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The "speciality" of a Cathedral is that it is the Bishop's seat, Cathedra Episcopi, hence its name; any Cathedral reform, therefore, which does not take this as its leading idea must fail.

As retreats for learned leisure, as schools for Church music, as nests of sinecure preferment, to attract to the Church those who wish for such preferment, (is that desirable?) as dreamy monuments of the past, to be visited by tourists and sentimental ladies, as anything but the home of the Bishop, and the head-quarters of the diocese, our Cathedrals must fail to commend themselves to the common sense of a practical age; how is it then that they have hitherto so little fulfilled their own special office?

I think the answer to this is obvious; it is because the Dean has got into the Bishop's chair,