Dr. H. L. Mansel, Dean of St. Paul's, died suddenly
on Mon- day morning from the rupture of a blood-vessel in the brain. Re is a loss to the kingdom. The system of philosophy which made him famous, and which we describe in technical form elsewhere, has always appeared to us to involve a heresy beside which the heresies of Dr, Coleus°, Dr. Pussy, or Mr. Voysey are orthodox, —the denial not of this or that dogma in religion, but of the pos- sibility of religion itself ; but the .English Church has too few thinkers to be content to lose one. She never persecuted Dr. Memel, for intolerant to excess of small divergencies in opinion, she is tolerant to excess of radical differences as to the fundamental truths of philosophy. If a man performs the communion service on the wrong side of the altar she ruins him ; but if he maintains the eternity of matter, that is, the superfluousness of a Creator ; or the impossibility of exemption from cause and effect, that is, the absurdity of morality ; or the inability of the finite to think about the infinite, that is, the uselessness of theology, she pats him on the back, and gives him a Deanery. She uses these Deaneries, in fact, to nourish men whom she cannot spare, and will not promote to substantive officio. Well, it is well there should be such re- fuges from intolerance, and no one ever better deserved one than the grand heresiarch, Dr. Memel. He meant what he said, and said what he meant, and feared no man, and if he stopped short oE necessary deductions he did it honestly.
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