always with success. Indeed, they can hardly like a war-cry, that I cannot too quickly disfail, provided the soil be favourable to spade- claim any intention of inflicting a political husbandry, the rent not higher than that which dissertation on the unwary reader. My dewould be demanded from a large occupier of sign is simply to draw a faithful likeness of land, the ground properly drained and fenced, one of the most peaceable members of the and the labourers not encumbered with rules establishment. and regulations: for the main object being not merely to add to the physical comforts, but to raise the moral character of the working classes, especial care should be taken to induce and cherish the feeling of independence, and to prove to them that they are considered as tenants paying rent, and not as almsmen receiving charity.

Of late years, there has been a prodigious change in the body clerical. The activity of the dissenters, the spread of education, and the immense increase of population, to say nothing of that "word of power," Reform, have combined to produce a stirring spirit of emulation amongst the younger clergy, which has quite changed the aspect of the profession. Heretofore, the "church militant" was the quietest and easiest of all vocations; and the most slender and lady-like young gentleman, the "mamma's darling" of a great family, whose lungs were too tender for the bar, and whose frame was too delicate for the army, might be sent with perfect comfort to the snug curacy of a neighbouring parish, to read Horace, cultivate auriculas, christen, marry, and bury, about twice a quarter, and do duty once every Sunday. Now times are altered; prayers must be read and sermons preached twice a day at least, not forgetting lectures in Lent, and homilies at tide times; workhouses are to be visited; schools attended, boys and girls taught in the morning, and grown-up bumpkins in the evening; children are to be catechised; masters and mistresses looked after;

I am happy to add, that the Mr. Howard of this little story (that is not quite his name) does actually exist. He is an eminent brewer in a small town in our neighbourhood, and has, also, another great brewery near London; he has a large family of young children and orphan relations, is an active magistrate, a sportsman, a horticulturist, a musician, a cricketer; is celebrated for the most extensive and the most elegant hospitality; and yet, has found time, not only to establish the system in his own parish, but, also, to officiate as secretary to a society for the promotion of this good object throughout the country. Heaven grant it success! I, for my poor part, am thoroughly convinced, that, if ever project were at once benevolent and rational, and practicable and wise, it is this of the cottage allotments; and I can hardly refrain from en-hymn-books distributed; bibles given away; treating my readers-especially my fair readers-to exert whatever power or influence they may possess in favour of a cause which has, for its sole aim and end, the putting down of vice and misery, and the diffusion of happiness and virtue.

THE CURATE OF ST. NICHOLAS'.

AMONGST the most generally beloved, not merely of the clergy, but of the whole population of Belford, as that population stood some thirty years ago, was my good old friend, the Curate of St. Nicholas'; and, in my mind, he had qualities that might both explain and justify his universal popularity.

Belford is, at present, singularly fortunate in the parochial clergy. Of the two vicars, whom I have the honour and the privilege of knowing, one confers upon the place the ennobling distinction of being the residence of a great poet; whilst both are not only, in the highest sense of that highest word, gentlemen, in birth, in education, in manners, and in mind-but eminently popular in the pulpit, and, as parish priests, not to be excelled, even amongst the generally excellent clergymen of the Church of England - a phrase, by the way, which just at this moment sounds so

tract societies fostered amongst the zealous, and psalmody cultivated amongst the musical. In short, a curate, now-a-days, even a country curate, much more if his parish lie in a great town, has need of the lungs of a barrister in good practice, and the strength and activity of an officer of dragoons.

Now this is just as it ought to be. Nevertheless, I cannot help entertaining certain relentings in favour of the well-endowed churchman of the old school, round, indolent, and rubicund, at peace with himself and with all around him, who lives in quiet and plenty in his ample parsonage-house, dispensing with a liberal hand the superfluities of his hospitable table, regular and exact in his conduct, but not so precise as to refuse a Saturday night's rubber in his own person, or to condemn his parishioners for their game of cricket on Sunday afternoons; charitable in word and deed, tolerant, indulgent, kind, to the widest extent of that widest word; but, except in such wisdom (and it is of the best,) no wiser than that eminent member of the church, Parson Adams. In a word, exactly such a man as my good old friend the rector of Hadley, cidevant curate of St. Nicholas' in Belford, who has just passed the window in that venerable relique of antiquity, his one-horse chaise. Ah, we may see him still, through the budding leaves of the clustering China rose, as he is stopping to give a penny to poor lame Dinah Moore

stopping, and stooping his short round person with no small effort, that he may put it into her little hand, because the child would have some difficulty in picking it up, on account of her crutches. Yes, there he goes, rotund and rosy, "a tun of a man," filling three parts of his roomy equipage; the shovel-hat with a rose in it, the very model of orthodoxy, overshadowing his white hairs and placid countenance; his little stunted foot-boy in a purple livery, driving a coach-horse as fat as his master; whilst the old white terrier, fatter still-his pet terrier Venom, waddles after the chaise (of which the head is let down, in honour, I presume, of this bright April morning,) much resembling in gait and aspect that other white waddling thing, a goose, if a goose were gifted with four legs.

occupied one side of Mrs. Martin's shop from the time of her setting up business, and still continued to keep his station uncheapened by her thrifty customers.

