ragraph in their favour. My
beloved friend and reader, I wish you and I could do the same: and let
me whisper my belief, ENTRE NOUS that of those eminent philosophers who
cry out against parsons the loudest, there are not many who have got
their knowledge of the church by going thither often.

But you who have ever listened to village bells, or walked to church as
children on sunny Sabbath mornings; you who have ever seen the parson's
wife tending the poor man's bedside; or the town clergyman threading the
dirty stairs of noxious alleys upon his business;--do not raise a shout
when one falls away, or yell with the mob that howls after him.

Every man can do that. When old Father Noah was overtaken in his cups,
there was only one of his sons that dared to make merry at his disaster,
and he was not the most virtuous of the family. Let us too turn away
silently, nor huzza like a parcel of school-boys, because some big young
rebel suddenly starts up and whops the schoolmaster.

I confess, though, if I had by me the names of those seven or eight
Irish bishops, the probates of whose wills were mentioned in last year's
journals, and who died leaving behind them some two hundred thousand
a-piece--I would like to put THEM up as patrons of my Clerical Snobs,
and operate upon them as successfully as I see from the newspapers Mr.
Eisenberg, Chiropodist, has lately done upon 'His Grace the Reverend
Lord Bishop of Tapioca.'

I confess that when those Right Reverend Prelates come up to the gates
of Paradise with their probates of wills in their hands, I think that
their chance is.... But the gates of Paradise is a far way to follow
their Lordships; so let us trip down again lest awkward questions be
asked there about our own favourite vices too.

And don't let us give way to the vulgar prejudice, that clergymen are an
over-paid and luxurious body of men. When that eminent ascetic, the
late Sydney Smith--(by the way, by what law of nature is it that so many
Smiths in this world are called Sydney Smith?)--lauded the system of
great prizes in the Church,--without which he said gentlemen would
not be induced to follow the clerical profession, he admitted most
pathetically that the clergy in general were by no means to be envied
for their worldly prosperity. From reading the works of some modern
writers of repute, you would fancy that a parson's life was passed
in gorging himself with plum-pudding and port-wine; and that his
Reverence