XXXIX
PURPLE AND FINE LINEN
Dean versus Bishop—it is an antinomy as old as the history of Cathedral institutions. The Dean, with a good house and a thousand a year, has always murmured against the Bishop, with a better house and five times that income; and, as he is generally master of his Cathedral, he has before now contrived to make his murmurs sensible as well as audible. Of late years these spiritual strifes (which beautifully link the post-Reformation to the pre-Reformation Church) have been voted disedifying, and, if they continue to exist, they operate surreptitiously and out of public view. But, though Deans have ceased from clamouring, they retain their right to criticize, and the Dean of Norwich has just been exercising that right with a good deal of vivacity. I cull the following extract from a secular newspaper:—