friend must be very much in earnest. I believe that the election nearly turned on a testimonial from a Dutch professor, in which he remarked that a strong sense of duty moved him to declare that his friend Jones in the beadle's chair would be the right man in the right place.

There was another aspect in which similarity was preserved. Only a few of the testimonials in each case had been obtained for the occasion. The candidates had had a large stock on hand. Perhaps they were none the worse for being aired now and then; they would have been apt to grow mouldy otherwise. It was curious to observe the different channels into which the same man's ambition had been directed from time to time. At one period he had thought of becoming a professor of Hebrew; at another he had an eye on the customs or the excise; then he was anxious to assist Mr. Panizzi in looking after the British Museum; then he was ready to do a little astronomy or a little natural history for the nation. And now a selection from all these old documents was forwarded to us to show how eminently qualified the applicant was to become our beadle. Some men might be disposed to laugh at the association; for my own part I did not laugh. There was, to my mind, something rather sorrowful in these evidences of repeated and continuous failure. Lots of men, anxious to do journeyman's work, yet unable to find any work,-left unemployed to devour their hearts, and a pittance that scarce kept body and soul together, at their leisure. And it was painful to notice how the hopefulness which marked the earlier applications gra

dually departed and vanished. The lad fresh from college would have applied for the premiership had it been vacant and open to competition. As it was, he had no doubt that he could look after a college or a colony, and was quite prepared to become Principal of St. Mary's or Governor of the Bahamas. Then—when his first application failed-he came down a step. A snug professorship, or a comfortable little thing in Downing Street or at the Treasury, would suit him exactly. And thus the descent had continued; thus hope after hope had been extinguished; until a hungry, halfstarved, half-witted, middle-aged, threadbare creature is eager for Bumble's empty shoes. My poor friends! what you might have been fit for once, and what you are fit for now, God knows; but I fear that even Bumble himself was not more acrid than the new beadle is likely to prove should we put one of your long-suffering fraternity into his place.

From this vein of pitiful reverie the Doctor rudely awoke me. I defy any man to be sentimental for ten minutes in his company. He disturbs romance as an uproarious blue-bottle fly disturbs the silence of a forsaken church-like Torcello.

'Jones seems eligible,' I remarked, alluding to the episcopal candidate, with his ninety-and-nine testimonials.

'Jones! why Jones is an undischarged bankrupt, who will probably be tried for fraudulently putting away his effects.'

'Robinson?' I asked in a whisper.

'Not such a bad fellow by any means-only he drinks like a fish. He had a bad fit of delirium tremens last Sunday fortnight. I don't believe that he is ever quite sober, except for a few hours about the middle of the week.'

'Then for whom are we to vote, Doctor?'

'Brown is our man,' was the authoritative reply. And the Doctor thereupon undertook to prove that Brown was the only qualified candidate. Brown was a sober and industrious citizen, who had stayed all his days in his native town; who had contrived to keep a wife and rear uncountable children on £40 a year; who was known by headmark and old repute to every one of the electors. But Brown's testimonials, unhappily, were not impressive. He was not one of those whom the episcopal bench delighted to honour. There was not a single bishop, not even a Dutch professor, to certify to his fitness. He had merely asked half-a-dozen of the men with whom he had worked for the past five-and-twenty years to say what they thought of his character, and they had only said, simply and plainly, and as briefly as possible, that they held him to be an honest, industrious, well-conducted, God - fearing

man.

I don't know that Brown had ever much chance. The Doctor, however, was so energetic, so imperious, so absolute, when he once took a cause to heart, that I rather think he might have carried his man. But just at the moment when things were looking brightest, a dire rumour was industriously circulated, how or by

whom we failed to discover. Brown was unsound. From that moment his chance was gone; our horse was scored out of the list of possible winners.

I have never been much of a theologian, and I cannot say that I ever exactly understood in what respects Brown had gone astray. You will find the details in Christian Charity, or The British Bug. He was a Socinian, or an Arian, or an Armenian, or a Pelagian, or something a shade or two worse, but I don't recollect what they called it. It could not be said, indeed, from the accounts furnished by his critics, that there was much consistency in his creed. At one time, like Lord Palmerston, he had held peculiar views about original sin; at another, loose notions about baptism of late years his opinions upon final perseverance had grown very unsettled.

The Doctor was furious. 'Oh you generation of reptiles!' he exclaimed, 'you unvarnished and untarnished humbugs! Suppose he has views about final perseverance, won't he make just as good a beadle? Why can't you let the man believe what he likes? We are not making him a doctor of theology. But the whole story is false: Brown is sound in wind and limb, in life and doctrine.'

He struggled gallantly, but he struggled in vain. The religious world was roused. We had had latitudinarian bishops, archdeacons who were shaky about the eucharist, deans and canons of unorthodox repute, but heresy hitherto had not infected the beadles. So there was really a large principle at stake. As Dan

put it to me the other morning-If the beadles go, what becomes of the Protestant Establishment? Dan is a son of old Widow Partington (Sydney Smith's friend), and he assured me solemnly that, in the event of Brown's election, not a boy of his should thereafter be permitted to pass the college gates. Secular learning was very well in its place; but what are the perishing interests of time,' said Dan, who has contrived, however, to feather his own temporary nest very snugly, 'to their eternal well-being?' Then the press took it up. Brown's private history was ransacked. He was turned inside out. The Hazeldean Midge (the High Church organ) buzzed about his ears. The Hazeldean Knout (Evangelical) smote him hip and thigh. The Hazeldean Bug (which bites on its own account) abuses provincialism' (especially the provincialism of thinking no evil of your neighbour); and if you happen to write a book, tells its readers, by way of criticism, what was said at your dinner-table last week, and how your butcher's bill has not been settled. The Bug inquired, generally, who was Brown's grandmother, wanted to know in particular if the Brown, who was hanged for sheep-stealing about the beginning of the century, was any connection of the family?

The day big with the fate of the beadle arrived. We the Doctor and I-went down to the council to propose our man pro formá; but we knew that defeat awaited us. The corpulent bailie (who was attached to the Burghers) proposed, and a lean councillor (a