he middle and close of the meal, but it is
resolved that the first dish set upon the table shall be one that a
Catholic--ay, even an Anglo-Catholic--might eat on Good Friday in
Passion Week: it shall be cold lentils and vinegar without oil; it shall
be unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and no roast lamb.

Of late years, I say, an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the
north of England; but in eighteen-hundred-eleven-twelve that affluent
rain had not descended. Curates were scarce then: there was no Pastoral
Aid--no Additional Curates' Society to stretch a helping hand to
worn-out old rectors and incumbents, and give them the wherewithal to
pay a vigorous young colleague from Oxford or Cambridge. The present
successors of the apostles, disciples of Dr. Pusey and tools of the
Propaganda, were at that time being hatched under cradle-blankets, or
undergoing regeneration by nursery-baptism in wash-hand basins. You
could not have guessed by looking at any one of them that the
Italian-ironed double frills of its net-cap surrounded the brows of a
preordained, specially-sanctified successor of St. Paul, St. Peter, or
St. John; nor could you have foreseen in the folds of its long
night-gown the white surplice in which it was hereafter cruelly to
exercise the souls of its parishioners, and strangely to nonplus its
old-fashioned vicar by flourishing aloft in a pulpit the shirt-like
raiment which had never before waved higher than the reading-desk.

Yet even in those days of scarcity there were curates: the precious
plant was rare, but it might be found. A certain favoured district in
the West Riding of Yorkshire could boast three rods of Aaron blossoming
within a circuit of twenty miles. You shall see them, reader. Step into
this neat garden-house on the skirts of Whinbury, walk forward into the
little parlour. There they are at dinner. Allow me to introduce them to
you: Mr. Donne, curate of Whinbury; Mr. Malone, curate of Briarfield;
Mr. Sweeting, curate of Nunnely. These are Mr. Donne's lodgings, being
the habitation of one John Gale, a small clothier. Mr. Donne has kindly
invited his brethren to regale with him. You and I will join the party,
see what is to be seen, and hear what is to be heard. At present,
however, they are only eating; and while they eat we will talk aside.

These gentlemen are in the bloom of youth; they possess all the activity
of that interesting age--an activity which their moping old vicars wou