SPURIOUS IMITATION.
Unmitigated Effrontery of Messrs. Brown and Smith.
ASTONISHING AND GENEROUS EXERTION BY CATHEDRAL CLERGYMEN.
The newspapers are continually making remarks of a painful nature on the conduct of Deans and Chapters. It is pleasing to encounter an opportunity of commenting in a more affectionate spirit on the behaviour of one of those reverend fraternities. That pleasure is afforded us by the Morning Post—wherein, under the heading of "Divine Service for the Militia," we read that
"The necessity of providing some means by which the Militia, in a body, could attend Divine Service on Sunday, and the difficulty of this being secured by the ordinary church accommodation available in Exeter, induced, we understand, the Lord Lieutenant of the county to make an application last week to the Cathedral authorities, suggesting that an extra service on Sunday in that spacious building would meet the wishes of his lordship."
Now, when we consider the average scale on which Deans and Chapters are remunerated in relation to their average services, and when, our reflections guided by the Rule of Three, we inquire how much, at that rate, an extra service of such a description is worth, we find the sum considerable. A prebend's sermon is perhaps, as to its abstract merit, inestimable: a pearl beyond any price: but even its actual cost may be computed at a high figure. Such a discourse, gratuitously addressed to a regiment of soldiers, may be regarded as a donation to them of something handsome per head.
To ask a Cathedral establishment, then, for an extra service, is asking it for not a little: to perform such a service is to do a munificent action. Therefore it is highly gratifying to peruse the statement following:—