There, by the advice of Dr. Grampound, did he place himself on his arrival at Belford; and there he continued for full thirty years, occupying the same first-floor; the sittingroom-a pleasant apartment, with one window (for the little toy-shop was a corner-house) abutting on the High Bridge, and the other on the market-place-still, as at first, furnished with a Scotch carpet, cane chairs, a Pembroke table, and two hanging shelves, which seemed placed there less for their ostensible destination of holding books, sermons, and newspapers, than for the purpose of bobbing against the head of every unwary person who might happen to sit down near the wall; and the small chamber behind, with its tent-bed and dimity furniture, its mahogany chest of drawers, one chair and no table; with the self-same spare, quiet, decent landlady, in her faded but well-preserved mourning gown, and the identical serving maiden, Patty, a demure, civil, modest damsel, dwarfed, as it should seem, by constant curtsying, since from twelve years upwards she had not grown an

There he goes, my venerable friend the Reverend Josiah Singleton, rector of Hadleycum-Doveton, in the county of Southampton, and vicar of Delworth, in the county of Surrey. There he goes, in whose youth tract societies and adult schools were not, but who yet has done as much good and as little harm in his generation, has formed as just and as useful a link between the rich and the poor, the landlord and the peasant, as ever did honour to religion and to human nature. Per-inch. Except the clock of time, which, howhaps this is only saying, in other words, that, under any system, benevolence and singlemindedness will produce their proper effects. I am not, however, going to preach a sermon over my worthy friend-long may it be before his funeral sermon is preached! or even to write his éloge, for éloges are dull things; and to sit down with the intention of being dull,to set about the matter with malice prepense (howbeit the calamity may sometimes happen accidentally,) I hold to be an unnecessary impertinence. I am only to give a slight sketch, a sort of bird's-eye view of my reverend friend's life, which, by the way, has been, except in one single particular, so barren of incidents, that it might almost pass for one of those proverbially uneventful narratives, The Lives of the Poets..

Fifty-six years ago, our portly rector-then, it may be presumed, a sleek and comely bachelor-left college, where he had passed through his examinations and taken his degrees with respectable mediocrity, and was ordained to the curacy of St. Nicholas' parish, in our market-town of Belford, where, by the recommendation of his vicar, Dr. Grampound, he fixed himself in the small but neat firstfloor of a reduced widow gentlewoman, who endeavoured to eke out a small annuity by letting lodgings at eight shillings a-week, linen, china, plate, glass, and waiting included, and by keeping a toy-shop, of which the whole stock, fiddles, drums, balls, dolls, and shuttlecocks, might be safely appraised at under eight pounds, including a stately rocking-horse, the poor widow's cheval de bataille, which had

ever imperceptibly, does still keep moving, every thing about the little toy-shop in the market-place at Belford was at a stand-still. The very tabby-cat which lay basking on the hearth, might have passed for his progenitor of happy memory, who took his station there the night of Mr. Singleton's arrival; and the self-same hobby-horse still stood rocking opposite the counter, the admiration of every urchin who passed the door, and so completely the pride of the mistress of the domicile, that it is to be questioned-convenient as thirty shillings, lawful money of Great Britain, might sometimes have proved to Mrs. Martin

whether she would not have felt more reluctance than pleasure in parting with this, the prime ornament of her stock.

There, however, the rocking-horse remained; and there remained Mr. Singleton, gradually advancing from a personable youth to a portly middle-aged man; and obscure and untempting as the station of a curate in a country-town may appear, it is doubtful whether those thirty years of comparative poverty were not amongst the happiest of his easy and tranquil life.

