 and Dr Gwynne stood for a moment silent in the middle of the room.

'Perhaps it's about Hiram's Hospital,' suggested Mrs Proudie.

Dr Gwynne, lost in astonishment, and not knowing what else on earth to do, confessed that his business with the bishop was connected with Hiram's Hospital.

'His lordship has finally conferred the appointment on Mr Quiverful this morning,' said the lady.

Dr Gwynne made a simple reference to the bishop, and finding that the lady's statement was formally confirmed, he took his leave. 'That comes of the reform bill,' he said to himself as he walked down the bishop's avenue. 'Well, at any rate the Greek play bishops were not so bad as that.'

It has been said that Mr Slope, as he started for Ullathorne, received a despatch from his friend Mr Towers, which had the effect of putting him in that high good-humour which subsequent events somewhat untowardly damped. It ran as follows. Its shortness will be its sufficient apology:

My dear Sir,—I wish you every success. I don't know that I can help you, but if I can I will. 'Yours ever' T.T. '30/9/185-'

There was more in this than in all Sir Nicholas Fitzwiggin's flummery; more than in all the bishop's promises, even had they been ever so sincere; more than in any archbishop's good work, even had it been possible to obtain it. Tom Towers would do for him what he could.

Mr Slope had from his youth upwards been a firm believer in the public press. He had dabbled in it himself ever since he had taken his degree, and regarded it as the great arranger and distributor of all future British terrestrial affairs whatever. He had not yet arrived at the age, an age which sooner or later comes to most of us, which dissipates the golden dreams of youth. He delighted in the idea of wresting power from the hands of his country's magnates, and placing it in a custody which was at any rate nearer to his own reach. Sixty thousand broad sheets dispersing themselves daily among his reading fellow-citizens, formed in his eyes a better depot for supremacy than a throne at Windsor, a cabinet in Downing Street, or even an assembly at Westminster. And on this subject we must not quarrel with Mr Slope, for the feeling is too general to be met with disrespect.

Tom Towers was as good, if not better than his promise. On the
