THE CURATES AT TEA.
NOAH AND MOSES.
BRIARMAINS.
OLD MAIDS.
FIELDHEAD.
SHIRLEY AND CAROLINE.
FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS ON BUSINESS.
SHIRLEY SEEKS TO BE SAVED BY WORKS.
MR. DONNE’S EXODUS.
WHITSUNTIDE.
THE SCHOOL FEAST.
WHICH THE GENTEEL READER IS RECOMMENDED TO SKIP, LOW PERSONS BEING HERE INTRODUCED.
A SUMMER NIGHT.
TOMORROW.
MRS. PRYOR.
TWO LIVES.
AN EVENING OUT.
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH.
THE WEST WIND BLOWS.
OLD COPY-BOOKS.
THE FIRST BLUESTOCKING.
PHŒBE.
LOUIS MOORE.
RUSHEDGE — A CONFESSIONAL.
UNCLE AND NIECE.
THE SCHOOLBOY AND THE WOOD-NYMPH.
MARTIN’S TACTICS.
CASE OF DOMESTIC PERSECUTION — REMARKABLE INSTANCE OF PIOUS PERSEVERANCE IN THE DISCHARGE OF RELIGIOUS DUTIES.
WHEREIN MATTERS MAKE SOME PROGRESS, BUT NOT MUCH.
WRITTEN IN THE SCHOOLROOM.
THE WINDING-UP.
CHAPTER I.
LEVITICAL.
Of late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England: they lie very thick on the hills; every parish has one or more of them; they are young enough to be very active, and ought to be doing a great deal of good. But not of late years are we about to speak; we are going back to the beginning of this century: late years — present years are dusty, sunburnt, hot, arid; we will evade the noon, forget it in siesta, pass the midday in slumber, and dream of dawn.
If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool, and solid lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. It is not positively affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the exciting, perhaps towards the 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