A SURFEIT OF SALMON.

A certain abbé, who was uncommonly fond of fish, often visited the Roche de Cançale, at Paris. Upon one occasion, having dined copiously off a salmon, a heavy indigestion was the consequence. Three days afterwards, whilst saying mass, the idea of the fish came across his mind, and instead of saying the Mea culpa of the Confiteor, he was heard to repeat, in striking his breast, "Ah, le bon saumon ! ah, le bon saumon !"

Dr. Gastaldy, physician to the late Duke of Cumberland, fell a victim to his love of salmon. He dined at Cardinal Belloy's, Archbishop of Paris, where, having eaten three times of the belly-part of the salmon, he died of the effects of this invincible gluttony. The Doctor would have gone to the salmon a fourth time, but that the prelate tenderly upbraided him for his imprudence, and ordered the desired dish to be removed. "But alas!" says the author of Host and Guest, "it was too late-the gulosity of Gastaldy caused his death, and he was hastily buried the day after his demise. Let this be a warning to priests in high places, whether Protestant, Popish, or Presbyterian, as to helping their guests too often to the richest part of a salmon."

CATECHISM.

Sampson Gideon, the noted rich Jew, bred his children Christians. He had a mind to know what proficiency his son had made in his new religion; "so," said he, "I began, and asked him who made him?" He said, 'God!' I then asked him who redeemed him? He replied very readily, 'Christ!' Well, then, I was at the end of my interrogatories, and did not know what other question to put to him. I said, 'Who -who'-I did not know what to say; at last, I said, 'Who gave you that hat?' The Holy Ghost,' said the boy. Did you ever hear a better Catechism?"

A READY ANSWER.

Miss Martineau relates that Mr. K., a missionary among a tribe of northern Indians, was wont to set some simple refreshment-fruit and cider-before his converts, when they came from a distance to see him. An old man, who had no

pretensions to be a Christian, desired much to be admitted to the refreshments, and proposed to some of his converted friends to accompany them on their next visit to the missionary. They told him he must be a Christian first. "What was that?" He must know all about the Bible. When the time

came he declared himself prepared, and undertook the journey with them. When arrived, he seated himself opposite the missionary, wrapped in his blanket, and looking exceedingly serious. In answer to an inquiry from the missionary, he rolled up his eyes, and solemnly uttered the following words, with a pause between each :

"Adam

Solomon

- Eve-Cain-Noah-Jeremiah-Beelzebub

ፃነ

"What do you mean?" asked the missionary. "Solomon-Beelzebub-Noah

"Stop, stop. What do you mean?"

"I mean-cider."

AGREEABLE VALEDICTION.

Before the first Bishop of New Zealand left England, Sydney Smith, in taking leave, affected to impress upon his friend the dangers of his mission. "You will find," he said, "in preaching to cannibals, that their attention, instead of being occupied by the spirit, will be concentrated on the flesh; for am told that they never breakfast without a cold missionary on the sideboard." In shaking hands with the new prelate, as he was leaving the house, Smith added, "Good-bye. We shall never meet again; but let us hope that you may thoroughly disagree with the savage that eats you."

I

BISHOP BLOMFIELD'S RISE.

Blomfield, when a boy, on being asked as to his views of a profession, replied, "I mean to be a bishop!"—and he kept his word.

The Bishop's fortunes were built up by the munificence of various patrons. He boasted once-though rather mal-àpropos to a poor clergyman who was grumbling that he never had got a single thing he asked for, "And I never asked for anything I got." "But (says a writer in the Saturday Review) he might have added that he never refused anything that was offered him, when, perhaps, a little more severe

sense of duty would have counselled some self-abnegation. Quarrington, in Lincolnshire, was held with the curacy of Chesterford, in Cambridgeshire; then with the rectory of Dunton, a queer little place in Bucks, with seventy-two inhabitants, where the parish clerk was a female between seventy and eighty, who being unable to read, when she stole the church communion-plate, took it to the nearest pawnbroker's, in ignorance that the name of the parish was engraved upon it. Then he held Great and Little Chesterford, with Tuddenham, in Suffolk. When promoted to the rich living of Bishopsgate in 1820, and shortly after to the archdeaconry of Colchester, he still retained Great Chesterford; and when elevated to the (comparatively poor) see of Chester, he retained Bishopsgate. When a rather crosslooking picture of him was painted on his accession to the mitre, he said it might be supposed to be 'inscribed, without permission, to the non-resident clergy of the diocese of Chester.'

