move the authorities to pull down the houses as "unfit for human habitation." But though that is being much done now, still there are many terrible plague spots in the day of dwellings in London, and some of our other large cities, of which Jasper Court and its abominations are only too faithful a picture.

"Stephen Remarx" has been so much read that it may seem superfluous to give any extracts, but also it is so much in the front rank of books describing London clergy that we cannot pass it over. Stephen Remarx, the enthusiastic, eager-hearted young curate who goes to St. Titus, Hoxton, is the "very antipodes" of his vicar. He "came up from Oxford brimming over with social enthusiasm. He had studied Political Economy, he had read all the Socialistic literature of the day, and devoured his Daily Chronicle; he had frequented Pusey House; he had read both the Booths, the "General" William and the more particular Charles; he had dived into the reports, and attended the meetings in connection with Oxford House and Toynbee Hall; he had formed in his mind an idea of East London Church work, very different from that which he found at St. Titus." How different will be seen from this picture of the Vicar! "Doctor Bloose did not visit the sick, because he had a tendency to faint away if the walls of the room in which he might happen to be were less than fourteen feet high. He seldom rubbed up against his parishioners, for fear of receiving from them an addition to the liveliness of his person. He had once during a sermon seen what he at first thought was a Protestant miracle; one of the ink blots on his manuscript began to move across the page as if on legs, suddenly realizing that it was no blot, but one of those marvels of the universe which owe more for the pleasure of existence to the carelessness of man than to the care of the Creator. The good doctor turned a deadly white, and, regardless of the fact that he was in the midst of convincing his little flock of the absurdities of Pantheism, he fled down

the pulpit stair and, gathering up the skirts of his Geneva gown, raced down the aisle and into the vicarage, nearly knocking over Mrs. Bloose, who was at that moment triumphantly carrying a pink 'shape' into the dining-room, which she had been coaxing all the morning to stand up straight in the dish. Mrs. Bloose was not a prepossessing person. She would have made a moderately successful monthly nurse. As the doctor's wife she was a failure. She could not enter into the subtleties of her husband's sermons. To her it mattered little whether evolution could be made to square with Christianity, or Darwin with Moses. But neither could she take a mothers' meeting, nor keep a servant. Thirty-three cooks had come and gone in twenty years, and now she managed the kitchen herself. The doctor and the dinner suffered in consequence; but, as she remarked to the female pew-opener, 'Anything for a quiet life.'"

The responsibility of private patronage is just alluded to, when Stephen Remarx is given a valuable West End living. "Well, hang it," said the Marquis, with a levity scarcely consistent with the sacred duty of appointing a spiritual father for twelve thousand souls, "hang it, I don't care who has the beastly living; all parsons are equally cussed in my eyes nowadays." His sense of responsibility is about equal to that of a patron we have met, who, on being told two clergymen were waiting to see him, because of a living in his gift being vacant, vowed to bestow it on either one who wore a beard!

Whyte Melville is an instance of an author who is delightful when ne writes on subjects in which he is at home, but who flounders about terribly when he touches on others. We should suppose his idea as to a clergyman would be that if a parson rode straight he could not go far wrong, and he describes con amore Parson Dove and the pretty Miss Cissy. But the heroine in "Uncle John" is made to work impossible miracles, when, as a cure for disappointed love, she takes to going down

to Smithfield periodically to visit the poor, and within a few months reforms the drunkards, saves the policemen from the brutality of fighting ruffians, educates the children, and reforms all the homes. More wonders still happen when her wedding takes place, as two hundred of her humble friends line the street in her honor on either side of the church door. How so many of the poorest of the poor can get away from their work is not stated. It is Whyte Melville who gives us a wicked parson, Abner Gale, in his Exmoor romance of "Katerfelto." And yet Abner Gale, with all his schemes of murder and treachery, claims our pity as we more or less know the demon of jealousy which possesses him, and we also feel for him having his deep-seated love rejected.

