A CLERICAL QUESTION FOR EXETER.
The Special Correspondent "doing" the Church Congress at Exeter for the Morning Post, when remarking on the clerical costumes in the procession to the Cathedral, told us that among the "college caps" i.e. "mortar-boards," (which of course go with the university gown or clerical surplice,) and "birettas," (which, being Italian, are not certainly part of English academical or ecclesiastical costume,) there appeared a "tall hat," i.e. the topper of private life, which, as it happens, is part of the Academical Master of Arts costume, and therefore, though unbecoming in a procession of mortar-boards and birettas, is yet unassailable from a purely academic and Cantabrigian point of view. It may not be "Oxonian," by the way; but if the wearer were an Oxford man he would know best. Now, if the hat, presumably black, had been a white one? White is the surplice: why not the hat? White is the emblem of purity, although, sad to say, when associated with a hat, it used at one time to be provocative of an inquiry as to the honesty of the wearer in regard to the surreptitious possesion of a donkey. Has anybody anywhere ever seen a parson, whether M.A. or not, in a white hat? Surely such a phenomenon must rank with the defunct postboy and dead donkey. This will be one of the inquiries to which clerical costume at ecclesiastical Exeter must naturally give rise. Perhaps the top-hatted clergyman was a Freemason, wearing this as emblematic of a "tiled lodge."
