BLOMFIELD, Chaeles James, bishop of London, was born on the 29th May 1786, at Bury-St-Edmund’s. He received his first education at his father’s school in that, town, and was then transferred to the grammar school,, where, under the able instruction of the Rev. M. T. Becher, he laid the foundations of an unusually sound and thorough classical scholarship. His career at Trinity College, Cambridge, which he entered in 1804, was brilliant. He gained the Browne medals for Latin and Greek odes, and carried off the Craven scholarship. In 1808 he graduated as third wrangler and first medallist, and in the following year was elected to a fellowship at Trinity College. The first-fruits of his scholarship was an edition of the Prometheus of Aeschylus, in 1810; this was followed by editions of the Septem contra Thebas, Persoe, Choephoeroe, and Agamemnon, of Callimachus, and of the fragments of Sappho, Sophron, and Alcaeus. Blomfield, however, soon ceased to devote himself to mere scholarship. He had been ordained in 1810, and held for a short time the curacy of Chesterford. He was then presented to the rectory of Quarrington, and shortly afterwards to that of Dunton, in Buckinghamshire, where he remained for about five years. In 1817 he was moved to the benefices of Great and Little Chesterford and Tuddenham, and he was in the same year appointed private chaplain to Howley, .bishop of London. In 1819 he was nominated by Lord Liverpool to the rich living of St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, and in 1822 he became archdeacon of Colchester. Two years later he was raised to the bishopric of Chester, and in that position began his career of incessant labour for the advancement of the church. Many reforms, were needed in the diocese, and the new bishop’s energy and ardour succeeded in ...