The Leather Plater, 283 



breeches unbuttoned at the knee, and whose principal occupation 

 appeared to consist in drinking his own ale and smoking along pipe 

 in the winter by his kitchen lirej in the summer, on the bench in 

 front of his old shanty. Half-way down the street was a kind of 

 dissenting chapel, a little Zion, where an ignorant Chartist shoe- 

 maker was wont to expound the Scriptures to a congregation as 

 ignorant and radical as himself, in a style which bordered both on 

 heresy and blasphemy. 



The clergyman who looked after the religious welfare of the 

 poor district was a hard-riding, roystering divine of the old school, 

 whose principal boast was " that he was born in the same year with 

 the ' Game Chicken,' and that they were the same weight to a 

 pound 5" whose breed of game fowls was unrivalled ; who was a 

 capital shot ; who could give you the winner and duration of every 

 prize-fight which had taken place during the last thirty years ; who 

 could tell you without hesitation the winner of every Derby and 

 Leger since the commencement ; and whose sole library consisted 

 of the Racing Calendar from the beginning, and some odd volumes 

 of the old Sporting Magazine. I attended this old clergyman's 

 sale after his decease, and a more unclerical miscellany 1 never 

 before saw exposed at any auction. Not that he was altogether a 

 bad clergyman ; but, living in such a wild, out-of-the-way place, 

 among such parishioners, he was hardly likely to be any other than 

 what he was. His charity was unbounded ; and when any of his 

 sick parishioners chose to send for him, he was ever ready to attend 

 at the dying man's bedside 3 and although the words of consolation 

 which fell from his lips were uttered in strong language, they were 

 well suited to the rough ears which heard them. His discourses 

 from the pulpit were, however, beautiful ; his voice and delivery 

 first-rate ; and old Stephen, our huntsman, who once happened to 

 ride over to Holliwell one Sunday morning to see about a young 

 hound at walk, chanced to stroll into the church while the old 

 clergyman was delivering his sermon, and he ever after used to 

 declare that it was worth riding fifty miles only to hear old parson 

 T "rally it out" from the pulpit. 



