Henry of Exeter.

THERE is no man whom, for the last few years, I have been so eager to see as Henry of Exeter. More than any other living prelate he met the picture which my imagination had drawn of the high and haughty churchman of past times. Had he lived in the eleventh century he would have been a Hildebrand; or moved and had his being at the time of Henry the Second, have torn the Constitutions of Clarendon, or come down to us, like Thomas à Becket, canonized for sublime contumacy to his king. When I read the passage in Mosheim, which describes the character of Gregory VII., the Bishop of Exeter stood before me: "Sagacious, crafty, and intrepid, nothing could escape his penetration, defeat his stratagems, or daunt his courage; haughty and arrogant beyond measure; obstinate, impetuous, and intractable, he looked up to the summit,

and laboured up the steep ascent with_uninterrupted ardour and invincible perseverance." I fancied, too, that the prelate might sit for the portrait of the pontiff, "with a crook in one hand," as Voltaire tells us the Neapolitan artist drew him, "and a whip in the other; trampling sceptres under his feet, with St. Peter's net and fishes on either side of him."

Nor was it to be wondered at, if my imagination took a romantic or dramatic turn, from all I had heard and read of "mitered Exeter "-from all friends or foes had advanced for and against him. In his origin there was something to set him apart from the prelates that had risen by common-place progress; who had found their way to episcopacy by the smooth and placid road

of a prudent piety and gradual promotion, or plodded to the same point across the ploughed and heavy field of academic learning, by the sheer strength of a ponderous endurance. The son of a Gloucester innkeeper, he had attained to the prelatic bench and stood prominent there, not only applying his powerful and impetuous eloquence to ecclesiastical matters, but mingling in political conflict for the high concernments of the kingdom, when he seldom wasted his strength upon smaller adversaries, but, singling out some one of the foremost of the lay-lords, measured minds with him alone. Who does not recollect his early hand-to-hand combats in the Upper House with Brougham, when, during some of the wild debates which distinguished the long and troubled administration of the Whigs, the ex-Chancellor and the Bishop, as if by some fierce instinct of superior animals and a consciousness of mutual strength, sought out, and fixed, and fastened upon each other, and stood—

"Like Titans, face to face."

It was no child's play, when vigour and venom on one hand were encountered by a nature more stern and an intellect hardly inferior on the other. Nor will it, I am sure, be necessary to remind the reader of the fearful force with which the Western Bishop descended on the soft and courtly Melbourne, when the latter, either in folly or forgetfulness, introduced the founder of the Socialists to the presence of his sovereign. Hour after hour did the mitred orator pour forth his terrible exposure of the tenets of the man who had been so admitted, until, having wrought up the House to the "highest pitch of interest and horror," he shortly turned round, and fixing his grey eye on the offending First Minister, told him he incurred and merited impeachment! It was during that debate, I think, that a person who was in the House assured me he observed an incident as characteristic of the haughty Churchman as even his oratory. The Bishop had stepped forward to the table to make, apparently, some alteration in the terms of the

paper or motion which he held in his hand, when the Duke of Wellington, stooping down, seemed to suggest something in his ear; upon which the Bishop, without even looking round, impatiently and with a show of irritation waved back his hand, as though he had said, "Do-do, pray, leave me alone!" The hero of a hundred fights retired meekly to his seat-the warrior of strong purpose unconsciously giving way to the hot and impetuous priest, the mitred son of mine host of the Bell!

Such was, or I fancied was, the man whom I had never heard or seen until last Sunday, having almost for this purpose alone made a pilgrimage to Torquay, where I was told he either preached or took part in the service at St. John's Chapel in the morning. I am not a topographer; it is, therefore, no business of mine to give an account of a well known watering-place, which almost every body has seen. It is a good locality, I believe, for fish and invalids; and the Bishop seems. to be fond of it, for he has built a marine pavilion about a mile from the town, close to the sea, with fountains and fruit trees and Italian terraces, that would not at all tempt you to cry," Nolo Episcopari," if such things made part of the apostolic succession.

