heard again of a clergyman who was so awkward that on the first occasion of his officiating at a wedding he stood the whole time at the altar, and read the service exactly as he found it in the Prayer-book, without inserting the names of the interested parties. "I, M., take thee, N., to my wedded wife," etc. I believe this was declared to be a valid marriage, but I think the officiating clergyman deserved a I did on the occasion of the mistake in the marriage license above referred to. on week days except weddings in the morning and funerals in the afternoon, and it is reported of the afore-mentioned clerk that on one occasion when a young lady and gentleman called at his house, and asked to go into the church for the purpose of seeing it, he made so certain that they could have come there but for one purpose, viz., to be joined together in holy matrimony, that when they followed him to the church they found to their consid-wigging quite as much, if not more, than erable dismay that he had got out the marriage registers, and fetched one of the curates, so as to despatch their little business as expeditiously as possible. Report says they were brother and sister. But this is supposed to have happened long before my time, and I decline to vouch for the authenticity of the narrative. People are often wonderfully ignorant or careless on all subjects connected with these interesting occasions. I have known couples present themselves at the church without having made any preliminary arrangements, saying that they knew I was a surrogate, and they thought that I could "sell them a license" in the vestry before the service commenced. I was once sent for by a young lady, who asked me "whether it was legal to be married without bridesmaids,” and on my assuring her that it was, she proceeded to ask me the further question "whether I would be so very kind as to marry her in her ordinary attire?" The common people have one peculiar habit of their own. When asked to say after the officiating clergyman" with all my worldly goods I thee endow," they frequently say "with all my worldly goods I thee and thou." But the stupidity is by no means always on the side of the people. I once had a curate who got greatly obfuscated by the number of the banns he was called upon to publish one Sunday morning. So, when at last he got through his task, he wound up by saying: "If any of you know any just cause or impediment why all these persons may not respectably be joined together in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it." Of course he meant respectively, but his mistake caused an audible titter from certain of the younger members of the congregation. It has twice happened to me that some one has risen up in the church for the purpose of forbidding the banns. I asked the objector to speak to me in the vestry after service, and the incident passed off and seemed to make little stir in the church at the time, but on both occasions the fact was widely reported in the London papers. I have It frequently happens that when people. have been married before a registrar they afterwards develop qualms of conscience at this irregular method of entering into the wedded state, and come to the parson and want to be married again in church. The law specially provides in such cases that any clergyman may read the marriage service over such people, without the production of a license or the publication of banns, but of course he is not to enter such marriages in the registers, as the legal ceremony was complete before. It has happened to me to have to officiate in such cases several times. But on one occasion I was rather nonplussed by the answer I got to the question, "John, wilt thou have this woman to thy wedded wife?" "Why, sir, I told you we was married two years ago." I have several times married a deaf and dumb couple, but never to my knowledge a deaf and dumb person to one who could hear and speak. Sometimes I have used a slate, and written out the questions, while they have written out the replies. Sometimes I have had an interpreter, who followed me in the service with the deaf and dumb alphabet. But it is an awkward business at the best for an outsider, and now that there is a deaf and dumb clergyman (whom I have had the pleasure of meeting), I think that all such weddings ought to be his especial care in future. I once married a lady of title who was a spinster of seventy-one to a widower of seventy-three. On this occasion the parties procured a special license, with the view of being married in the afternoon, when they thought they would escape notice and be married "on the quiet." But somehow or other the affair got wind, and excited (as was, perhaps, but natural) extraordinary attention, and I have seldom seen a church fuller at a wedding than it was on that interesting occasion. The good old couple are both dead and gone now, but they lived to. gether for some years, and I always took a sort of fatherly interest in them from Many years ago, when the Oxford movehaving officiated on the afore-mentioned occasion, though they were not far short of half a century my seniors. A great many people do not know the difference between an ordinary license, which can be procured without difficulty through any surrogate or at Doctors' Commons, and a special license, which can only be procured with considerable difficulty