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    would have all needful observances maintained , but with a splendour that shall be like Beatrice's love to Benedict " no more than reason . " The costly , and the unmeaning , have fallen into disrepute . We have even heard a Tory member of the Corporation of London timidly hint that he doubted whether the Lord Mayor ought to be obliged to count hobnails

    when he is inaugurated . This disposition to abridge the " ceremony that to great ones ' longs , " is a sign of the times of which His Majesty ' s Ministers were heedful , in the arrangements of the late Coronation , much to the satisfaction of the country . But it became thereby a less tempting topic to the preacher . No doubt it was " spiritualized" by some of the more mystical of the Evangelical preachers ; but they seem to have confined the edification to their own flocks .

    Perhaps another cause has co-operated in the productidh of this " effect defective . " It may be feared that the popularity of His Majesty , as well as of his Majesty's Government , does not pervade the laity and the clergy with equal intensity . He is the people's king ; and that is against his being the priests' king . The Church and the Nation are plainly not in ' sympathy . The direction to " follow the bishops" in a division , is no longer a safe

    guide for a short-sighted peer who wishes to support Ministers and does not understand the debate . That rule is obsolete , though it seemed to have become a part of the Constitution . The clergy have not been so forward as usual in their demonstrations of loyalty ; and when they hang fire , it is not the custom of the Dissenting ministers to go off . The Coronation Addresses of both bodies are long in concocting . The clergy have delayed moving at all ; and the Dissenting ministers never move first .

    Trifling as the whole affair is , it yet shews , amongst other indications , which way the wind is blowing . Amid the political corruption , or indifference , of the Clerical order , and of what too often descends to be its shadow , it is to Mr . Aspland ' s honour that he does not «* follow , " but set an " example , in order to testify his gratitude to a Patriot King , and his confidence in His Majesty's present Government ; sentiments common to the larger part of the British nation . " ( Preface , p . iii . )

    It is gratifying to observe the approach towards an identity of principle in these two discourses , delivered as they were by such very different persons , and to such very different auditories . Had the preachers changed places , there would only have been some minor differences in the way of their changing sermons also . The Bishop has pleasantly disappointed our

    expectations . His discourse is not only simple , dignified , and appropriate , but generally sound and just . Who of us will dissent from the following statement of the basis of civil society , and the ground of Christian obedience , which immediately follows the announcement of the text ( 1 Peter ii . 13 ) ? " A . sense of mutual dependence , and the prospect of common advantage , are the basis upon which human reason has erected the fabric of civil so-

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    726 Coronation Sermons .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1831, page 726, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2603/page/2/