BISHOP LONSDALE.
[Facial A CORRESPONDENT.
A Maar has bsen taken from the Episcopal Bench during the last week of whom we should like to say a few words. Dr. Loiusdale will not be remembered by any books that he wrote. He pro- duced a Latin ode on the death of Pitt when he was fresh from Eton ; he produced some apologetic works against Infidels when he was still possessed by the ordinary Eton notion that the main business of Churchmen as well as statesmen is to guard wickets or to bowl them down. But he happily discovered that a simple Christian life is a much better refutation of infidelity than any arguments. Whilst he was a preacher at Lincoln's Inn the lawyers especially admired him for assuming that they had had enough of pleas and replications during the week, and that on Sunday they would prefer to be addressed as men than as pro- fessional disputants. He was not a High Churchman, a Low Churchman, a Broad Churchman. Journalists who represent any respect.
Those who believe that a father in God is something better than a champion for any school, will remember him with warm affec- tion, even if they had only slight and occasional opportunities of intercourse with him. No person of any party ever left him with the fancy that he had found or made a convert to his opinions ; no person of any party ever left him without the feeling that he had met a just, kindly man, before whom he need not fear to expose his opinions, whatever they were. Those who were under him at King's College speak with cordial recollection of him as a most conscientious, painstaking, never troublesome or vexatious administrator ; those who had most experience of his government in the diocese over which he presided for twenty-three years will, we believe, be most eager to bear the same testimony. He never kept a suitor waiting or left a letter unanswered. Always pleasant and genial in society, and therefore evidently enjoying it, he never neglected a single disagreeable duty for the sake of it. He did not talk against men of the world, but he gave you the impression of being far more unworldly than those who were most profuse in such denunciations. He might discourse less ably on the grace of God than many, but there was an habitual graciousness in his words and acts which spoke, to those who saw it and who believed in a divine Spirit, of His abiding presence. There may be many more astute, more learned, and more eloquent prelates left than Bishop Lonsdale ; one more answering to the ideal of a spiritual father it might be difficult to find. A few minutes in his company did more to make one understand why an Episcopacy exists, and what influences it may still put forth, than all the pastorals and the resolutions of twenty Pan-Anglican Synods.
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