HALFIIOURS. 235 



in, and conceiving this intimation to be as authoritative as the issue of 

 a papal bull. "Yes, Sir, I told him you were at breakfast but he 

 says he is going away to foreign parts, and is mightily hurried. He 

 said at last, poor man ! if you would but see him for five minutes." 

 " Not five moments !" cried I, testily and valorously " unless I 

 knew his name and errand previously, I added after a pause, some- 

 what intimidated by the rising disorder in the biliary, and danger to 

 the digestive organs Iwas becoming sensible of, and moreover rather 

 ashamed of the audibleness of my vehemence, into which I am not 

 wont to be betrayed. " He says. Sir, his name is a very literal one 

 and he has a great heap of names to show you in the superscription 

 to his book and he mentioned pitickererly one General Phil some- 

 thing, a gentleman as you know well, and who he knows would 

 recommend him to you at a word. But to my thinking, Sir, he is a 

 poor clergyman, for he spoke a deal about divinity, and the heathen; 

 and about wrangling with St. John at Cambridge, which may be the 

 means of his being so out of plight now. Truly he looks like a nine 

 days' fast Sir !" My niece and her companion tittered ; but I was 

 stricken with the rueful sincerity of old Benjamin's compassionate 

 looks, who had become a sort of barometer to me and with a secret 

 consciousness, despite of Monsieur Camus, that a man indulging in 

 the luxuries of a well-appointed breakfast- table, ought the rather in 

 such circumstances to open his heart to appeals of benevolence, and 

 so, if this should be an unfortunate clergyman ! how could I excuse 

 myself for denying him at least a fair hearing ?" " Well ! request the 

 favour of the gentleman to send in his name,'* my old infirmity of 

 patronising letters kindling fast within me in conjunction with my 

 natural sympathies, and my respect for the cloth. But I had not the 

 remotest thought of disconcerting female nicety by subjecting my 

 neglige young friends to the intrusion of a stranger, by just then and 

 there inviting him into the presence, when to my astonishment, close 

 upon the heels of old Benjamin with his announcement as "the Rev. 

 Mr. Carpenter," stalked into the room a colossal personage arrayed 

 in rusty and dusty black, in gait not much happier than Dominie 

 Sampson, but possessed of colloquial fluency that might have endowed 

 a whole college of Dominies, who with a perfectly self-satisfied air, 

 though begging pardon for intrusion, literally talked me dumb ere I 

 had rallied a misty recollection of having somewhere in the world 

 before seen that remarkable assortment of hard-carved features, 

 and listened to those peculiarly accentuated provincial tones, in 

 connection, too, with the very name my servant had given in ! Yet 

 there was an equivoque in this latter reminiscence of affinity which 

 at first increased my perplexity, but which speedily tended to my 

 complete illumination. 



Certain set terms and phrases of a less original cast, however, 

 than the countenance and character of the speaker, were duly 

 reiterated in each clause of his voluminous harangue, reminding me 

 of the worthy Wakefield Vicar's cosmogony-man, and these were 

 " talented persons," " gifted minds," " general philanthropy" (my 

 imputed friend), " grasp of intellect," "calibre of genius," and "spread 

 of knowledge," but I could give the reader only a very faint out- 



