The Bishop of London, Dr. Temple, has been offered, and
has accepted, the Primacy of the Church of England. During his head-mastership at Rugby, when there was some question whether a boy who had committed some offence should or should not be expelled the school, the father of the boy forwarded to Dr. Temple the boy's own account of the matter, which ended with the succinct and pithy remark, "Temple is a beast, but a just beast." That was a schoolboy compliment, but it hit off at once Dr. Temple's gruffness of manner and his equity of mind. And he is not only brusque and scrupulously fair, but he is a Hercules in his labours, and on the whole a man of very large and sagacious common-sense. He is seventy-five, which would be far too old for the Primacy, were he not still discharging, and discharging very vigorously and well, the duties of a still more laborious See. Indeed many men of sixty-five are greatly inferior to him in power of work. With his singular mastery of the whole Education question, he will probably render great services both to the Church and to the State during the discussion and settlement of the policy to be pursued towards the voluntary schools. The question which remains as to who should be selected for the great diocese which Dr. Temple will leave vacant, will prove a difficult one. Will it be Dr. Jayne (the Bishop of Chester), or Dr. Creighton (the Bishop of Peterborough), or Dr. Talbot (the Bishop of Rochester), or some other prelate not as yet thought of,—for instance, Dr. Jacobson, the Bishop of Newcastle? The diocese of London needs a strong man in the meridian of his strength.
