is diocese, and he does not seem to have particularly cared
about having one. He was content with paying it an occasional visit at
very rare intervals, and settled himself in comfortable quarters 'in the
beautiful district on the banks of Winandermere.' Here he employed his
time 'not,' he proudly tells us, 'in field diversions and visiting. No!
it has been spent partly in supporting the religion and constitutions of
my country, by seasonable publications, and principally in building
farmhouses, blasting rocks, enclosing wastes, making bad land good,
planting larches, &c. By such occupations I have recovered my health,
preserved my independence, set an example of a spirited husbandry, and
honourably provided for my family.'

If we formed our estimate of Bishop Watson's character simply from such
samples as these, we might conclude that he was a covetous, unreasonably
discontented, and worldly-minded man. But this would be a very unfair
conclusion to arrive at. The Bishop gives us only one, and that the
weakest side of his character. He was most highly esteemed by some of
his contemporaries, whose good opinion was well worth having. Gibbon
pays him a very high compliment, calling him 'his most candid as well as
able antagonist.' Wilberforce wrote to him in 1800 saying that 'he hoped
ere now to be able to congratulate him on a change of situation which in
public justice ought to have taken place.' In 1797, Hayley wrote to him
(saying it was Lord Thurlow's expression), 'Your writings have done more
for Christianity than all the bench of bishops put together.'[678] Lord
Campden told Pitt that 'it was a shame for him and the Church that he
had not the most exalted station upon the Bench.' As in the case of
Bishop Newton, one can only reconcile these anomalies by bearing fully
in mind the low views which were commonly taken of clerical
responsibilities, and the general scramble for the emoluments of the
Church which was not thought unseemly in the eighteenth century.

One of the most characteristic specimens of the courtier prelate of the
eighteenth century on whom so much abuse has been somewhat unfairly
lavished both by contemporaries and by writers of our own time, who have
dwelt exclusively upon the weak side of their character, was Bishop
Hurd. Hurd is now chiefly known as the devoted friend--or rather the
'_fidus Achates_'--of Warburton. He was a man, however, who had a very
distinct individuality of his own, and may be