The Bishop was no friend to lazy incumbents: he insisted on them residing on their livings, even if these were in the worst part of the Essex marshes. If a curate could live there, a rector might. Besides," as he said, "there are two wellknown preservatives against ague. The one is a good deal of care and a little port-wine; the other a little care and a good deal of port-wine." He preferred the former; but, he added, "if any of the clergy prefer the latter, it is at all events a remedy which incumbents can afford better than curates."

SAVING RIGHTEOUSNESS.

While Dr. Blomfield was Rector of Chesterford, it was the permanent annoyance of every Easter Day that a stream of carriages was passing through the village, giving it the appearance, and too much of the reality, of a noisy fair, while conveying the racing men of the day to Newmarket. The aristocratic sporting men would drive up to the inn in open carriage, playing at whist, and throwing out their cards, would call to the waiter for fresh packs. To remove the scandal, it was only slowly that the Jockey Club was induced to alter the first day of the meeting to Easter Tuesday. The Duke of York, when applied to on the subject by Bishop Howley,

declined to alter his practice, but added that, "Though it was true he travelled to the races on Sunday, he always had a Bible and Prayer-Book in the carriage !"

THE DUKE OF CLARENCE AND BISHOP BLOMFIELD. The Bishop's acquaintance with the Duke of Clarence, afterwards William the Fourth, had the following singular commencement. The Bishop addressed a letter to the Countess of Dysart, at Ham House, requesting permission to see that ancient mansion. The Countess, hospitable as she generally was, at first declined, saying, "I never saw any Bishop here in my brother's time." Afterwards, however, she relented, and, as the most agreeable arrangement to all parties, desired Sir George Sinclair, who had married her granddaughter, to fix a day for the Bishop to dine there, adding that he might invite William the Fourth, then Duke of Clarence, and a large party to meet him. Sir George was not aware that the Duke had taken great offence at the Bishop for his recent speech and vote on Catholic emancipation. Observing that they took no notice of each other, he presented the Bishop to the Duke, who immediately addressed him in a voice loud enough to be heard by all the company, "I had lately the pleasure of seeing the Bishop of along with me in the lobby of the House of Lords, but I had not the pleasure of seeing the Bishop of London." The Bishop courteously replied, "It is with regret that I ever vote on a different side from your Royal Highness." The Duke resumed, "I was the more surprised, and I consider you the more in the wrong, because I thought I had reason to expect the reverse. "Whether I was actually in the wrong or not," replied the Bishop, "my conscience told me that I was in the right." The Duke was about to continue, when dinner was fortunately announced. At table, the Bishop drew him into conversation, and so completely conciliated his good opinion that some days afterwards he said to Sir George Sinclair, "I like the Bishop far better than I expected, and I do not care how soon you invite him to meet me again." He felt that he had gone too far, and asked, "How did the Bishop look when I told him my mind?" "I did not see," replied Sir George, "for my eyes were fixed upon the ground.' "Did any one else observe how he looked? 66 "No; I believe their eyes were turned

in the same direction." This anecdote is given on the authority of Sir George Sinclair in the Life of Bishop Blomfield, by his Son.

Dr. Blomfield asked Dr. Carr, Bishop of Chichester, to unite with him in asking the sanction of George the Fourth for a dispensation from wearing wigs. Nothing came of it; but when William the Fourth was told that the Bishop of London, in obeying his commands to dine with the King, would be glad to come without his wig, the monarch replied, "I dislike wigs as much as he does, and shall be glad to see the whole Bench wear their own hair."

THE BISHOPS' SATURDAY NIGHT.

Sydney Smith, on the bare suggestion that Lord John. Russell's Church Commission should collect the Church revenues, and pay the hierarchy out of them, imagined and described the scene of payment in the following irresistible words:

"I should like to see this subject in the hands of H. B. I would entitle the print

'The Bishops' Saturday Night; or, Lord John Russell at the

Pay-table.'

The Bishops should be standing before the pay-table, and receiving their weekly allowance; Lord John and Spring Rice counting, ringing, and biting the sovereigns, and the Bishop of Exeter insisting that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has given him one which was not weight; Viscount Melbourne, in high chuckle, should be standing, with his hat on, and his back to the fire, delighted with the contest; and the Deans and Canons should be in the background, waiting till their turn came, and the Bishops were paid; and among them, a Canon, of large composition, urging them not to give way too much to the Bench. Perhaps I should add the President of the Board of Trade, recommending the truckprinciple to the Bishops, and offering to pay them in hassocks, cassocks, aprons, shovel-hats, sermon-cases, and such-like ecclesiastical gear."

A SMALL CHARGE.

The following version of a charge delivered to his clergy by Bishop Blomfield, the Rev. Sydney Smith solemnly declared he did not write :