Chapter II: Part 2

The archdeacon is, in fact, a bishop in little, and as such is often much more of a bishop in fact than is the bishop himself. To define,--or rather to make intelligible by any definition,--an archdeacon’s power and duties, would be very difficult; as also it is very difficult, or I may say impossible, to do so with reference to a bishop’s functions. The archdeacon holds a court, and makes visitations. These visitations may be made pretty much at his pleasure. He must, I believe, make them once in three years, but may make them every year if he thinks fit. He inquires as to the administration of the services, seeing that the canons are maintained, but has no power to alter aught; and as there seems to be much difficulty in knowing when and by what the canons are maintained, and when and by what they are not maintained, we may imagine that the inquiries of a discreet archdeacon into the practices of a respectable and efficient parson will not be too close or searching in this matter of the canons. It is, however, easier to see whether the windows of a church are in repair, and whether the roof keeps out the rain, than it is to be intelligibly and efficiently explicit on the subject of canons, and, therefore, the outward structure of the parish church gives very safe employment to an archdeacon. The little difficulty as to church rates which sometimes follows upon an order for repairs is not uncongenial to the archdeacon’s mind. It hinges upon politics, and upon a vexed political question in which the archdeacon, as a strong local Conservative, has hitherto had his victories. There remain so very few subjects which are still grateful to him in the same way, that church rates, with all their little impediments and embargoes, naturally present themselves to him as pleasant matters. And then the archdeacons receive reports from the churchwardens, if churchwardens have anything to report,--any scandal of which to tell, or evil practices on the parson’s side of which complaint has unfortunately become necessary according to the judgment of those churchwardens! By the word “scandal” let not the uninitiated reader be led to think that undignified tittle-tattle with his neighbour’s churchwardens is the duty or the employment of an archdeacon. Open moral misconduct in a clergyman’s life is supposed to be matter of justifiable public scandal--the scandal arising with the clerical sinner, and not with those who tell of the sin--and, as such, is, by the constitution of our Church, an especial subject for the care of our archdeacons, and indeed, under them, of our churchwardens. But in such matters archdeacons are liberal, and much prefer to wink an eye than to see too much. We may imagine that a churchwarden, misunderstanding his mission with regard to scandal, and taking upon himself too promptly the duty of watching the moral conduct of his parson, would not receive much comfort from a visiting archdeacon. No one knows better than an archdeacon--no one knows so well as an archdeacon--that it is needless and absurd to look for a St. Paul in every parsonage. He would, indeed, be very little at his own ease with a local St. Paul, much preferring a comfortable rector, who can take his glass of wine after dinner and talk pleasantly of old college days. St. Pauls, however, do not trouble him; nor is he troubled much by the scandals of his clerical neighbours; but he must be troubled sorely, I should think, by the increasing number and increasing influence around him of those “literate” clergymen who--from want of better, as we must in sorrow confess,--are flocking to us from Islington, Birkenhead, and such like fountains of pastoral care. The man who won’t drink his glass of wine, and talk of his college, and put off for a few happy hours the sacred stiffnesses of the profession and become simply an English gentleman,--he is the clergyman whom in his heart the archdeacon does not love.

Thus the archdeacon is a bishop in little as regards his own archdeaconry, which may probably comprise half a diocese; and as an energetic financial secretary at the Treasury may, under an uninstructed Chancellor of the Exchequer, have much more to do with the finances of the country than the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, so may an energetic archdeacon have a much stronger influence on his clerical district than the bishop who is over him. He is the bishop’s eye, or should be so, and may not improbably become the bishop’s hand.

But the archdeacon, in spite of all his power and authority, though he be so great among his brother parsons, is hardly in the way to better promotion. High promotion in the Church now comes from political influence or from the friendship of Ministers,--from those things, combined of course with high clerical attainments--and an archdeacon is not often in the way to obtain political influence or the friendship of Ministers. As deans live in towns, so do archdeacons live in the country; and like other country gentlemen they are always in opposition. And then they are men who have been made what they are by the bishops, and, therefore, are known well in their dioceses, but are not much known beyond them. They culminate in their own local dignity, and, knowing that they do so, they make the most of it. An archdeacon who is potent with his bishop, and who is popular with his clergymen, who works hard and can do so without undue meddling, who has a pleasant parish of his own and is not troubled by ambitious or indifferent curates, who can live on good terms with the squires around him, understanding how far it is expedient that he should be restricted by his coat, and how for he may go in discarding hyper-clerical constraint, is master of a position in which he need not envy the success of any professional gentleman in the kingdom. But he is not on the direct road to higher things, and will probably die in his rectory, an archdeacon to the last.

