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About a month before the death of the Bishop of Carlisle, arelation of Sir James Lowther had preached the Commencement-sermon, at Cambridge. Mr. Pitt happened to sit next to me atchurch, and asked me the name of the preacher, not much approv-ing his performance. I told him report said that he was to be thefuture bishop of Carlisle; and I begged him to have some respectto the dignity of the Bench whenever a vacancy happened. He as-sured me that he knew nothing of any such arrangement. Withintwo months after this, Sir James Lowther applied to Mr. Pittfor the bishoprick of Carlisle for the gentleman whom he hadheard preach, and Mr. Pitt, without the least hesitation, promisedit. This was one of the many transactions that gave me an un-favourable opinion of Mr. Pitt; I saw that he was ready to sacrificethings the most sacred to the furtherance of liis ambition. Thegentleman, much to his honour, declined the acceptance of thebishoprick, which Mr. Pitt, with true ministerial policy, hadoffered him.

The medical faculty having represented to me, in the mostserious terms, the necessity of abandoning all literary pursuits, ifI wished to preserve my health and life; and knowing that, if Ilived in Cambridge, the genius loci would not suffer me to aban-don them; and having no place of residence in my diocese, nora desire to procure a change of situation by a prostitution ofprinciple; and being conscious, moreover, that the activity of mymind would not suffer me to dream away life without employment,I turned my attention to the improvement of land. I thoughtthat the improvement of a man’s fortune by cultivating the earthwas the most useful and honourable mode of providing for afamily; and I believed also that it would be the most likely mode