still more against them, and breeds up such a spirit of contention, that it commonly hin ders them from taking the measures necessary to retrieve esteem, or to merit hospitality. Independent of this conduct, so little conciliatory on the part of the curates, there is another cause which invites the people of Bristol to treat them with such felonious contumacy. The people find that the rectors treat their curates as schoolmasters treat the ushers of their schools; that is, they lord it over them as task-masters; and if they admit them to their table, and introduce them to their friends, the dinner has the appearance of an alms, and the introduction is marked with all the formula that distinguish the tyrant from the slave. And those rectors, to disguise their own vices, and to pass for men of the most exemplary life, are for ever brawling against their curates, and causing no alliance to exist between them and the community, by setting them by the ears together, and keeping them in a state of perpetual warfare and strife."

"I am sorry to interrupt you, Madam," said Henry, "but really your information appears so extensive and correct, that I should be happy, before you proceed further, if you would favour me with a rectorial sketch, and instruct me how far those reverend gentlemen are entitled, by the estimate entertained of their own characters, to ride over the necks of the unfortunate curates, whose case you so ably describe, and have so much disposition to redress?"

"The conduct of the Bristol people to their clergy," replied Mrs. Percy, " is incomprehensible, it is dark and mysterious as a riddle. The same people are lavish of obsequiousness to an idle rector, and indigent of common decency to the laborious curate or clerical slave. Unable to keep a just medium, they reverence the one to a degree of idolatry, and treat the other with a contempt not to be described. But what is still more unaccountable, is, that the faults and infirmities of the rectors are entirely overlooked, while the small inadvertencies

vertencies of the curate are hunted into day light, and magnified into vices by the addition of ten thousand lies. This conduct of the people misguides the rectors, and prevents their reformation; they would have fewer faults if they had less of this shameful incense given them. 'Tis their flatterers that make them uncivil, proud, contemptu-ous, and haughty, by placing them so high above their curates, and unwilling to descend from this imaginary superiority, they make a great swagger before the people, and insist upon keeping their curates as humble, modest; passive, and mortified, as the primitive itinerants who lived on locusts and wild honey, and preached the gospel for the love of God. As long as a man is a BENEFICED clergymen, it matters not to the good people of Bristol whether he be the offspring of a fool and a madman, or a cross breed of oafish fanaticism and wild enthusiasm, which produces an orthodox babe of grace. Doctor Little is silly to the extravagance of bigotry. Doctor Whitecliffe:

Whitecliffe is frantic to the utmost fury of senseless zeal. Commissioned by a solemn call of devotion, the swelling of self-applause, and the knawings of envious want of merit, Doctor Whitecliffe can preach anarchy up to the eminence of christian. obedience, blow pride to the warmth of religious ardour, and deal out damnation by wholesale, at the expence of the other clergy of the town. A zealous apostle of the newfangled gospel, he can look the saint, and put on the similitude of the angel of light, to make the good rebel, and the wicked blaspheme through despair of being saved: He has robbed one half of the people of their senses, the other half of their conscience; he has talked libertines out of all hopes of repentance, the virtuous into diffidence of their salvation, and deprives church and city of the means to rectify their disorders by the contempt he has railed them into. A mere ecclesiastical juggler, who, by an odd kind of miracle has rendered venerable and ridiculous the most contemptible absurdities,

absurdities, and with his gold watch in his hand, preaches against luxury most pathetically, and makes his curate serve as an example of the blessings of poverty, by strikingten pounds annually off of his income, on the pretence that he lived too well to preach the gospel according to the simplici

ty

of the word. The contrast to this solid divine is to be met with in Doctor Little. This worthy personage, without being a minister from principle, has all the merit requisite to qualify him for a mitre, as mitres are generally bestowed. Blest with an energetic appearance, and a happy countenance, where native impudence ranges through every feature, unhaunted by the shadow of modesty, he looks a very bishop of the Roman church. And he is so eaten up with the zeal of the house of the Lord as to retain but little for himself; and, therefore, if he is industriously forward in rebuking his neighbours for their conduct, they are the more obliged to him, as his charity renders him solicitous to make others as moral as he