tremendous diocese has no need of your services. You are not wanted in the English Church '?"

That You will

"No, no, I assure you, Mr. Moxon-Hughes. would be saying far more than I intended. remember that the question we were discussing was this service on the Feast of the Circumcision, in which I am informed you have introduced a dance before the altar by a number of little boys in vestments, the exact character of which I am not quite clear about. With every desire to look sympathetically at your work, I cannot, I really cannot, my dear Mr. Moxon-Hughes, accept such a performance as being in accordance with the spirit of the Book of Common Prayer."

"But do you realize, my lord, that these vestments— tunicles and apparelled albs, to give them their correct name-have been embroidered by a number of most distinguished lady artists? I wish your lordship would do us the honour to come and inspect one particularly magnificent specimen of devout labour-a tunicle of glaucous silk powdered with red roses and blue fleurs-delys, and another of the same field with orphreys of gold and sown with peacocks, griffins, and sanguine cockatrices. And I may add that with astonishing accuracy this superb example is worn over a green alb.'

"I have no doubt about the beauty of the workmanship," the Bishop would say, feeling by this time like a small boy that is being taken round a museum. "But my point, Mr. Moxon-Hughes, which I venture to think you have not even yet quite appreciated, is not so much what these little boys wear-and please believe me when I assure you how deeply gratified I am to hear of the beautiful work which is being done by these lady artists— no, Mr. Moxon-Hughes, not so much what they wear as what they do. In other words, it is this dancing in front of the altar which, without wishing in the very least, my dear Mr. Moxon-Hughes, to minimize the admirable work you are doing in Chelsea, does, I confess, perturb me quite considerably."

"Do you realize, my lord," Mr. Moxon-Hughes would retort without the least sign of penitence, "do you quite realize that these little boys whose beautiful dance you

criticize have been specially taught by Lady Diana LeeMetford, who, as your lordship must be very well aware, is supreme, not only as an amateur dancer of the classical school, but even among professionals has scarcely a rival? However," and here Mr. Moxon-Hughes would assume an air of urbane martyrdom, "if your lordship objects to this dancing before the altar on the old Feast of Fools, I am prepared to submit instantly to your lordship's ruling."

"I appreciate that very much, Mr. Moxon-Hughes," the Bishop might reply, for he would be so grateful for the deference to episcopal authority that he would say not a word about the boy bishop on St. Nicholas' Day or the pilgrimage that Moxon-Hughes had led to the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket, which had provoked such an acrimonious letter in The Times from the Dean of Canterbury. In fact, he would not make another demand upon Moxon-Hughes' obedience, though he might venture, when Moxon-Hughes was leaving, to express an earnest hope that he would think twice-yes, twice before shattering the Protestant serenity of the diocese of Durham by conducting a similar pilgrimage next year to the shrine of St. Cuthbert.

"Would your lordship object to our visiting the shrine of St. Thomas de Cantilupe at Hereford?"

"Oh, not Hereford, Mr. Moxon-Hughes, please! You seem to delight in choosing such unsuitable cathedrals. I am sure that anything in the nature of a pilgrimage would pain the Bishop of Hereford extremely.'

Mark was one of Moxon-Hughes' assistant-priests for nearly two years, toward the end of which time he wrote the following letter to the Rector of Wych-on-theWold:

155, Beaufort Street,

Chelsea,
Sept. 2, 1908.

My dear Rector,

I was most deeply disappointed that I could not get down to Wych for a fortnight or three weeks this August, but I did not come for two reasons. I had more or less made up my mind to leave St. Cuthbert's, and I

did not want in talking out my resolution with you to let myself fall once more into the state of indecision in which I have been living all this year; and, secondly, if I was going to leave here this autumn, it did not seem fair to take a holiday during the summer.

The immediate reason of my leaving was a meeting with that stormy petrel, Andrew Hett, who has been restored more or less to episcopal favour, and is now senior assistant-priest under Whitmore at St. Chad's, Pimlico. You perhaps remember that he was the harbinger of my decision to leave the O.S.G. He used no persuasion, but it fell to my lot to entertain him while Moxon-Hughes was away on his honeymoon, and when he was preaching a week-day course of sermons at St. Cuthbert's. The result was that in his own forcible way he voiced a good many criticisms I had been making to myself for some time past, criticisms that I had never made to you in writing, because I did not want to encourage a discontented and roving spirit in myself. Perhaps Andrew Hett's expressed contempt of what I've heard called the "practical Pre-Raphaelitism and mundane mediævalism" of St. Cuthbert's would not have made me hand in my resignation unless I had been assured by him that not only should I be happier under Whitmore, but that I was the very person they wanted at St. Chad's.