If an archdeacon be ambitious of moving in higher clerical matters than his archdeaconry affords him, he generally looks to gratify that desire by sitting in Convocation. This method of doing something more than routine duty is easier and less likely to fail than the other method of publishing a volume of sermons. Sermons are not read now as they were some thirty or forty years since, and Convocation has lately held its head a little up, obtaining recognition in the newspapers, and appearing to do something. An archdeacon is just the man to believe that Convocation can do much; and this faith on his part is evidence of a moral freshness and a real earnestness which adds a charm to his normal character. Who can bring himself to believe that a bishop believes in Convocation--a bishop, that is, who takes his seat in the House of Lords, talks to other peers, and knows what is going on in the well-instructed blasé London world? Such a one cannot but see, cannot but know, that Convocation is a clerical toy, a mere debating society to which belongs none of the vitality of power. But the archdeacon, fresh from the country, believes in Convocation, and works there with some real conviction that he is one of a clerical Parliament, and that he is animated by true parliamentary life.

But it is in his own rectory that an archdeacon must ever shine with the brightest light. I have said that he is a bishop in little, and I may also say that he is the very chief among parsons; and as the country parson--the country parson with pleasant parsonage, pleasanter wife, and plenty of children--is the true and proper type of an English clergyman, to which bishops, deans, canons, and curates are mere adjuncts and necessary excrescences, so is the archdeacon the highest type of the country parson. He is always married--an exception here or there would but prove the rule--he generally has a large family; of course he has a pleasant rectory. He must be an earnest working parish clergyman, or he would hardly have been selected as an archdeacon. He is necessarily--I may say certainly--a gentleman. Alas! that the day should have gone by when the same might have been said of every clergyman bearing orders in the Church of England. He is a man of the world, as I have above explained, and as such it is not probable that he will be a fanatic, though living examples may probably be adduced that fanaticism can exist under an archdeacon’s hat. And he walks just a head taller than other clergymen around him, receiving that pleasant attitude from the modest authority which he carries. Of all attitudes it is the most pleasant. He who stands high on a column can hardly talk pleasantly with those who stand round his pedestal; and that haranguing with loud voice from column top to column top is but a cold ceremonial conversation. Who can imagine two archbishops slapping each other’s backs and being jolly together? But an archdeacon is not raised by his dignity above a capability for jovial intimacy, and yet he walks with his head pleasantly raised above the heads of other parsons around him.

V.

THE PARSON OF THE PARISH.

The word parson is generally supposed to be a slang term for the rector, vicar, or incumbent of a parish, and, in the present day, is not often used without some intended touch of drollery,--unless by the rustics of country parishes who still cling to the old word. But the rustics are in the right, for of all terms by which clergymen of the Church of England are known, there is none more honourable in its origin than that of parson. By that word the parish clergyman is designated as the palpable and visible personage of the church of his parish, making that by his presence an intelligible reality which, without him, would be but an invisible idea. Parsons were so called before rectors or vicars were known, and in ages which had heard nothing of that abominable word incumbent. A parson proper, indeed, was above a vicar,--who originally was simply the curate of an impersonal parson, and acted as priest in a parish as to which some abbey or chapter stood in the position of parson. The title of rector itself is new-fangled in comparison with that of parson, and has no special ecclesiastical significance. The parson, properly so called, had not only the full charge of his parish, but the full benefit derivable from the tithes; and then he came to change his name and to be called politely a rector. The vicar was he who had the full charge of his parish, as also he has at present, vicariously at first for some abbey or chapter; and now, in these days, vicariously for some lay improprietor,--but who had and has the benefit only of the so-called small tithes; and then he also came to be called the parson. Rectors and vicars at present hold their livings by tenures which are equally firm, and they have done so now for more than four hundred years. The rustics above mentioned would be much surprised if told that their vicar was not a real parson. In speaking, therefore, of the parson of the parish, let us be understood to mean the parish clergyman, who has that full fruition of his living which is given by freehold possession. There is a pleasant flavour of old crusted port present to the palate of one’s imagination when mention is made of a rector, which he misses perhaps in inquiring after the vicar, whose beer may be better than his wine; and the rector cuts lustily from the haunch, while the vicar is scientific with the shoulder. But we expect, on the other hand, and are gratified in expecting, a kinder and more genial flow of clerical wit from the vicar than the rector gives us; and I have generally found the vicar’s armchair to be easier than that of his elder brother. But here, in speaking of the English parson,--of the priest who has full clerical command in his parish,--no distinction between rector and vicar shall be made.