through the Archbishop of Canterbury, and at a cost of some thirty pounds. I have several times officiated in private houses, where, of course, such special license is necessary, though in Scotland at all events, until quite recently a large proportion of the weddings were celebrated not in the churches or kirks, but at the home of the bride. Some time ago I granted an ordinary license in the ordinary way. But the people most closely concerned did not consider it an ordinary occasion, for I saw the marriage described in the Times "by special license from the surrogate of the diocese." Most of my comical reminiscences centre themselves round weddings, but occasionally the comic side will obtrude itself at more sombre times. On one occasion, when I was waiting at the cemetery chapel to commence the service, the undertaker stepped up to the sexton and said, in a very audible aside, "Trimmings allowed, John." This I afterwards discovered was his polite way of making known the fact that the mourners were anxious to present the officiating clergyman with a hatband. ment was first stirring men's minds, and the old Prayer-book services were beginning to be used again after the lapse of many years, my father was the incumbent of a country parish in Oxfordshire. Ash Wednesday came round, and he thought he would read the Commination Service, but, as his doing so was a decided novelty, and the services of the clerk were not available on a week day, he was in some trepidation as to whether such congregation as was likely to assemble would be equal to the proper saying of the responses in that unaccustomed service. So he carefully coached up his butler in the necessary responses, and took him with him to the service to officiate as clerk. But unfortunately, when the man got there, he could not find the service in his Prayerbook, but thinking he remembered the part that appertained unto him, he said "Amen," not only at the proper places after the denunciatory sentences, but whenever he could manage to get one in right down to the very end of the service. I once knew a very eloquent clergyman, who could do and say pretty nearly anything you could ask him, except give out a notice. Of these he always made such a terrible bungle that at last his wife used to write them out for him before service, and he used to read them from her paper. But one Palm Sunday, when the notices for Holy Week were of course unusually complicated and voluminous, the paper in question somehow went astray. However, thus suddenly thrown upon his own resources, he resolved to make the best of things, and with a serious face he nerved himself to his task, and began detailing the various services which were to be held during the week. He got on pretty well during the first three days, and gave us a tolerably coherent account of what was going to happen on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. But here his patience seemed exhausted, or his pres One's duty sometimes leads one into strangely contrasted scenes. On one occasion, after officiating at a wedding, I had to hurry up to the cemetery to take a faneral before presenting myself as a guest at the wedding breakfast. This made me a trifle late, and I kept them waiting for a few minutes. A little later I found myself on my legs, in for a speech. I remember that I was unusually hard up for something to say, but it did not occur to me to apolence of mind gone, for he went on to ogize for my apparent rudeness in keeping them waiting by telling them where I had been in the mean time. Talking of these odd juxtapositions reminds me of a speech made by an old lawyer in Lincolnshire who came to supper one Sunday night with a clergyman with whom I was reading before going up to Oxford. After supper my fellow-pupil and I politely escorted him to the door, when he took leave of us as follows: "Well, my boys, good-night. God bless you. Where the devil's my hat?" astonish his congregation by announcing in stentorian_tones, "and on Thursday next, being Good Friday, there will be divine service," etc. When we got into the vestry I said to him, "I declare I believe you will give out some day, on the first Sunday in the middle of the week, there will," etc. But he did not take it well. So I collapsed. I do not personally remember anything comical happening to me when reading the churching service; but we have probably all of us heard of the parish clerk who was so much shocked at hearing the The following is an exact transcript of back, I think there is some It was in the same pulpit that I preached my first extempore sermon. I had no idea that I had any gifts that way (very likely I was quite right), and I always used to provide myself with the necessary manuscript. On one occasion I put that document into my tail coat-pocket, and then church. Somehow or other the sermon I once, on coming into the charge of a large town district which had been for some time previously somewhat neglected, discovered that there were a very large number of children unbaptized. I accordingly determined on holding a great pub. lic baptism service, and invited the people to bring their children on a week day even-jogged comfortably down on my cob to the ing in their working clothes. More than a hundred babies were brought in response to this invitation. On seeing so large a number of parents and god-parents