Very happy they undoubtedly were. To say nothing of the comforts provided for him by his assiduous landlady and her civil domestic, both of whom felt all the value of their kind, orderly, and considerate inmate; especially as compared with the rackety recruiting officers and troublesome single gentlewomen who had generally occupied the first-floor; our curate was in prime favour with his vicar, Dr. Grampound, a stately pil

volunteers, which had divided the whole gentility of the town into parties. In short, he was such a favourite in the female world, that when the ladies of Belford (on their husbands setting up a weekly card-club at the Crown)

other's houses, Mr. Singleton was, by unanimous consent, the only gentleman admitted to the female coterie.

lar of divinity, rigidly orthodox in all matters of church and state, who, having a stall in a distant cathedral, and another living by the sea-side, spent but little of his time at Belford, and had been so tormented by his three last curates the first of whom was of avow-resolved to meet on the same night at each edly whig politics, and more than suspected of Calvinistic religion; the second a foxhunter, and the third a poet-that he was delighted to intrust his flock to a staid, sober youth of high-church and tory principles, who never mounted a horse in his life, and would hardly have trusted himself on Mrs. Martin's steed of wood; and whose genius, so far from carrying him into any flights of poesy, never went beyond that weekly process of sermon-making, which, as the doctor observed, was all that a sound divine need know of authorship. Never was curate a greater favourite with his principal. He has even been heard to prophesy that the young man would be a bishop.

Amongst the parishioners, high and low, Josiah was no less a favourite. The poor felt his benevolence, his integrity, his piety, and his steady kindness; whilst the richer classes (for in the good town of Belford few were absolutely rich) were won by his unaffected good-nature, the most popular of all qualities. There was nothing shining about the man, no danger of his setting the Thames on fire, and the gentlemen liked him none the worse for that; but his chief friends and allies were the ladies-not the young ladies, by whom, to say the truth, he was not so much courted, and whom, in return, he did not trouble himself to court; but the discreet mammas and grand-mammas, and maiden gentlewomen of a certain age, amongst whom he found himself considerably more valued, and infinitely more at home.

Sooth to say, our staid, worthy, prudent, sober young man, had at no time of his life been endowed with the buoyant and mercurial spirit peculiar to youth. There was in him a considerable analogy between the mind and the body. Both were heavy, sluggish, and slow. He was no strait-laced person either; he liked a joke in his own quiet way well enough; but as to encountering the quips, and cranks, and quiddities of a set of giddy girls, he could as soon have danced a cotillion. The gift was not in him. So with a wise instinct he stuck to their elders; called on them in the morning; drank tea with them at night; played whist, quadrille, cassino, backgammon, commerce, or lottery-tickets, as the party might require; told news and talked scandal as well as any woman of them all; accommodated a difference of four years' standing between the wife of the chief attorney and the sister of the principal physician; and was appealed to as absolute referee in a question of precedence between the widow of a post-captain and the lady of a colonel of

Happier man could hardly be, than the worthy Josiah in this fair company. At first, indeed, some slight interruptions to his comfort had offered themselves, in the shape of overtures matrimonial, from three mammas, two papas, one uncle, and (I grieve to say) one lady, an elderly young lady, a sort of dowager spinster in her own proper person, who, smitten with Mr. Singleton's excellent character, a small independence, besides his curacy in possession, and a trifling estate (much exaggerated by the gossip fame) in expectancy, and perhaps somewhat swayed by Dr. Grampound's magnificent prophecy, had, at the commencement of his career, respectively given him to understand that he might, if he chose, become nearly related to them. This is a sort of dilemma which a well-bred man, and a man of humanity, (and our curate was both,) usually feels to be tolerably embarrassing. Josiah, however, extricated himself with his usual straightforward simplicity. He said, and said truly,

that he considered matrimony a great comfort-that he had a respect for the state, and no disinclination to any of the ladies; but that he was a poor man, and could not afford so expensive a luxury." And with the exception of one mamma, who had nine unmarried daughters, and proposed waiting for a living, and the old young lady who had offered herself, and who kept her bed and threatened, to die on his refusal, thus giving him the fright of having to bury his inamorata, and being haunted by her ghost-with these slight exceptions, every body took his answer in good part.

As he advanced in life, these sort of annoyances ceased-his staid, sober deportment, ruddy countenance, and portly person, giving him an air of being even older than he really was; so that he came to be considered as that privileged person, a confirmed old bachelor, the general beau of the female coterie, and the favourite marryer and christener of the town and neighbourhood. Nay, as years wore away, and he began to marry some whom he had christened, and to bury many whom he had married, even Dr. Grampound's prophecy ceased to be remembered, and he appeared to be as firmly rooted in Belford as in St. Nicholas's church, and as completely fixed in the toy-shop as the rocking-horse.