The parson of the parish is the proper type and most becoming form of the English clergyman as the captain of his ship is of the English naval officer. Admirals of the Red and Admirals of the Blue, and Commodores with authority ashore, are very fine fellows, and may perhaps be greater in their way than the captain can be in his; but for real naval efficiency and authority the captain of the ship on his own quarter-deck stands unequalled. And so it is with the parson of the parish in his own glebe. He is pure parson and nothing else, and in the daily work of his life, if he does that daily work diligently, he cannot but feel that he is devoting himself to those duties which properly belong to him. Whether a bishop in the House of Lords may so think of himself, or a bishop speaking from a platform, or a bishop in the turmoils of correspondence, or even a bishop dispensing his patronage, may be more doubtful. And the easy dean may doubt whether such ease was intended for him when he took upon himself to bear the arms of St. Paul. And the fellow of a college, even though he be tutor as well as fellow, may feel some qualms as to that word reverend with which he has caused the world to address him. But the parson in his parish must know that he has got himself into that place for which he has been expressly fitted by the orders he has taken. The curate, who is always a curate, to whom it is never given to exercise by his own right the highest clerical authority in his parish, cannot be said to have fulfilled the mission of his profession satisfactorily, let him have worked ever so nobly. He is as the lieutenant who never rises to be a captain. But the parson requires no further exaltation for clerical excellence. The higher he rises above parsondom, the less will he be of a clergyman. He may become a peer of Parliament, or the head of a chapter, or a local magistrate over other clergymen, as is an archdeacon; but as simply parish parson, he fills the most clerical office in his profession.

The parson of the parish in England, a few years since, was almost necessarily a man who had been educated at Oxford or Cambridge. An English parish might indeed have an Irishman from Trinity College, Dublin; and, now and again, an outsider was admitted into the fold as a shepherd. There was a small college in the north to fit northern candidates for northern congregations, and the rule was not absolutely absolute; but it prevailed so far that it was felt to be a rule. And thence came an assurance, in which trust was put more or less by all classes, that the parson of the parish was at least a gentleman. He was a man who had lived on equal terms with the highest of the land in point of birth, and hence arose a feeling that was very general in rural parishes, and as salutary as it was general, that the occupant of the parsonage was as good a man as the occupant of the squire’s house. It would be interesting to us to trace when this feeling first became common, knowing as we do know that for many years after the Reformation, and down even to a comparatively late date, the rural clergyman was anything but highly esteemed. We are told constantly that the parson left the dining-room when the pudding came in, and that he by no means did badly for himself in marrying the lady’s maid. We most of us know the character of that eminent divine Dr. Tusher, who lived in the reign of Queen Anne. Then came the halcyon days of British clergymen,--the happy days of George III. and George IV., and the parson in his parsonage was as good a gentleman as any squire in his mansion or nobleman in his castle. There is, alas! a new order of things coming on us which threatens us with some changes, not for the better, in this respect. There are theological colleges here and there, and men and women talk of “literates.” Who shall dare to say that it may not all be for the best? Who will venture to prophesy that there shall be less energetic teaching of God’s word under the new order of things than under the old? But, as to the special man of whom we speak now, the English parish parson, with whom we all love to be on familiar terms,--that he will be an altered man, and as a man less attractive, less urbane, less genial,--in one significant word, less of a gentleman,--that such will be the result of theological colleges and the institution of “literates,” no one who has thought of the subject will have any doubt.

And in no capacity is a gentleman more required or more quickly recognized than in that of a parson. Who has not seen a thrifty household mistress holding almost unconsciously between her finger and thumb a piece of silk or linen, and telling at once by the touch whether the fabric be good? This is done with almost an instinct in the matter, and habit has made perfect in the woman that which was born with her. Exactly in the same way, only much more unconsciously, will the English rustic take his new parson between his finger and thumb and find out whether he be a gentleman. The rustic cannot tell by what law he judges, but he knows the article, and the gentleman he will obey and respect, in the gentleman he will believe. Such is his nature. While in the other, who has not responded favourably to the touch of the rustic’s finger, the rustic will not believe, nor by him will he be restrained, if restraint be necessary. The rustic in this may show, perhaps, both his ignorance and servility, as well as the skilled power of his fingering,--but such is his nature.

