ill-natured allusions, are represented as constantly asking in effect.  Curious indeed are the glimpses which the Bishop gives us into the system of Church patronage and the race for preferment which were prevalent in his day.  But more curious still is the impression which the memoirs convey that the writer himself had not the faintest conception that there was anything in the least degree unseemly in what he relates.  There appears to be a sort of moral obtuseness in him in reference to these subjects, but to these subjects only.[676] The memoir closes with a beautiful expression of resignation to the Divine will, and of hopeful confidence about the future, in which he was no doubt perfectly sincere.  And yet he openly avows a laxity of principle in the matter of preferment-seeking and Court-subservience which taken by itself would argue a very worldly mind.  How are we to reconcile the apparent discrepancy?  The most charitable as well as the most reasonable explanation is that the good Bishop’s faults were simply the faults of his age and of his class.  And for this very reason the autobiography is all the more valuable as an illustration of the subject before us.  Bishop Newton is eminently a representative man.  His memoir contains evidently not the exceptional sentiments of one who was either in advance of or behind his age, but reflects a faithful picture of a general attitude of mind very prevalent among Church dignitaries of that date.

Bishop Watson’s ‘Anecdotes of his own Life’ furnish another curious illustration of the sentiments of the age on the matter of Church preferment.  But the Bishop of Llandaff treats the matter from an entirely different point of view from that of the Bishop of Bristol.  The latter was perfectly content with his own position, and with the preferment before him of his brother clergy.  ’He was rather pleased with his little bishopric.’  ’His income was amply sufficient, and scarce any bishop had two more comfortable or convenient houses.  Greater he might have been, but he could not have been happier; and by the good blessing of God was enabled to make a competent provision for those who were to come after him, as well as to bestow something on charity.’[677] Bishop Watson writes in a very different strain.  His ‘Anecdotes’ are full of the bitterest complaints of the neglect he had met with.  He is ’abandoned by his friends, and proscribed the emoluments of his profession.’  He is ’exhibited to the world as a marked man fallen under royal displeasure.’  He appeals to posterity in the most pathetic terms.  ‘Reader!’ he exclaims, ’when this meets your eye, the author of it will be rotting in his grave, insensible alike to censure and to praise; but he begs to be forgiven this apparently self-commendation.  It has not sprung from vanity, but from anxiety for his reputation, lest the disfavour of a Court should by some be considered as an indication of general disesteem or a proof of professional demerit.’  And yet, by his