Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/206

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TWELVE YEARS IN A MONASTERY

deavouring to tread in his predecessor’s footsteps too closely instead of confining his attention to the administration of the archdiocese. The intense activity which has kept him continually on the move since he entered the diocese and which has so rapidly aged him has had little or no palpable result, and has certainly not deepened the attachment of his clergy. His predecessor remained day after day in his little room at Carlyle Place; the world came to him and sought his influence.

Yet with all his activity and the perpetual fluttering of aristocratic wings in his vicinity he cannot give the financial aid to his clergy which his predecessor did. One of his first cares was to change the existing financial arrangements, cutting off many allowances and commanding new contributions. He had a perfect right to do so, but when, after so many economical measures, he confessed in his Trinity Sunday pastoral that he could not reach the income of his predecessor his clergy felt little sympathy. In the same pastoral he preached a panegyric of the aristocracy which gave great offence, and he gave a comparison of the contributions of five West-end churches and five East-end churches, which was not quite accurate, was hardly fair, and certainly impolitic. However, he has made many wise changes in the distribution of the clergy and other long-desired improvements. At Barking and Canning Town, for instance,