representing him in his cassock
performing the marriage service. Let that be sufficient punishment; and,
if you please, do not press the query.

It is very likely that if Miss Smith had come with a licence to marry
Jones, the parson in question, not seeing old Smith present, would have
sent off the beadle in a cab to let the old gentleman know what was
going on; and would have delayed the service until the arrival of Smith
senior. He very likely thinks it his duty to ask all marriageable young
ladies, who come without their papa, why their parent is absent; and, no
doubt, ALWAYS sends off the beadle for that missing governor.

Or, it is very possible that the Duke of Coeurdelion was Mr.
What-d'ye-call'im's most intimate friend, and has often said to him,
'What-d'ye-call'im, my boy, my daughter must never marry the Capting.
If ever they try at your church, I beseech you, considering the terms of
intimacy on which we are, to send off Rattan in a hack cab to fetch me.'

In either of which cases, you see, dear Snobling, that though the parson
would not have been authorised, yet he might have been excused for
interfering. He has no more right to stop my marriage than to stop my
dinner, to both of which, as a free-born Briton, I am entitled by law,
if I can pay for them. But, consider pastoral solicitude, a deep sense
of the duties of his office, and pardon this inconvenient, but genuine
zeal.

But if the clergyman did in the Duke's case what he would NOT do in
Smith's; if he has no more acquaintance with the Coeurdelion family than
I have with the Royal and Serene House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha,--THEN, I
confess, my dear Snobling, your question might elicit a disagreeable
reply, and one which I respectfully decline to give. I wonder what Sir
George Tufto would say, if a sentry left his post because a noble lord
(not the least connected with the service) begged the sentinel not to do
his duty!

Alas! that the beadle who canes little boys and drives them out, cannot
drive worldliness out too; what is worldliness but snobbishness? When,
for instance, I read in the newspapers that the Right Reverend the Lord
Charles James administered the rite of confirmation to a PARTY OF THE
JUVENILE NOBILITY at the Chapel Royal,--as if the Chapel Royal were a
sort of ecclesiastical Almack's, and young people were to get ready for
the next world in little exclusive genteel knots of the aristocracy, who
were not to be disturbed in their journ