icher than Fielding has described him, yet
encumbered by a title ever associated with wealth and dignity, and only
calculated, when allied with so much poverty and social humility, to
deepen the incongruity of his lot, and throw him more than ever on the
mercy of the scorner. The office was indeed conspicuous, not by its
dignities or emoluments, but by the extensive opportunities it afforded
for self-devotion. One may have noticed his successor of later times
giving lustre to newspaper paragraphs as "The Lord Bishop of Moray and
Ross." It did not fall to the lot of him of whom I write to render his
title so flagrantly incongruous. A lordship was not necessary, but it
was the principle of his Church to require a bishop, and in him she got
a bishop. In reality, however, he was the parish clergyman of the small
and poor remnant of the Episcopal persuasion who inhabited the
odoriferous fishing-town of Fraserburgh. There he lived a long life of
such simplicity and abstinence as the poverty of the poorest of his
flock scarcely drove them to. He had one failing to link his life with
this nether world--he was a book-hunter. How with his poor income, much
of which went to feed the necessities of those still poorer, he should
have accomplished anything in a pursuit generally considered expensive,
is among other unexplained mysteries. But somehow he managed to scrape
together a curious and interesting collection, so that his name became
associated with rare books, as well as with rare Christian virtues.

When it was proposed to establish an institution for reprinting the
works of the fathers of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, it was
naturally deemed that no more worthy or characteristic name could be
attached to it than that of the venerable prelate who, by his learning
and virtues, had so long adorned the Episcopal chair of Moray and Ross,
and who had shown a special interest in the department of literature to
which the institution was to be devoted. Hence it came to pass that,
through a perfectly natural process, the association for the purpose of
reprinting the works of certain old divines was to be ushered into the
world by the style and title of THE JOLLY CLUB.

There happened to be amongst those concerned, however, certain persons
so corrupted with the wisdom of this world, as to apprehend that the
miscellaneous public might fail to trace this designation to its true
origin, and might indeed totally mistake the nature and