One hundred years ago
Lord Salisbury is getting into arrears with his Bishops. The Bishop of Bangor is resigning, the Bishop of St. Albans is resigning, and the Bishopric of Durham has been vacant for the last ten weeks. , The filling-up of these Bishopric is one of the most difficult and uneaiable of the Prime Minister's tasks. It is very rarely indeed that he gets any real praise for his recommendations, and he almost always makes new enemies by them; but we do not suppose he minds, that, if he can but satisfy himself that he has put new life into the Church by them. But that is just the great difficul- ty, and we fancy that the least enviable aspect of an unenviable task is the dissatisfaction and searchings of heart by which these appointments must be succeeded in the mind of a Prime Minister who really cares about the Church as Mr. Gladstone did and Lord Salisbury does.
Lord Tennyson has been very ill; but we are thankful to observe that he is well advanced in his recovery. We cannot spare him yet. "Passing the Bar" indicates so large a reserve of poetical power, that the country would be incon- solable if the Poet-Laureate passed the bar just now. The tide will flow again, we trust, before he passes on its ebb across this bank and shoal of time.
The Spectator, I March 1890
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