assembled, I at once came to the conclusion that the opportunity was far too good to be lost, and I therefore ascended the pulpit stairs with the view of instructing them in the meaning of the Holy Sacrament which was about to be administered, and what duties devolved upon them in connection therewith. But I reckoned entirely without my host. The babies were determined to have their say on that subject, and I had no sooner commenced my remarks than I was surrounded by a perfect "Lamb Fair." I at once saw the necessity of giving up the unequal conflict. I surrendered at discretion, and beat a hasty and undignified retreat. That was not the only occasion on which I was in some danger of being worsted by a baby. One of about two years old was once brought to me to be baptized. It had its own ideas on the subject, and when I picked it up for the purpose of performing the ceremony it plunged its little hand A lady once sent me a message that her into my beard and whiskers, and gave footman had not been confirmed, and that them such a thorough good and unmistak- she would like him to join some confirmaable pull, that I was in great danger of tion classes which were just being formed. calling out with the pain. Another baby One of my colleagues went to call on her was just old enough to run, and run very with the view of making the necessary quickly too. When I came near it, off it arrangements. Just as he was leaving, it went, and, had it not tumbled over a foot- suddenly occurred to her that she had a stool, and thus fallen ignominiously into groom, and very likely he was not conthe hands of its enemies, and been brought | firmed either. So she rang the bell, and told the butler to go over to the stables, | old parish clerk, is still sometimes guilty. and find out whether James had been confirmed. In a few minutes the man returned and stolidly announced, "Yes, miss, it's all right. He's been done twice." Of course he meant vaccinated. The of a stroke of unconscious humor. One of my curates, who had previously officiated at a very famous London church, where the sexes were divided, the men sitting on the one side of the aisle and the The offertory occasionally yields its women on the other, once told me a very humors. I can see no fun myself in drop- amusing story of their official. The serping into the plate buttons or peppermint vice was just about to commence. drops or gilded farthings. But these, and long procession of the surpliced choir was other such-like votive offerings, occasion. drawn up in the vestry, just about to march ally come our way. On one occasion a into the church. The vicar was commild hint was given to a dirty-looking mencing the words of the vestry prayer, verger, when a small coin was carefully when the official in question popped his wrapped up in a bit of paper, inscribed, head through the door and remarked, "For a bath for a prominent church offi-"Please, sir, there's a bishop got in among cial." On another occasion, when the offi- the ladies. Shall I have him out?" ciating clergyman had been somewhat bungling through a difficult litany, a similar piece of paper was marked, "For a singing lesson for the curate." After a somewhat rambling discourse from one of my colleagues, who shall, of course, be nameless, the church warden told me that a man at the bottom of the church, when he offered him the plate, took out a sixpence and looked at it ruefully, and then cast it in with the remark, "Well, you shall have it, old fellow, but it's a deal more than that sermon was worth." It fell to my lot for some Sundays to take the service at a once famous proprietary chapel, where shillings used to be charged for seats at the door. When I was there, the place of worship in question had been made free and open, but one morning a lady arrived, and on taking her accustomed place, and missing the usual impost at the door, sent a shilling by the verger to me in the vestry. On my suggesting that times were changed, and that she would have an opportunity by and by to deposit the coin in question in the offertory bag, she utterly declined to give way to any I will conclude these disjointed clerical reminiscences by recounting what happened to me once when I was still in deacon's orders. The clerk of a neighboring parish came over to inform me that the parson had been taken suddenly and seriously ill, and that he would be greatly obliged to me if I would take his service for him on the following Sunday morning. The man was much delighted at my consenting, and was profuse in his thanks. Just as he was leaving the room he casually remarked, "Oh, by the way, it is Sacrament Sunday." I then explained to him that I was unable to do what he wanted, for I was only in deacon's orders, and that he must get some one else. He seemed much distressed at the failure of his efforts, and at last, like one trying his last chance, he turned to me with a most insinuating smile, and said, "Couldn't you do it, sir, just for once?" From The Nineteenth Century. such new-fangled invention, remarking A JOURNEY TO ENGLAND IN THE YEAR that "she always had paid a shilling to sit in that seat, and she always would." 