In the 'Spectator' also we have the memoirs of a country gentleman, "an obscure man who lived up to the dignity of his nature and according to the rules of nature.” Among other memoranda are the following:

"Mem. Prevailed upon M. T., Esq., not to take the law of the farmer's son for shooting a partridge, and to give him his gun again.

"Paid the apothecary for curing an old woman that confessed herself a witch.

"Gave away my favorite dog for biting a beggar. "Laid up my chariot and sold my horses to relieve the poor in a scarcity of grain.

"In the same year remitted to my tenants a fifth part of their rents.

"Mem.: To charge my son in private to erect no monument for me; but put this in my last will.”

Such a character we may hope was not merely ideal—and it may be fairly put into the scale against the Squire Westerns and Squire Tyrrells of the century.

prevent liberties being taken with the character by Steele and others, in case he was supposed to remain alive.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PARSON OF THE LAST CENTURY.-FLEET MARRIAGES

IN a famous chapter of his 'History of England,' Lord Macaulay has described the state of the Clergy in the seventeenth century in terms the truth of which has been much disputed. He refers to Eachard and Oldham as authorities for some of his most telling passages. Eachard was master of Catherine Hall at Cambridge, and published in 1670 a book called 'Causes of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion.' Swift says of him: "I have known men happy enough at ridicule, who upon grave subjects were perfectly stupid; of which Dr. Eachard of Cambridge, who writ‘The Contempt of the Clergy' was a great example." The book, which is very short, assigns as the chief reasons for the contempt of the clergy their ig norance and poverty. The remarks are, upon the whole, exceedingly sensible, and some of them well worthy of attention even now. A considerable part of the work is devoted to criticising the bad taste of

the sermons of that period; and the author strongly complains also of the miserable stipends which a large portion of the clergy received, and which compelled them to eke out a support for their families by degrading employments. "What a becoming thing," he asks, "is it for him that serves at the altar to fill the dung-cart in dry weather, and to heat the oven and pull hemp in wet? . . . . Or to be planted on a pannier, with a pair of geese or turkeys bobbing out their heads from under his canonical coat, as you cannot but remember the man, sir, that was thus accomplished?" In another passage he speaks of the chaplains in great houses as having "a little better wages than the cook or butler," and describes their degraded position in one respect, which continued to be literally true in the following century. He says he does not object to a young man becoming a chaplain, so that "he may not be sent from table picking his teeth, and sighing with his hat under his arm, while the knight and my lady eat up the tarts and chickens.”

Oldham's poem is avowedly a satire "addressed to a friend that is about to leave the university; but the following lines express the exact truth:

"Little the unexperienced wretch does know
What slavery he oft must undergo;

Who, though in silken scarf and cassock drest,

Wears but a gayer livery at best.

When dinner calls the implement must wait
With holy words to consecrate the meat,
But hold it for a favor seldom known,

If he be deigned the honor to sit down.
Soon as the tarts appear, 'Sir Crape, withdraw,
These dainties are not for a spiritual maw.'

The same custom is thus alluded to by Gay in his 'Trivia:

"Cheese, that the table's closing rites denies,

And bids me with the unwilling chaplain rise."

For, strange as it may seem now, it was the usual custom for the domestic chaplain to retire from table at the second course. In the Tatler' there is a letter purporting to be written by a clergyman, in which he says: *“I am a chaplain to an honorable family, very regular at the house of devotion, and, I hope, of an unblamable life; but for not offering to rise at the second course, I found my patron and his lady out of humor, though at first I did not know the reason of it. At length, when I happened to help myself to a jelly, the lady of the house, otherwise a devout woman, told me that it did not become a man of my cloth to delight in such frivolous food; but as I still continued to

* 'Tatler,' No. 255.

sit out the last course, I was yesterday informed by the butler that his lordship had no further occasion for my service."

And Steele, in his comment upon this letter, observes: "The original of this barbarous custom I take to have been merely accidental. The chaplain retires out of pure complaisance, to make room for the removal of the dishes, or possibly for the ranging of the dessert. This by degrees grew into a duty, until at length, as the fashion improved, the good man found himself cut off from the third part of the entertainment." In another letter a poor chaplain acknowledges the benefit he has received from the publication of the former one, and the notice taken of it. He says that he was helped by "my lord" to a slice of fat venison, and pressed to eat a jelly or conserve at the second course.

Lord Macaulay quotes also Swift's 'Advice to Servants' to show that, in the time of George II., “in a great household the chaplain was the resource of a lady's maid whose character had been blown upon, and who was therefore forced to give up hopes of catching the steward." But in a recent work this is denied, and the author calls it "an astounding blindness to the purposes of satire, and a still more extraordinary ignorance of the artistic devices by which it