NEWS OF THE WEEK.
DR. WESTCOTT, the Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, has after all accepted the Bishopric of Durham, in succession to his former friend and col- league, Bishop Lightfoot. We conjecture that he had refused it, and that it was afterwards offered to others, but that at last it was offered once more to him, and offered with more urgency. There are pecuniary diffi- culties, it is said, in meeting the great expenses which fall upon any new Bishop of Durham in purchasing the furniture at Auckland Castle, the palace of the Bishopric. Bishop Baring, it is declared, had to pay £5,000 to Bishop Villiers's family for the furniture of the palace alone. Such a sum as that is not easy to raise, especially now that the revenue of the Bishopric is reduced from £8,000 a year to £7,000 or less. The appointment made is probably the most satisfactory that could have been made. Dr. Westcott is a man of great and accurate learning, of deep piety, and of a thoroughly spiritual cast of thought, who represents a theology at least as profound and penetrated by as ardent a Christian spirit, as that of Bishop Lightfoot himself. The only take-off is that he is already sixty-five years of age, and so no longer in the prime of physical vigour. Perhaps, however, his administrative judgment and insight will prove none the less on that account.
