THE GRACE OF CHARITY 325 



clerical or unclerical facts, " he can't interfere." This is a sad 

 state of things, calling, loudly calling, for reformation by some 

 court clerical, to which more summary power should be given, at 

 least to set, if not our houses, our churches in better order. It 

 is against the most Christian stomachs to receive water from an 

 impure vessel. From having been regarded in the light of " the 

 squire " of more than one vicinity, I can form a fair opinion of 

 the good or evil that an incumbent of a living may do. For 

 myself, as a layman, I try to do all the good I can ; very little, 

 indeed, I have to give, but still there is always something for a 

 deserving poor creature ; at the same time I set my face against 

 an indiscriminate charity. It is the fashion now to attempt to 

 cover a multitude of sins by being what is vauntingly termed 

 " good to the poor." This fashion so adopted by fine ladies and 

 gentlemen, whose showy charities are well understood by the 

 people in cottages and huts, whom they personally visit, is so 

 slighted that I have seen the little ragged children make their 

 parents laugh approvingly when they have thumbed their noses 

 behind the ladies as they left the cottage door. My maxim is 

 to draw a strong line between a good poor person and a rogue ; 

 if you relieve the bad as well as the good you put a premium on 

 vice, and suggest it to the mind of the good that they might as 

 well be bad, and to the bad that even by gifts from their 

 superiors they are not put or held up as at a disadvantage. No 

 one deserves praise for being charitable. The fact itself carries, 

 or ought to carry, so much pardonable self-gratification with it, 

 that where a man is charitable the donor should feel more 

 happy than the receiver. I know that I do when I give any- 

 thing away ; perhaps novelty causes the feeling in me, because I 

 have so little to give, and were I richer the grace might wear off. 

 I remember my keeper coming to me, and reporting that, 

 to use his words, " there was a rummish-looking customer " in a 

 little planted gravel-pit, near the new church at Highcliff, who 

 had passed a night there, and said he should do the same on the 

 night of the day when this report was made. I was angry at 

 this, and said I would not have vagrants of the sort lying about 



