Bonfire Club, which is regularly organized, and supported by considerable subscriptions, for the purpose of burning costly effigies of the Pope and other persons obnoxious to the mob of Lewes, or supposed to be so, on the 5th of November. And we believe, further, that we are not far wrong in supposing that these disreputable youths were got together by the direction, suggestion, or prompting of a lay official connected with the church where all the disturbance took place. Whether this person knew or thought that he should please Mr. Scobell by so doing, we are unable to say. Certain it is, by that gentleman's own admission, that he did not make the slightest attempt to protect the injured ladies from the violence of the rabble. Mr. Neale avers that he requested Mr. Scobell to do so, which the latter denies. Without judging between the two statements, we must take the fact as a proof that Mr. Scobell was not anxious for the ladies and his brother clergyman to escape their extreme danger at the hands of an uncontrolled set of blackguards. The second question answers itself after this. It is plain enough that some intimation was given to the "bonfire boys" that there would be Popery' at this funeral, and that, having thus received their instructions in one word, they took their own way of putting Popery down: that way being-let it be remembered, to the disgrace of the men of Lewes to tear women's dresses off their backs, and hunt them down within an inch of their lives.

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But, it will be said, 'there was something behind the scenes here. It is impossible that the mere sight of a white pall with a black cross upon it could excite an English mob to a murderous attack upon unprotected women mourners, and a clergyman who had nothing but his hands to defend himself and them with; and equally impossible that they should have been prevailed on to commit such an outrage by a mere intimation that so-called Popish proceedings were expected to take place, when nothing of the kind really did. There must have been something else talked about in the town beforehand, which had made these ladies and this clergyman obnoxious to the townspeople.' There had been. This clergyman and these ladies belonged to an institution whose one object-next to the glory of GoD-was to do good to their fellow-creatures. They had banded together that they might engage in the Christian work of nursing sick people,-sometimes those whom others were afraid to go near. At the head of the institution was a lady, the daughter of a venerable clergyman lately deceased, who had himself walked in the strict practice of the Church's religion for more than fourscore years, and whose daughters had been so trained up to good works, that their former neighbours say of them to this day they were more like angels than women.' When Miss Scobell desired to escape from the frivolity, persecution, and ill-temper of her natural home, she asked permission to become a member of this

an outcast from his family by her father, simply because she had become "slightly imbued with the doctrines and views of Dr. Pusey," and in danger of a reiteration of violence-bodily persecution as well as mental-if she returned home; and finding that her father would not even answer the letters in which she implored his consent; then at last, after long waiting, this lady of thirty years old took the matter into her own hands, and became an inmate of that institution, for the peace and holiness of which she had been longing. After some months she was attacked by scarlet fever, caught from some of her friends who had been nursing a patient sick with that malady, and in the end this fever was the cause of her removal. She made a will at the last moment, leaving £400, out of £6,000 which she possessed, to the institution which she had so loved, and where she was so cared for, and the rest to a brother. Messenger, and letter, and telegraph were all put in action, to get her relatives to come and see her; but though they knew she was dangerously ill of scarlet fever, in which there will always be some cause to apprehend a fatal termination, they had gone away from home, and did not care to have their letters about her sent to them oftener than every two days. So after great pains taken by Mr. Neale and the ladies to get them to see her before she died, they did not reach East Grinsted until her eyes had been closed by her kinder and more loving friends. A few days intervened, these facts became the talk of the town, and who is responsible for the shameful perversion by which alone they could have been the means of exciting even a Lewes mob to such conduct at the funeral which occurred after that interval? We leave our readers to form their own opinion.