1663. I. I was somewhat disconcerted one SunTHE TRAVELLER INTRODUCED. day, when the vicar's Easter offerings were being collected, by a mad woman AMONG the familiars of the French Emwho brought a basket of stinking fish, bassy in the year 1663, when the Comte which she insisted on personally offering de Cominges represented the Grand Monat the altar. She was not such a pleasant arch at the British court, was a thin, lean person to deal with as a colonial farmer I person, who belonged partly to the Church was once told of by a friend who looked and partly to the world, a Protestant by very much distressed at passing the plate birth and a Catholic by trade, named on a similar occasion, but explained his Samuel Sorbières, or de Sorbières as he apparent shortcoming by remarking in a preferred to be called. He was travelling loud aside, "You'll find a pie on the ves-in England to see the sights, to improve try table." The modern church verger, though by no means so interesting an animal as the his knowledge, and to become better acquainted with the famous philosopher Thomas Hobbes, of Malmesbury. pension of a thousand livres; from Clement IX. he obtained a trifling gratuity, given once for all, and many kind words. His déboire on this last occasion was great. "They give lace cuffs," he said, to a man without a shirt! As his disappointment lasted long he had time to circulate this consolatory witticism, to improve it and remodel it; several of the variantes such as, "I wish they would send me bread for the butter they kindly provided me with," have been preserved by his friend Graverol.* Sorbières was then between forty and | and, what was more to the purpose, a forty-five years of age. He was born at St. Ambroix in the diocese of Uzez; his father, his uncle (the then well-known Petit), all his family, were staunch Protes. tants, and so was Sorbières himself, to all appearance, during many years. He lived for a while at Paris, then in Holland, then at Orange, where he was appointed principal of the local college. His easy manners, easy speech, easy style in writing made him an agreeable correspondent and companion, and he became early in life acquainted with several of the best men of the day, exchanging letters with Gassendi, Father Mersenne, Hobbes, Saumaize. A number of epistles addressed to Saumaize are preserved in the National Library, Paris (MS. Fr. 3930); they treat of learned questions; they contain copies of recently discovered inscriptions; they are full of friendly assurances and respectful compliments to both M. and Madame de Saumaize. Sorbières had, while young, studied theology, then medicine; then he had devoted himself wholly to the making of his fortune, for the improvement of which he allowed himself to be converted in good time to the Catholic faith. I have heard [Guy Patin writes in 1653] that our old friend M. Sorbières, master of the college at Orange, has proved a turncoat, and has become a Roman Catholic. He was requested to do so by the Bishop of Vaison and by the Cardinals de Bichi and Barberin. Here are miracles such as are witnessed to-day; miracles, I say, of the political and economical, rather than the metaphysical, order. He is a widower✶ and a clever fellow, but, sharp as he is, I wonder whether, with that new shirt of his, he will succeed in making his fortune at Rome, for the place swarms with hungry and thirsty people. The thirst and hunger of Sorbières were of the keenest, and he took immense pains to assuage both. He journeyed to Rome, appealed to the king, wrote against the Protestants; but his want of character was against him; he only got temporary favors, small allowances, and unimportant livings. He did his best from year to year to ingratiate himself with cardinal, king, and pope; he neither failed nor succeeded entirely: from Mazarin he got little; from Louis XIV. he received the empty title of historiographer royal (1660) Sorbières had married, while in Holland, a French woman called Judith Renaud; they had a son, Henry, who, after the death of his father, caused a part of his papers to be published. Before his journey to England, Sorbières was known to literary men principally by his translations. He had turned from Latin into French Sir Thomas More's "Utopia," Hobbes's "De Cive," Bates's "Elenchus motuum nuperorum in Anglia."† He had also written a few essays, letters, and discourses, on philo. sophical, medical, theological, and other subjects. Hobbes had been greatly pleased with Sorbières's translation. "The book " (ie., the "De Cive"), he said in his "Five Lessons to the Professors of the Mathematics," 1656, “translated into French, hath not only a great testimony from the translator Sorberius, but also from Gassendus and Mersennus." He began with Sorbières a correspondence in Latin, in which he apostrophizes him as "clarissime charissimeque, amicissime, eruditissime," etc. And he went even farther, as he dedicated "viro clarissimo et amicissimo Samueli Sorberio," his " Dialogus physicus de natura aeris," addressing to him a very characteristic and Pungent letter in which, according to his and everybody, but concludes with the wont, he loudly complains of everything kindest appeal to his correspondent, saying: "Let us live as long and as well as we can, and let us love each other Vale." The desire of having some talk with Hobbes was among the main motives which induced Sorbières to undertake the journey that was to make him for a short while famous all over Europe in the literary and diplomatic world, and to give him his minute d'immortalité. |