It is perhaps being behind the scenes in novels which in general prevents us making such harsh judgments as we do in real life. The axiom is always true that savoir tout c'est pardonner tout. Like the critic in art, so the author too ought to have a sympathy almost divine in its universality, and be able to show us the hidden workings of a soul, so that we should feel the temptations, and not only as in life see alone the fall or the conquest. The student of character ought also to perceive that what are narrowly called the defects of any kind of art that is really Я genuine product of human nature are truly inseparable from its qualities, and if rightly considered will be found to be qualities themselves. So Hamerton reinarks on art, and we believe the same regarding authorship.

18

The really bad cleric in fiction rather conspicuous by his absence; sometimes one is just mentioned, painted very black to throw up by contrast the shining whiteness of his successor. Bute Crawley was a very common type of man of the early part of this century; it was a time when the ideal of what Church work should be was very low, or we might say, in most cases, non-existent. Even hard drinking was considered, if not exactly as a virtue, still hardly a vice, and Bute Crawley was often like too many of his

cloth when he was "problematically pious, and indubitably drunk." Even in Miss Austen's books, which we mentioned just now, Edmund Bertram is the only one who regards Holy Orders as at all a sacred calling; the others seem to look on their livings simply as an aid to their marrying. It was during the Oxford movement and later that higher standards for the clerical life were held up in fiction, notably in books by Rev. W. Gresly and Rev. F. E. Paget. The "Owlet of Owlestone Edge," by the latter, is a series of sketches of clergymen's wives; there is the society woman, the hypochondriacal invalid, the fast and flirting wife, the learned one, and the too affection ate wife, who is always fearful of her husband doing too much for his health, and so succeeds in making him do far too little for his parish; lastly, there is the perfect wife, the true helpmeet, who, like Catherine Elsmere, had her heart and soul in her husband and her work, teaching, nursing, making herself the mother and friend of all around her. "The Curate of Cumberworth" is an amusing story of an over-zealous young man, who begins work in too much haste, but experience does it, as Mrs. Micawber would say, and though he flounders into many scrapes, eventually everything comes right. "The Vicar of Roost" gives us a contrast somewhat like Stephen Remarx of a self-indulgent vicar, thoroughly careless of his parish and unfit for his post, and his self-denying and high principled curate, whose only fault is that he is too meek and unselfish.

We have spoken of the East End missioner; there are many more sketches of him than of a missionary to foreign lauds, of whom indeed we only remember two: St. John in "Jane Eyre" and Norman May in "The Daisy Chain. Miss Yonge depicts Norman fresh from gaining honors at Oxford, and witn ber two: St. John in "Jane Eyre" and career, political or other, that he should adopt, giving up all former ambitions, being ordained, to go as missionary to New Zealand, enthusiasm spurring him ou amid the objections of many who

Miss Yonge has several good clerical sketches. Robert Fulmort takes orders from mixed motives, unhappiness in love for one, but a stronger reason is to atone for the harm worked by his father's gin distilleries, by giving up himself and his money to try and stem some of the evils which had suddenly become known to him. Maurice Ferrars is another favorite character of

a

ours, and Clement Underwood we regard with mixed feelings; he is a cocky, disagreeable boy at first, and then priggish young curate, but real hard work conscientiously done, and the deepening experience of life, eventually make him a thorough-going earnest priest, able later on to worthily take Robert Fulmort's place as head of his clergy-house and London parish. We suspect, however, that Clement would always have the narrow-mindedness of one leading idea, and be unable to extend much sympathy to those who did not see things exactly as he did. There is a rather amusing incident when Clement is at his first curacy (a very High Church one), and goes to see some connections at a distance, and is asked whereabouts his curacy is. He tells, expecting to have the name received in horror, but all the party are quite out of reach of the thermometer of London churches. This, by the way, sounds ideal, but it was only that the party were ignorant of the differences, not that they rose superior to "high," "low," and "broad." The "Three Brides" has a good rector and curate; the latter goes madly in for cricket, but has a pull-up in time by the bishop deferring his priesthood, and he atones for previous carelessness by his selfsacrifice when the parish has a breakout of typhoid fever. The rector's bride when coming to her new home questions her husband about society round, but all he knows of it is that they will be within reach of Doctor Easterby, "one of the greatest lights of the English Church," which to her is scarcely

an answer.

