful daily retainer
of the Record's, the Morning Advertiser, and partly credited by the Record of Wednesday, but not by the Guardian, a much better authority, has got about to the effect that the Bishop of Lincoln will refuse to come to London, from the fear that the work of this great diocese will be too much for his health, and that in case of this refusal, Mr. Gladstone intends to recommend the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Wilberforce) to the See of London. The latter part of the story is wholly incredible. Mr. Gladst,one's ecclesiastical appointments may possibly enough not prove to be quite so dispassionate, or formed on so skilful an external diagnosis of opinion, as Mr. Disraeli's, but he is assuredly not likely to entrust great responsi- bilities to the one Bishop of the English Church who has shown himself to be in the strictest sense that most dangerous of all characters to any church, a thoroughly unscrupulous tactician and partizan.
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