It was, indeed, worse than this,--for the adversary had appropriated to his own use the castles and the queen of the unhappy vanquished one.

This Church Reform was the legitimate property of the Liberals, and had not been as yet used by them only because they had felt it right to keep in the background for some future great occasion so great and so valuable a piece of ordnance.
It was theirs so safely that they could afford to bide their time.
And then,--so they all said, and so some of them believed,--the country was not ready for so great a measure.

It must come; but there must be tenderness in the mode of producing it.

The parsons must be respected, and the great Church-of-England feeling of the people must be considered with affectionate regard.

Even the most rabid Dissenter would hardly wish to see a structure so nearly divine attacked and destroyed by rude hands.