Of clergy like those on one page of

In "The Heart of Life" 1 we meet with three very individual characters in Canon Bulman, Doctor Clitheroe, and Mr. Godolphin; in all three the reader becomes immensely interested, and the tragic endings of two of them come upon him with quite a shock! Doctor Clitheroe, the D.D., not beneficed, but holding an important post (connected with Reports on Education) under government. The reader, who like all his many friends, is taken with his unselfish, unworldly, serious, and beautiful character, is terribly taken aback in volume three to discover in him a fraudulent speculator, who is justly condemned to seven years' penal servitude. "He was a genius," said Lord Wargrave. "Invalid ladies to whom he administered the sacrament were his principal clients. No one else that I know has managed to live off the Gospel in precisely the same way." "Mr. Godolphin was happy in the double consciousness of valid priestly orders and £3,000 a year. His voice had as many tones in it as an harmonium, and he was able, therefore, to modulate it in a beautifully sympathetic manner.

The Heart of Life (W. H. Mallock).

In appearance he was like a statue of dignity culminating in a bust of beneficence." One of the most touching things in this clever book is the sermon which Mr. Godolphin preaches in the North Devon village where Doctor Clitheroe has lived, and been known and beloved, the Sunday after his disgrace has been made public; Mr. Godolphin, who is charitable but upright, shows both qualities on that occasion, when he makes evident he can hate the sin and yet love the sinner.

Canon Bulman had a different charity -he had the sort which believed all things when said in the way of scandal; he delighted so much in abhorring vice that he was always talking of it. He busied himself so much in pointing out the way they should go to others, that he comes to shipwreck himself.

This

is how he is described at the beginning of the book: "Canon Bulman had all the air of a sanguine and strenuous traveller on the road of duty, of hard work, and of preferment; his devotion to democratic principles was only equalled by his taste for aristocratic persons." It was the Canon's reading prayers which is mistaken by a listener for the equally monotonous sound of grinding coffee. Bishop Bloomfield's household devotions for each day in the week had been used at Glenlynn for more than half a century, and the aforesaid listener "could not suppress a smile when he heard the Canon, obviously much against the grain, constrained to prefer the following petition to Providence: 'Make us humble to our superiors; affable to our equals; kind and condescending to the poor and needy.' It was a petition, however, of which the Canon need have had no personal fear, for it was plain when he rose from his knees that in his case it had not been answered."

The best account of the construction of a sermon we think we ever met with is in "Thirlby Hall," by W. E. Norris. We will give it in extenso with the description of the church: "The next day being Sunday, my uncle and I of course went to church in the morning. The old square seat in which we sat, with

its worm-eaten boards, its green baize curtains above them, and its shabby cushions and hassocks; the faint musty smell for which partly damp, and partly the remains of our decaying ancestors were responsible; the village choir in the gallery bawling out 'I will arise,' to the accompaniment of various musical instruments, which had always been dimly associated in my mind with King Nebuchadnezzar and his image of gold-all these things brought back vividly to me the days of my boyhood; days that seemed then far more remote than they do now. I am afraid my mind was a good deal more occupied with memories and vain regrets than with the prayers and the rector's subsequent homily. This, like all his discourses, was constructed on time-honored and unvarying lines. Firstly— What was so and so? was it this? No. Was it that? No. Was it something else altogether improbable? Again no. What then was it which led to the agreeable discovery that after all it was very much what the untutored mind would have pronounced it to be at first sight? Secondly-How was this doctrine illustrated by examples from Holy Writ? Examples from Holy Writ numerous, and more or less apposite followed. Finally, brethren, how did this great truth come home to all of us? The unsatisfactory conclusion being, that it ought to come home to us all in many ways, but that, by reason of the hardness of our hearts, it didn't. Then there was a great scutfling of hob-nailed boots, a great sigh of relief, and we were dismissed. This is an amusing and faithful sketch, but it is only a surface one, and cannot compare with that given in "Adam Bede" of the church and its service on the Sunday that poor 'Thias Bede is buried. That is a poem in prose; the description of the farm left to Sunday peacefulness, the family walk through the fields, the quaint old fashions in the church, the old clerk, the gallery, and the turning up; and lastly, the vicar, Mr. Irwine, looking round on his people, "in his ample white surplice that became him so well, with his pow