Such was the cause of the late disgraceful proceedings; let us now pass on to some of its results. The funeral took place on November 18th; on the 22nd the following letters were written by the Bishop of Chichester, and are made public, with the Bishop's permission, in both Mr. Neale's and Mr. Scobell's pamphlets :

"Palace, Chichester, Nov. 22nd, 1857. "MY DEAR MR. SCOBELL,-You may be well assured of the deepfelt sympathy of every upright candidly religious man. I beg to offer you and your family the sincere expression of mine and Mrs. Gilbert's. I have felt it my duty to write to the Lady Superioress and the Society of S. Margaret's at East Grinsted a letter, with a copy of which I thus briefly intrude upon your sorrows. He must be heartless who could have permitted himself to add to them as that infatuated man from East Grinsted has done. But you will know how and where to look both for support in your own sufferings, and for the power of a Christian feeling towards him. May these things be abundantly vouchsafed to you sincerely prays,

"Rev. John Scobell."

"Your faithful brother,

"A. T. CICESTR.

"MADAM,-Your society was first formed as an association of ladies, who should engage themselves and train others to minister to the bodily wants of their fellow-Christians by nursing them in sickness. Such an institution I regarded as praiseworthy and Christian in its object, and I authorised the use of my name in connection with it. It has for some time past submitted itself to the unlimited influence of Mr. Neale, a clergyman, in whose views and practices it is well known I have no confidence. Especially it is well known that I deny that the Church of England sanctions the habitual practice of confession. She acknowledges it only in rare and exceptional cases, and Mr. Neale is unwarranted in using it in the frequent and regular way in which he applied it. Those who admit such application of it to themselves, manifest thereby the inadequacy of their direct faith in CHRIST'S promises. Their resort to this unauthorised remedy, by a righteous retribution, issues in a continuous increase of weakness, and an accumulation of obstructions in the way of the true influences of grace upon their hearts. They trust more and more in man, and are less and less able, without man, to hope in CHRIST, i.e., truly to hope in Him. I desire, therefore, that henceforth neither you nor any of your Sisterhood will state that I approve of, or have any connection with, your Institution and Sisterhood of S. Margaret's. I desire that any circulars or printed copies of your rules in which my name is introduced may be cancelled and not used with my name in future. Whatever expense is brought upon the Institution by the consequent loss of the copies you may have by you I will fully repay.

We ask our readers if it is possible to speak in forbearing terms of these letters, knowing the circumstances of the case as we have sketched them out for their information. Here is a household of ladies engaged in the most devoted and self-denying work in which any Christian ladies could engage; their protection is sought by another lady—at an age and in a position when much independence of action must be allowed, and full of earnest desire to wean herself from the troubles of her domestic position by undertaking a share of their work. This lady is taken ill while a member of their household, she is tended with loving care by those who were no less sisters in deed than in name, and in their arms she dies. A lawless, degraded mob assaults these ladies, and-the Bishop of Chichester casts them off, having hitherto professed an interest in their work of Christian love. Mr. Neale is stigmatised by the Bishop as "heartless" and "infatuated," in return for all his pastoral kindness to Miss Scobell; and Miss Gream is refused an interview

with

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lordship's lacquey. Mr. Neale writes, "That any one, be his rank or station what it may, should thus repulse a lady, whose only object in requesting an interview was to set herself right in his good opinion, I could not have believed. A Bishop is entreated by an old friend, and the daughter of an old friend and parish priest, by one who had been, by the confession of all, spending and being spent for the benefit of the diocese, to grant her half an hour's interview in order to clear herself from what she feels to be a cruel calumny. That Bishop has already acted on the strength of the calumny; but when requested to allow an answer to it, replies by his servant, and replies as I have just stated."

But Mr. Neale has evidently not given sufficient attention to the singular phenomena to which we alluded in our opening remarks. We certainly could not have believed it of any English gentleman not subject to those peculiar disturbing forces. Angelic deeds and angelic dispositions meet with no sympathetic word from the Bishop of Chichester and Mrs. Gilbert: the ladies who received Miss Scobell among them, who attended her through a contagious fever, in whose arms she died-these very ladies are treated as if they had done her a grievous injury, and as if they had been trying to supplant the father and family whom they had used all their efforts, but in vain, to drag to her dying bedside. Why? Faugh! the ladies were "Puseyites," they associated with Mr. Neale; and the associates of that "infatuated man," (who is accustomed, bythe-by, to do more work for the Church in a year than some Bishops do in a lifetime,) such are beyond all law, whether of courtesy or equity. And is it Mr. Scobell's conduct to his daughter,he himself has dragged it to the light,-is it this that forms such a beautiful picture of paternal self-devotion and love in the Bishop's eyes, that he is constrained at the earliest moment to offer that sympathy to him which he utterly denies to the maltreated workers of so much good, who manifested so much practical love to the deceased? What invaluable sympathy!

