The death of theArchbishop throws upon Lord Salisbury a task
which he is understood to regard with extreme aversion. He has at once to conciliate the Queen, who, as head of the Church, has a direct and personal interest in the ecclesiastical thrones ; he has to soothe, or at least not to irritate, widely divergent parties ; and he has to satisfy his own conscience that he is doing the best he can for the Church and the nation. No Prime Minister ever quite knows who will bear best the white light which is so steadily turned on an Archbishop of Canterbury, and there is not just now an ecclesiastic who, like Dean Church when Mr. Gladstone offered him the lofty seat, unhappily in vain, possesses by the consent of all men all the necessary qualifi- cations. There are too many influences at work for prophecy to be safe, but the public and the profession are both fixing their eyes upon Dr. Creighton, who represented the Anglican Church in the Coronation at Moscow. The Archbishop of York is seldom translated, the Bishop of Winchester would probably, with his imperfect health, shrink from the posi. tion, and those who select are not apt to look beyond the English Episcopal Bench.