Torquay, like every other watering-place, has two parties in the Church, and two churches for these parties; by a happy fitness of situation, too, the high is on the hill and the low in the hollow. As Mr. Fayne's was not the one for me to look for "mitred Exeter" in, I followed the wheel chairs up the ascent, to that which calls the Rev. Park Smith incumbent. I was yet two hundred yards from the church when some one near me said, "Here is the Bishop ;" and here he was, in a neat one-horse Brougham, with his two daughters, presenting by his thin white hair, his solid stern forehead, his grey eye and sallow worn countenance, a marked contrast to the bright colours of the ladies' dresses, and the fresh complexions of those who wore them. A passing glance was all I got of him as he leant back moodily or thought

fully in the corner of his carriage; but that was enough to show me he was no common man-the man who, when denouncing an offending minister in Parliament, or crushing a contumacious clergyman in the provinces, was equally following the impulse of a proud and imperious nature.

St. John's, Torquay, is the same church of which there was some mention a short time ago in the newspapers, as having provoked the wrath of the Bishop by being decorated up with wreaths of flowers round the altar, when his lordship, it was alleged, removed the floral ornaments-" tore them down," I think, was the phrase with his own hands. For the truth of the report I do not answer; there may have been some slight foundation for it, but nothing more. However, be this as it may, St. John's, in the manner and mode of proceeding with the service, is manifestly the opposite to low. Three clergymen and the Bishop took part in the prayers, and seemed like a little regiment of fine linen and lawn as they assumed their places within the altar rails, his lordship occupying the sedilia on the north side, and the three others sitting in row on the south. The church, which is a very poor plain Grecian structure, though well attended, was not full. Indeed there was little or nothing of the display or circumstance of architecture, &c., to "set off" the part which the Bishop took in the service; yet I think the surrounding simplicity enabled one to observe his character and manner with more attention and interest, than if one were to see him amid all the pomp of his own cathedral, moving in procession between the Purbeck marble columns of the nave, or sitting under the towering crocketted canopy of his throne in the choir. The "mitred lord"—the "iron bishop," as some called him -taking part in the prayers of a little country church, had something more of sublimity for me, than if preceded by a file of mace-bearers, and followed by a retinue of robed clergy.

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Selden says, "For a Bishop to preach 'tis to do

other folks' work, as if the steward of the house should exercise the porter's or the cook's place: 'tis his business to see that they, and all others about the house, perform their duties." For the most part there may be policy and prudence in this saying, but I should not like to see a man turn his back altogether on the pulpit when he becomes a prelate; for we suppose he attains to that high office for some eminent talent or acquirement, which it is a pity should be lost to the public on account of his episcopacy. And so thinks Henry of Exeter, for he may be seen almost every Sunday morning, that he is not attending to Parliament, riding in from Bishopstowe, with a little black-covered sermon in a side pocket for the benefit of the congregation of St. John's.

Unfortunately for me, however, he did preach this morning, there being no sermon, as it was Sacrament Sunday an economy of labour which, considering how many hands they had to make it light, I think they need not have indulged in. Still I heard him read, and I question if that was not more characteristic of the man than even his manner in the pulpit-of which I could form a fair estimate from his reading-might have been. The prayers, lessons, and litany, were taken by the elder of the curates, a Mr. Hutchins, I think; and when he came to the communion, the Bishop advanced slowly from the sedilia, emerging from beneath the shadow of a great pillar, which, up to that time had hið him from my view, and, kneeling down, prayed in silence, raising his hand, which was stretched out on the altar, earnestly from time to time during his devotions.

For the few opening words of the Lord's Prayer, with which the Communion commences, I could hardly hear him; but his voice, which is not that of a person in robust health, becoming more earnest, grew, as he proceeded, distinctly audible, though still far from strong. However, I should say, he was more likely to be heard than many of your stentorian "popular" young men ; for there is that about his solemn and impressive manner-his great apparent devotional earnestness, his age,