n Church rather in a tremor.
You haven't read--the--ahem--the Pulpit Pencillings in the P. M. G.?
Slight sketches, mental and corporeal, of our chief divines now in
London--and signed Latimer?"

"I don't do much in that way," said Clive.

"So much the worse for you, my young friend. Not that I mean to judge
any other fellow harshly--I mean any other fellow sinner harshly--or
that I mean that those Pulpit Pencillings would be likely to do you
any great good. But, such as they are, they have been productive of
benefit.--Thank you, Mary, and my dear, the tap is uncommonly good, and
I drink to your future husband's good health.--A glass of good sound
beer refreshes after all that claret. Well, sir, to return to the
Pencillings, pardon my vanity in saying, that though Mr. Pendennis
laughs at them, they have been of essential service to the paper. They
give it a character, they rally round it the respectable classes. They
create correspondence. I have received many interesting letters, chiefly
from females, about the Pencillings. Some complain that their favourite
preachers are slighted; others applaud because the clergymen they sit
under are supported by F. B. I am Laud Latimer, sir,--though I have
heard the letters attributed to the Rev. Mr. Bunker, and to a Member of
Parliament eminent in the religious world."

"So you are the famous Laud Latimer?" cries Clive, who had, in fact,
seen letters signed by those right reverend names in our paper.

"Famous is hardly the word. One who scoffs at everything--I need not say
I allude to Mr. Arthur Pendennis--would have had the letters signed--the
Beadle, of the Parish. He calls me the Venerable Beadle sometimes--it
being, I grieve to say, his way to deride grave subjects. You wouldn't
suppose now, my young Clive, that the same hand which pens the Art
criticisms, occasionally, when His Highness Pendennis is lazy, takes
a minor theatre, or turns the sportive epigram, or the ephemeral
paragraph, should adopt a grave theme on a Sunday, and chronicle the
sermons of British divines? For eighteen consecutive Sunday evenings,
Clive, in Mrs. Ridley's front parlour, which I now occupy, vice Miss
Cann promoted, I have written the Pencillings--scarcely allowing a
drop of refreshment, except under extreme exhaustion, to pass my lips.
Pendennis laughs at the Pencillings. He wants to stop them; and says
they bore the public.--I don't want to think a man is jealous, who was
himself the cause of