he dignity of
common-councilman, which he had occasionally been invited to aspire
to, might interfere with his domestic comforts and put Mrs. Dickinson
out of her way; and he had some slight apprehensions that he might not
be successful if he should make the attempt; and then as in the course
of his life he had seen many promoted to that honour, whom he had once
known as children and apprentices, and whom he still regarded as boys,
though some of them were upwards of thirty years old, he affected to
make light of a dignity that had become so cheap.

Mr. Bryant was considered by the frequenters of the Pewter Platter as
a man of substance, and being some years older than most of the
visitors at that house, and having been accustomed to the house for
more years than any other of the party, the arm-chair, at what was
called the upper side of the fire-place, was invariably reserved for
him, and the other arm chair was most frequently occupied by the Rev.
Simon Plush. This reverend gentleman was a specimen of a class of
clergy now happily extinct, and never it is to be hoped for the honour
of the church, likely to be revived. He was a tall, muscular, awkward
man, about fifty years of age; habited in a rusty grey coat, with
waistcoat and breeches of greasy black, wearing a grizzled wig that
had shrunk from his forehead, which in its broad expanse of shining
whiteness, formed a contrast with a fiery hooked nose with aldermanic
decorations. His gait was shuffling and awkward, and all his carriage
was that of a man who was a sloven in everything; he was slovenly in
his dress, slovenly in his behaviour, slovenly in mind. He had been a
servitor at Oxford, where it can hardly be said that he had received
his education, for though an education had been offered to him both at
school and at Oxford, he had, in both instances, declined the offer,
guessing, perhaps, that with such a mind as his, the acquisition of
mental furniture would be but labour lost. By the tender mercy
however, or by the culpable negligence of college dignitaries and
examining chaplains, he had found his way into the clerical
profession, and had undergone the imposition of episcopal hands, which
was rather an imposition on the public than on him. Yet he lacked not
talent of some kind; he was a good hand at whist, excellent at cudgel
playing, dexterous on the bowling-green, capital at quoits,
unparalleled at rowing a skiff, could play well at nine-pins, could
run,