1828.J 
than the babe she should have been nursing 
the while. She has brooded over “ doing- 
good”’ people, till she imagines none but 
the busy, according to their rules, can find 
employment to resist the killing ennui of 
their own society. She is evidently one 
who thinks every thing is to be accomplished 
by lecturing and sermonizing—and the pro- 
per business of the rich is to fidget about 
the poor in the management of their own 
concerns—and under the notion of improy- 
ing and instructing, to shape their sayings 
and doings by some fanciful standard of 
their own. To any thing tending really to 
improve their comforts or their morals, we 
cannot of course be supposed to object ; but 
our doctrine is—furnish them with the 
means, and let them eut and contrive to 
their own liking. We have no ‘toleration 
for the busy-body, interfering spirit of those 
who must have all their own way—and who 
can know—and who indeed desire to know 
—little of the real wants, and less of the 
real feelings, of those, whose life is labour, 
and whose main concern must be the main- 
tenance of life. If we could give Jeisure, 
we might hope, through their intellects, to 
soften their manners ; but as matters are, 
prudence is the sum of their practicable vir- 
tues, and that they will, one thing with 
another, practise, as well as their betters. 
The good lady has a most becoming ad- 
miration for the clergy, and the Rector of 
Overton is, of course, her beau-ideal of one 
of the species, and a very fine animal we 
must acknowledge he is—Adonis, Hercules, 
Apollo—tria juncta in uno—less surely 
might have served even for abishop. That 
she is not herself a parson, or the wife or 
daughter of one—nor any body who knows 
anything of the clerical condition, or of life, 
taken generally, or the manners and habits 
of the day—nor capable at all of estimating, 
or exhibiting probabilities, is conspicuous 
in every page. The parsonage she calls a 
glebe-house ; and her favourite is at four- 
and-twenty despatched—to fill up the lin- 
gering days of an approaching marriage— 
to Oxford, to take his doctor’s degree (and 
not by mandate neither)—and is represented 
as previously reading with prodigious fer- 
your for that important occasion. Then a 
_ young lad, who has been at Winchester, is 
described, as thirteen, as writing Greek 
Pindarics before breakfast, and within a year 
or two, translating a chapter of Isaiah from 
the Hebrew, and commenting upon it, and, 
moreover, collating the most celebrated tran- 
slators and critics. Then this prodigy is 
to be sent to Oxford—because at Oxford 
they are all believers, and at Cambridge all 
reasoners. Then, again, a gentleman of 
large estate—the owner of 5,000 acres, or 
more perhaps, in a ring fence, is represented 
as a man of high and eminent virtue—of 
80 wide-spread a reputation—that the Lord 
Chancellor was desirous of appointing him 
_ —a “justice of the peace for the district.’ 
Bless the good woman —why will she 
a’. ei cme § | 
Domestic and Foreign. 
42} 
not keep within the bounds of rhe actual 
knowledge ! 
But to the Rector. He is the son of a 
man of property, and, of course, duly “born 
and bred ;”” but the said property had been 
so far encroached upon—the father had so 
hampered and enfeebled it, that the youth 
found it expedient himself to put the estate 
to nurse, and take to a profession to help 
him out. He had a stock of resolution, 
which nothing could daunt, and fagged and 
fagged at his books beyond any mortal 
powers: At College he had a friend—all 
ignorant people speak of College friendships 
as the most binding ties in existence—one 
Sir Wm. Somebody, who, with £5,000 a 
year, was destined for the church, because 
he had at his own disposal a family living 
of £700. This gentleman haying, it seems, 
an hereditary passion for sporting, though 
an excellent and even intellectual person, 
began to have some mistrustings as to his 
motives for entering the church, and dis- 
closing them to his friend, he was advised, 
and at once resolved to renounce the pro- 
fession, living and all; and haying so re- 
nounced, as if the sole purpose for going to 
the University was to qualify for orders, 
loses not a moment in abandoning alto- 
gether his College studies, and sets out the 
next morning on his travels—towards the 
Lakes first, because it was right to see what 
was to be seen at home, before he excursed 
abroad. 
In the meanwhile Mostyn, the hero, goes 
a curatizing, and while engaged in this en- 
chanting office, in some “ sequestered” spot, 
a lady, young, beautiful, and of magnificent 
fortune, fell fairly in love with him, and 
made him a frank offer of her hand; and 
being rejected, flew into a fury, threw her- 
self on the floor, played the part of Poti: 
phar’s wife, screamed ont for assistance, and 
reported him to the bishop, who very con- 
siderately, without further inquiry, com- 
manded the Rector to turn the offending 
young man adrift. Nothing, however, was 
lost by this—his friend Sir William hears 
of the adventure, and forthwith presents 
him with the living, which he had himself 
so recently declined. By the time the lucky 
Mostyn is comfortably fixed at Overton, 
comes home the Baronet, with a bride, a 
young lady of surpassing charms and vir- 
tues, whom he had picked up at the Lakes, 
and, setting himself down at Overton, pro- 
ceeds, without the loss of an hour, to put the 
village in order ; and encouraged and aided 
by the Rector, who proves, as might be 
expected, to be a man of universal know- 
ledge—theory and practice—all the same to 
him—things soon wear a new appearance :— 
smiling cottages rise on all sides—every 
thing and every body indeed rises—the 
pauper to the labourer—the labourer to the 
little farmer—the little farmer to the great 
one—rows of almshouses too are built ; but 
as there were soon neither sick nor poor, 
nobody seems found to fill them. 
