Complaints of the unauthorised publication of Bishop Wilber- force's very
flimsy and rather unscrupulous gossip multiply daily. In our own columns, Mrs. Oliphant gives reasons for not believing in the accuracy of a report of a supposed conversation between the Bishop and the late Mrs. Carlyle ; while in the Times of Tuesday, Lord Ampthill expresses his annoyance that the Roman gossip of 1870, which he had reported to the Bishop, should be published as his, without any mention of the very different opinion of the matters re- ferred to which was entertained by himself. But the fact is that Dr. Wilberforce would, we are sure, have been horrified at the notion that the many idle words in his diary should see the light, before even the time had come when those whom they were likely to wound had passed away. If the Bishop were to be judged not only for every idle word he had spoken, but for every idle word which he had put down in his diary, his spiritual fate would be terrible indeed,—especially if his own creed were true, that no purgatory can be admitted into the future state.
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