1 Since writing the above, a letter has appeared in print which Mr. Neale did not consider himself justified in publishing. We give it here; and our readers will agree with us that the first sentence exceeds in rudeness anything that could have been preconceived in the correspondence of a gentleman,-that gentleman a Bishop, -with a lady,-that lady one of great respectability and worth, and recently a personal friend.

"Palace, Chichester, December 3rd, 1857. "Dear Madam,- When your name was announced to me, I felt you had taken a licence which was by no means open to you, in coming to this house without having previously ascertained whether I approved of your doing so or not. Whatever publication with regard to Mr. Scobell Mr. Neale may resolve upon making, he must do so, as far at least as I am concerned, upon his own responsibility, and at his own risk as to consequences. If the documents you say you have brought with you were at this moment open before me, I would refuse to look into them. I will be no party to any such intrusion of strangers into private and family matters. "I remain, dear madam, your faithful pastor, "A. T. CICESTR.

"Miss Gream."

But this is one of the many miseries under which the Church of England labours, that we have men put into the place of chief Pastor to a diocese who know nothing whatever of a pastor's work in its inferior phases; and who know no more how to sympathise with those who are working for the sick and poor than they do how to work for them themselves. With rare exceptions they are practically ignorant of a parish priest's work, and too proud to avail themselves of the knowledge, experience, and local information which their Presbyters could give them. What training for CHRIST'S Work can that be in which a man lives a life of comfortable ease and leisure in his college, saving up money for marriage? What is the special vocation for the Episcopal office which can be developed in the headship of a college-Brascnose, for instance? And hence, if any devote themselves utterly to CHRIST and His work,--if they choose to be poor for His sake, instead of rich, if they live for CHRIST, and not for the world,-if they seldom show themselves at 'respectable' evening parties, their conduct must appear so extraordinary to a Bishop of this sort, that they cannot expect any long continuance of his sympathy, if they get it at all. They would have a good hope of it, however worldly they might be, if they would only keep to a respectable mediocrity of religious practice, and content themselves with subscribing to societies, instead of labouring with their whole souls and bodies in the cause of their Master.

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That we may not lay ourselves open to the accusation of speaking with unjust severity respecting the Bishop's conduct after this melancholy exhibition of devilish1-we will not dignify it with the name of Protestant '-malice on the part of a mere mob, let us look at the case more in detail. Happily-in some respectswe have full opportunity for doing this; for Mr. Scobell, who did not know that he was such an injured man, and was evidently not aware that he had any story to tell, became painfully conscious on the receipt of his Bishop's letter that he had a grievance. Patted on the back by his Lordship-and Mrs. Gilbert-it was more than human nature could stand to resist the temptation of disclosing to the public his newly discovered wrongs, and so Mr. Scobell rushes into print. Unhappy man! The Times was kinder to him

1 What else than devilish is the malice contained in the following words, reported to have been used by the Dean of Carlisle at a public meeting? "There are, it seems also, institutions in different parts of England, some of them professing to be penitentiaries for women; others ostensibly houses of benevolence, where young ladies assuming the garb and profession of Sisters of Mercy addicted themselves to works of charity. Under the garb of this excuse there were several such houses in the country under the influence of private priests who confess these ladies; and what orgies were performed at these places could not be told, because no one was allowed to penetrate the secret." What a state of society must that religious coterie be in which could tolerate unreproved such infamous baseless insinuations as these; insinuations which would disgrace the manhood of the lowest pothouse brawler. We wish there was room to hope that Mr. Close was misreported.