btree Canonicorum and Stogpingum. Indeed, he had
the cure of three parishes, for that of Eiderdown was joined to
Stogpingum. He had resided in Italy for twelve years. His first
going there had been attributed to a sore throat, and that sore
throat, though never repeated in any violent manner, had stood him
in such stead that it had enabled him to live in easy idleness ever
since.

He had now been summoned home--not, indeed, with rough violence, or
by any peremptory command, but by a mandate which he found himself
unable to disregard. Mr. Slope had written to him by the bishop's
desire. In the first place, the bishop much wanted the valuable
co-operation of Dr. Vesey Stanhope in the diocese; in the next, the
bishop thought it his imperative duty to become personally acquainted
with the most conspicuous of his diocesan clergy; then the bishop
thought it essentially necessary for Dr. Stanhope's own interests
that Dr. Stanhope should, at any rate for a time, return to
Barchester; and lastly, it was said that so strong a feeling was
at the present moment evinced by the hierarchs of the church with
reference to the absence of its clerical members, that it behoved Dr.
Vesey Stanhope not to allow his name to stand among those which would
probably in a few months be submitted to the councils of the nation.

There was something so ambiguously frightful in this last threat
that Dr. Stanhope determined to spend two or three summer months at
his residence in Barchester. His rectories were inhabited by his
curates, and he felt himself from disuse to be unfit for parochial
duty; but his prebendal home was kept empty for him, and he thought
it probable that he might be able now and again to preach a prebendal
sermon. He arrived, therefore, with all his family at Barchester,
and he and they must be introduced to my readers.

The great family characteristic of the Stanhopes might probably be
said to be heartlessness, but this want of feeling was, in most of
them, accompanied by so great an amount of good nature as to make
itself but little noticeable to the world. They were so prone to
oblige their neighbours that their neighbours failed to perceive how
indifferent to them was the happiness and well-being of those around
them. The Stanhopes would visit you in your sickness (provided it
were not contagious), would bring you oranges, French novels, and the
last new bit of scandal, and then hear of your death or your recovery
with an eq