Whether it is the reaction against the exaggerated Sarum of St. Cuthbert's, or whether it is the spectacle of our blatant congregationalism here I don't knowprobably a mixture of both-but I've had a bad attack of Roman fever lately. Nothing to worry about for the moment, for I can assure you that I'm quite convalescent. Still, my temperature was high while it lasted, and I daresay that I've not had my last attack by any means. Moxon-Hughes' marriage was not exactly a febrifuge. I don't object to married priests, but I do strongly object to their nuptials. Perhaps the Orthodox Church takes the wisest course in denying them promotion or preferment. One feels that the obscure country parson is justifiably married; but when a priest like Moxon-Hughes, who lives by advertisement, indulges in an immense artistic wedding, I feel there is something undignified and

almost unpleasant about it. However, I daresay that I should not have felt like this about it if I had not already begun to feel that, whatever there was to be said for the utility of the St. Cuthbert's religion, it did not suit me.

My chief objection to our system here has always been the atmosphere of the theatrical performance that our services emit, and not merely of theatrical performances, but of those dreadfully self-conscious performances which indicate an avowed determination to raise the standard of dramatic art. We seem to be saying all the time, "Yes, the Catholic revival in England has not paid enough attention to Art, but we are different." At St. Cuthbert's we think of Art first of all. Our chief aim is to restore Beauty to Religious Life. I'm not saying that we have neglected morality or spiritual fervour, but we do judge everything and everybody by aesthetic standards. When I think of the private lives of some of the people who have helped to make St. Cuthbert's the beautiful thing it is, I sometimes ask myself if we haven't accepted the paintings and sculpture and carving in the way that a restaurant keeper allows painters to decorate the walls of his restaurant instead of paying his bill. With all that these artistic people have done for Moxon-Hughes, I can't help feeling that they are still as deeply in debt to Almighty God as they ever were. Our congregation here is too confoundedly "interesting." "It's like a first-night at a fashionable theatre. Our pews are thronged by minor celebrities, and whenever Moxon-Hughes goes up the steps of the marble pulpit, I feel that a distinguished actor-manager is thanking his kind friends in front for the cordial reception they have given to our little service. It's all "such great fun," or it's "rather jolly," with an intolerable drawl of the "rather." Or it's "quite pleasing," with an infernal complacency over that affected participle.

And just as we've made Art the handmaid of Religion, to use Moxon-Hughes' phrase, though I should have been less mediaval and called her a lady's-maid, so, to use my phrase this time, we are trying to make Religion the governess of Politics. One of the conspicuous tendencies of the time in which we are living is the way we all of us, whatever our political creed, try to appease that fierce

dragon of Revolution which every day draws a little nearer. A man might as well try to stop a pack of hungry wolves with the breast-bone of a chicken. The Tories are Tory Democrats. The Liberals hope for an alliance with Labour, and try to claim that Lib. and Lab. are abbreviations that by their very similarity show the similarity of what they stand for. Every day the Labour party gains another recruit from the Intelligensia, not because the Intelligenzia really believes in the fitness of Labour to govern, but because the Intelligenzia has enough intelligence to be in with the winning side before it is too obviously the winner. And alas, this is the spirit of the Christian Socialism with which the Moxon-Hughes religion is identified. One of Moxon-Hughes' chief holds over the leaders of the English Church is the way he exhibits the Red Flag as the standard of the Lamb of God. The bishops feel that it is worth while winking at some of M.-H.'s eccentricities of ceremonial, if thereby the social revolutionaries will be kept in sympathy with the Church.

For a long time I enjoyed myself thoroughly here. was intoxicated by the atmosphere of free discussion. revelled in being able to voice my opinions without being regarded as a dangerous lunatic. I deluded myself into believing that we really were converting England to Catholicism. Every new pre-reformation form and ceremony and service that we were able to revive successfully filled me with enthusiasm for the future. Above all, Moxon-Hughes' conception of the English Church did seem profoundly logical. We were a National Church. The impulse behind the reformation was the impulse of the English to express their nationality, just as a similar impulse actuated the sea-dogs of Queen Elizabeth to harry Philip of Spain. The superficial notion in both cases might appear to be plunder, but the material gain was in both cases merely an incident.

And then it gradually began to dawn on me that we were acting, and that the main inspiration of our most magnificent productions was a desire to be accurate, if possible not at the expense of beauty, and artistic, if possible without involving our accuracy.

We were so