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AN ECCENTRIC CHARACTER.

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"There's my Dotterel Parson;" and, on learning what business had brought him thither, he gave him the long-promised living.

AN ECCENTRIC CHARACTER.

HE Rev. Mr Patten, who flourished in the second half of the last century, had been chaplain to a man-of-war, and had contracted a kind of marine roughness from his voyages. He was of an athletic make, and had a considerable share of wit and humour, not restrained by any strict ideas of professional propriety. During many years, he was curate of Whitstable, at a very small stipend, and used every Sunday to travel in a butcher's cart to do duty at another neighbouring church. Whitstable, lying close to the sea, has a very bad reputation for agues, so that, had he been dismissed, it would have been very difficult for the Archbishop of Canterbury, to whom the living belonged, to have provided a curate at the same low rate. This Patten well knew, and presuming upon it, was a great plague to every new primate. He lived publicly with a woman to whom he was not united by the holy bonds of wedlock, and had such an esteem for punch, that when his sermons were too long, some one showing him a lemon, could at any time cause him to bring his discourse to an abrupt conclusion, that he might be at liberty to adjourn to the public-house.

When Archbishop Secker was enthroned, or soon after, he gave a charge to his clergy, and among other articles, found great fault with the scanty allowance paid to curates. Patten was there, though not summoned, as the primate, afraid of his remarks, had ordered the proctor to leave him out of the list. He appeared greatly pleased with the sentiments of the prelate, and expressed his satisfaction by rising up and bowing to the archbishop, saying, in a loud voice, "I thank your grace." After the charge was over, the proctor, by mistake, called the Rev. Mr Patten, who, bustling through the crowd, came up to

the archbishop. His grace, seeing he could not avoid the interview, began with the usual question, "You are, sir, I think, curate of Whitstable?" To which Patten replied, "I am, may it please your grace, and have for it received from your grace's predecessors the paltry sum of £30 per annum only, although the living brings in above £300.”—“ Don't enlarge, Mr Patten," said the archbishop.-"No, but I hope your grace will," rejoined the curate.

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Patten long refused to read the Athanasian Creed. The archdeacon, reproving him for that omission, told him his grace the archbishop read it. "That may be," answered Patten. "Perhaps he may believe it, but I don't. He believes at the rate of £7000 per annum; I at that of less than £50." In his last illness, Patten was in great distress, which Dr Secker hearing, sent him ten guineas by the archdeacon; to whom he made the following acknowledgment: “Thank his grace most heartily, and tell him, now I know him to be a man of God, for I have seen his good angels."

ABOUT IT.

FRIEND accused another of sleeping in church, which he flatly denied, insisting that he had been awake all the time. "Well then," said the accuser, 66 can you tell me what the sermon was about ?"-"Yes, I can" was the answer, "it was about half an hour too long."

SIX-BOTTLE JACK.

WENTY-TWO clergymen of the Isle of Man met on a political convocation at the end of the last century, when hard drinking was the fashion. The subject to be discussed proved so dry, that forty-four bottles of claret were drunk in discussing it. Parson Jack amused himself in

ATTERBURY'S PAD.

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arranging the empty bottles round the room where the meeting was held. Some pick-thank told the quantity of wine consumed at this meeting to Bishop Hildesley, who, being a very abstemious man, at the next convocation expatiated much on this horrid excess, as he called it. During this harangue the eyes of the whole company were turned on Parson Jack, as the subject of the bishop's admonition, as he only mentioned wine-bibbing in general. Jack seeing their mistake, loudly exclaimed, "You are mistaken, gentlemen, his lordship does not mean me; he speaks only of two bottles a-head, and he very well knows I am a six-bottle man."

AN ECONOMICAL PREACHER.

PAROCHIAL incumbent, whose scene of labour some

years ago bordered on the Strath of Blaine, was blamed for having an erroneous opinion of the memories of his hearers, inasmuch as he frequently entertained them with "cauld kail hot again," in the shape of sermons that he had previously given. On one occasion his own memory allowed him to make a slip, and only one Sabbath elapsed between the giving of the sermon a second time. After the dismissal of the congregation, the beadle remarked to him, “I hae often heard ye blamed, sir, for giein' us auld sermons; but they'll surely no say that o' the ane ye gied them this afternoon, for it's just a fortnicht sin' they heard it afore in the same place."

ATTERBURY'S PAD.

N the debate on the Occasional Conformity and Schism Bill in the House of Lords, in December 1718, the promoters of the bill were very warmly opposed by Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, who said "he had prophesied last winter this bill would be attempted in the present session, and

he was sorry to find he had proved a true prophet." Lord Coningsby, who always spoke in a passion, rose immediately after the bishop, and remarked that "one of the right reverends had set himself forth as a prophet ; but for his part, he did not know what prophet to liken him to, unless to that famous prophet Balaam, who was reproved by his own ass." The bishop in reply, with great wit and calmness exposed his rude attack, concluding in these words: "Since the noble lord hath discovered in our manners such a similitude, I am well content to be compared to the prophet Balaam; but, my lords, I am at a loss how to make out the other part of the parallel. I am sure that I have been reproved by nobody but his lordship." From that day forth Lord Coningsby was called " Atterbury's Pad."

EXHAUSTIVE PREACHING.

HARLES II. was wont in his humorous way to say of his chaplain, Dr Barrow, "that he was the most unfair preacher in England, because he exhausted every subject, and left no room for others to come after him." It was, indeed, too much the doctor's way; when he got hold of a topic, he never knew how to leave anything unsaid upon it. One of his best discourses, that on The duty and reward of bounty to the poor," actually took him up three hours and a half in delivering.

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FORTUNATE OBSTINACY.

OME forty years ago one of the richest commoners in England was the Rev. Mr Hughes, formerly a poor clergyman, but who died possessed of a revenue of between £70,000 and £80,000 a year. At one time he was in part proprietor of a barren piece of land, for which Lord Uxbridge was then in treaty. The purchase-money, a very

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small sum, was agreed upon; but the nobleman, not keeping his appointment one day to finish the business, the reverend gentleman, in a tiff, refused to give him another meeting. On the above-mentioned barren piece of ground were subsequently discovered the rich Anglesea copper mines, from which Mr Hughes drew his enormous income.

ELECTIONEERING SERMON.

T an election for the town of Bedford, Mr Whitbread and Howard the philanthropist were opposed by Sir William Wake and a Mr Sparrow. A clergyman of the Established Church, a warm supporter of the patriotic candidates, one Sunday morning, during the heat of the election, took for his text that passage from St Matthew's Gospel, in which the question is proposed by our Lord to his disciples: Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing?" Whence this encouragement to their perseverance and their fate is deduced: "Fear ye not, therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows."

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BISHOP BERKELEY.

IR BERKELEY having conceived the benevolent project of converting the American Indians to Christianity, by means of a colony to be erected in the Bermudas, published a proposal for this purpose in 1725, and offered to resign his own opulent preferment of the deanery of Derry, worth £11,000 per annum, and to dedicate the remainder of his life to the instruction of the Indians, on the moderate allowance of £100 a year. Such was the influence of his distinguished example, that three of the junior fellows of Trinity College, Dublin, concurred with him in his design, and proposed to abandon all their flattering prospects in their own country, for

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