dered hair thrown back, his rich brown complexion, and his finely cut nostril and upper lip; there was a certain virtue in that benignant yet keen countenance, as there is in all human faces from which a out."

generous soul beams

Speaking of sermons reminds us of Becky suggesting that Rawdon Craw ley might "go into the church," and of her preaching an imaginary sermon for him. No doubt she would have been able to do it with "forty-parson power," as Byron says!

The clergyman who takes to tutoring simply and solely to raise his income, without any natural aptitude for the work, is well given in the "Mill on the Floss." How many marriages we hear of on a very small living, with the ignis fatuus of pupils, and how many a poor couple find later that it is a sorry case of first catch your hare; but the poverty of clerical incomes is an increasing difficulty, more now than when the "Mill on the Floss" came out. We hear of clergy giving up livings, emigrating and taking to farming as an alternative to starving in England. It seems almost as though the clerical status must be altered, and our clergy will have to become celibate, or work at some manual labor like some Dissenting ministers throughout the week, leaving their spiritual duties for Sundays. George Eliot speaks of the parson-tutor thus: "There are two expensive forms of education, either of which a parent may procure for his son by sending him as a solitary pupil to a clergyman; one is the enjoyment of the reverend gentleman's undivided neglect; the other is the endurance of the reverend gentleman's undivided at

tention. ... In those less favored days than these it is no fable that there were other clergymen besides Mr. Stelling who had narrow intellects and large wants, and whose income by a logical confusion to which Fortune, being a female as well as fold, is peculiarly liable, was proportioned not to their wants their intellect; there was but one way of raising their income; any of those

'blind

but to

low callings in which men are obliged to do good work at a low price were forbidden to clergymen; was it their fault if their only resource was to turn out very poor work at a high price?

"Fathers cast their sons on clerical instruction to find them ignorant after many days. The state of mind in which you take a billiard cue or a dice box in your hand is one of sober certainty compared with that of old-fashioned fathers like Mr. Tulliver, when they selected a school or a tutor for their sons."

Men have various reasons for taking Holy Orders; among bad reasons are, solely because of a family living, weariness of some other profession, or as a means of a social rise, and this last view is spoken of in "Alton Locke," when the tailor-hero goes to see his cousin at Cambridge. The latter says, "I have chosen the right road, and shall end at the road's end; and I advise you-for really as my cousin I wish you all success, even for the mere credit of the family-to choose the same road likewise."

"What road?"

"Come up to Cambridge by hook or by crook, and then take Orders."

Alton laughed scornfully. "My good cousin, it is the only method yet discovered for turning a snob (as I am, or was) into a gentleman; except putting him into a heavy cavalry regiment. My brother, who has no brains, preferred the latter method. I, who flatter myself that I have some, have taken the former. If you are once a parson all is safe.

Be you who you may before, from that moment you are a gentleman. No one will offer an insult. You are good enough for any man's society. You can dine at any nobleman's table. You can be friend, confidant, father confessor if you like to the highest woman in the land; and if you have person, manners, and common sense marry one of them into the bargain, Alton, my boy."

That character is fate is shown in the short after history of this despicable sneak, who had the tailor-soul ingrain, though he prided himself on rising so