Destiny, however, had other things in store for him. The good town of Belford, as I have already hinted, is, to its own misfortune,

This talent, which, it is to be presumed, he acquired in the ladies' club at Belford, and which probably contributed to his popularity in that society, stood him in great stead in the aristocratic circle of Delworth Castle. The whole family was equally delighted and amused by his bonhommie and simplicity; and he, in return, captivated by their kindness, as well as grateful for their benefits, paid them a sincere and unfeigned homage, which trebled their good-will. Never was so honest and artless a courtier. There was something at once diverting and amiable in the ascendency which every thing connected with his patron held over Mr. Singleton's imagination. Loyal subject as he unquestionably was, the king, queen, and royal family would have been as nothing in his eyes, compared with Lord and Lady Delworth, and their illustrious offspring. He purchased a new peerage, which, in the course of a few days, opened involuntarily on the honoured page which contained an account of their genealogy; his walls were hung with ground-plans of Hadley House, elevations of Delworth Castle, maps of the estate, prints of the late and present lords, and of a judge of Queen Anne's reign, and of a bishop of George the Second's,

a poor place! an independent borough, and subject, accordingly, to the infliction (privilege, I believe, the voters are pleased to call it) of an election. For thirty years-during which period there had been seven or eight of these visitations-the calamity had passed over so mildly, that, except three or four days of intolerable drunkenness, (accompanied, of course, by a sufficient number of broken heads,) no other mischief had occurred; the two great families, whig and tory, might be said to divide the town, for this was before the days of that active reformer, Stephen Lane,-having entered, by agreement, into a compromise to return one member each; a compact which might have held good to this time, had not some slackness of attention on the part of the whigs (the Blues, as they were called in election jargon) provoked the Yellow or tory part of the corporation, to sign a requisition to the Hon. Mr. Delworth, to stand as their second candidate, and produced the novelty of a sharp contest in their hitherto peaceful borough. When it came, it came with a vengeance. It lasted eight days as long as it could last. The dregs of that cup of evil were drained to the very bottom. Words are faint to describe the tumult, the turmoil, the blustering, the brawling, the abuse, the ill-worthies of the family; he had, on his diningwill, the battles by tongue and by fist, of that disastrous time. At last the Yellows carried it by six; and on a petition and scrutiny in the House of Commons, by one single vote: and as Mr. Singleton had been engaged on the side of the winning party, not merely by his own political opinions, and those of his ancient vicar, Dr. Grampound, but, also, by the predilections of his female allies, who were Yellows to a man, those who understood the ordinary course of such matters were not greatly astonished, in the course of the ensuing three years, to find our good curate rector of Hadley, vicar of Delworth, and chaplain to the new member's father. One thing, however, was remarkable, that amidst all the scurrility and ill blood of an election contest, and in spite of the envy which is sure to follow a sudden change of fortune, Mr. Singleton neither made an enemy nor lost a friend. His peaceful, unoffending character disarmed offence. He had been unexpectedly useful too to the winning party, not merely by knowing and having served many of the poorer voters, but by possessing one eminent qualification, not sufficiently valued or demanded in a canvasser: he was the best listener of the party,* and is said to have gained the half-dozen votes which decided the election, by the mere process of letting the people talk.

* A friend of mine, the lady of a borough member, who was very active in canvassing for her husband, once said to me, on my complimenting her on the number of votes she had obtained: "It was all done by listening. Our good friends, the voters, like to hear themselves talk."

room mantel-piece, models of two wings, once projected for Hadley, but which had never been built; and is said to have once bought an old head of the first Duke of Marlborough, which a cunning auctioneer had fobbed off upon him, by pretending that the great captain was a progenitor of his noble patron.

Besides this predominant taste, he soon began to indulge other inclinations at the rectory, which savoured a little of his old bachelor habits. He became a collector of shells and china, and a fancier of tulips; and when he invited the coterie of Belford ladies to partake of a syllabub, astonished and delighted them by the performance of a piping bullfinch of his own teaching, who executed the Blue Bells of Scotland in a manner not to be sur passed by the barrel-organ, by means of which this accomplished bird had been instructed. He engaged Mrs. Martin as his housekeeper, and Patty as his housemaid; set up the identical one-horse chaise in which he was riding to-day; became a member of the clerical dinner club; took in St. James's Chronicle and the Gentleman's Magazine; and was set down by every body as a confirmed old bachelor.

All these indications notwithstanding, nothing was less in his contemplation than to remain in that forlorn condition. Marriage, after all, was his predominant taste; his real fancy was for the ladies. He was fifty-seven, or thereabouts, when he began to make love; but he has amply made up for his loss of time, by marrying no less than four wives since that period. Call him Mr. Singleton, indeed! why, his proper name would be Doubleton.