h these things happen
sometimes; and we are willing to take whichever of the two solutions is
borne out by future facts. In the mean time, we announce the next Saturday
Moon for the 18th of August."

How many coincidences are required to establish a law of connection? It
depends on the way in which the mind views the matter in question. Many of
the paradoxers are quite set up by a very few instances. I will now tell a
story about myself, and then ask them a question.

So far as instances can prove a law, the following is proved: no failure
has occurred. Let a clergyman be known to me, whether by personal
acquaintance or correspondence, or by being frequently brought before me by
those with whom I am connected in private life: that clergyman does not,
except in few cases, become a bishop; but _if_ he become a bishop, he is
sure, first or last, to become an arch-bishop. This has happened in every
case. As follows:

1. My last schoolmaster, a former Fellow of Oriel, was {324} a very
intimate college friend of Richard Whately[692], a younger man. Struck by
his friend's talents, he used to talk of him perpetually, and predict his
future eminence. Before I was sixteen, and before Whately had even given
his Bampton Lectures, I was very familiar with his name, and some of his
sayings. I need not say that he became Archbishop of Dublin.

2. When I was a child, a first cousin of John Bird Sumner[693] married a
sister of my mother. I cannot remember the time when I first heard his
name, but it was made very familiar to me. In time he became Bishop of
Chester, and then, Archbishop of Canterbury. My reader may say that Dr.
C. R. Sumner,[694] Bishop of Winchester, has just as good a claim: but it
is not so: those connected with me had more knowledge of Dr. J. B.
Sumner;[695] and said nothing, or next to nothing, of the other. Rumor says
that the Bishop of Winchester has _declined_ an Archbishopric: if so, my
rule is a rule of gradations.

3. Thomas Musgrave,[696] Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, was _Dean_
of the college when I was an undergraduate: this brought me into connection
with him, he giving impositions for not going to chapel, I writing them out
according. We had also friendly intercourse in after life; I forgiving, he
probably forgetting. Honest Tom {325} Musgrave, as he used to be called,
became Bishop of Hereford, and Archbishop of York.

4. About the time when I went to Cambridge, I heard a great deal about Mr