But the adult parson of the parish in England,--the clergyman who has reached, if I may so say, the full dominion of his quarter-deck,--is still customarily a man from Oxford or from Cambridge, and it is of such a one that we speak here. He has probably been the younger son of a squire, or else his father has been a parson, as he is himself. Throughout his whole life he has lived in close communion with rural affairs, and has of them that exact knowledge which close communion only will give. He knows accurately, from lessons which he has learned unknowingly, the extent of the evil and the extent of the good which exists around him, and he adapts himself to the one and to the other. Against gross profligacy and loud sin he can inveigh boldly, and he can make men and women to shake in their shoes by telling them of the punishment which will follow such courses; but with the peccadilloes dear to the rustic mind he knows how to make compromises, and can put up with a little drunkenness, with occasional sabbath-breaking, with ordinary oaths, and with church somnolence. He does not expect much of poor human nature, and is thankful for moderate results. He is generally a man imbued with strong prejudice, thinking ill of all countries and all religions but his own; but in spite of his prejudices he is liberal, and though he thinks ill of men, he would not punish them for the ill that he thinks. He has something of bigotry in his heart, and would probably be willing, if the times served his purpose, to make all men members of the Church of England by Act of Parliament; but though he is a bigot, he is not a fanatic, and as long as men will belong to his Church, he is quite willing that the obligations of that Church shall sit lightly upon them. He loves his religion and wages an honest fight with the devil; but even with the devil he likes to deal courteously, and is not averse to some occasional truces. He is quite in earnest, but he dislikes zeal; and of all men whom he hates, the over-pious young curate, who will never allow ginger to be hot in the mouth, is the man whom he hates the most. He carries out his Bible teaching in preferring the publican to the Pharisee, and can deal much more comfortably with an occasional backslider than he can with any man who always walks, or appears to walk, in the straight course.

It almost seems that something approaching to hypocrisy were a necessary component part of the character of the English parish parson, and yet he is a man always on the alert to be honest. It is his misfortune that he must preach higher than his own practice, and that he is driven to pretend to think that a stricter course of life is necessary than that which he would desire to see followed out even in his own family. As the mealman in the description of his flours can never go below “middlings,” knowing that they who wish to get the cheapest article would never buy it if it were actually ticketed as being of the worst quality, so is the parson driven to ticket all his articles above their real value. He cannot tell his people what amount of religion will really suffice for them, knowing that he will never get from them all that he asks; and thus he is compelled to have an inner life and an outer,--an inner life, in which he squares his religious views with his real ideas as to that which God requires from his creatures; and an outer life, in which he is always demanding much in order that he may get little. From this it results that a parish parson among his own friends differs much from the parish parson among his parishioners, and that he is always, as it were, winking at those who know him as a man, while he is most eager in his exercitations among those who only know him as a clergyman.

The parish parson generally has a grievance, and is much attached to it,--in which he is like all other men in all other walks of life. He not uncommonly maintains a mild opposition to his bishop, upon whom he is apt to look down as belonging to a new order of things, and whom he regards, on account of this new order of things, as being not above half a clergyman. As he rises in years and repute he becomes a rural dean, and exercises some small authority out of his own parish, by which, however, his character as a parish parson, pure and simple, is somewhat damaged. He is great in the management of his curate, and arrives at such perfection in his professional career that he inspires his clerk with mingled awe and affection.

Such is the English parish parson, as he was almost always some fifty years since, as he is still in many parishes, but as he will soon cease to become. The homes of such men are among the pleasantest in the country, just reaching in well-being and abundance that point at which perfect comfort exists and magnificence has not yet begun to display itself. And the men themselves have no superiors in their adaptability to social happiness. How pleasantly they talk when the room is tiled, and the outward world is shut out for the night! How they delight in the modest pleasures of the table, sitting in unquestioned ease over a ruddy fire, while the bottle stands ready to the grasp, but not to be grasped too frequently or too quickly. Methinks the eye of no man beams so kindly on me as I fill my glass for the third time after dinner as does the eye of the parson of the parish.

VI.

THE TOWN INCUMBENT.

Dr. Johnson tells us that an incumbent is he who is in present possession of a benefice, and by quoting Swift shows us that, though in possession of a benefice, the incumbent may be in possession of very little benefit from his benefice. “In many places,” Swift says, as quoted by Johnson, “the whole ecclesiastical dues are in lay hands, and the incumbent lieth at the mercy of his patron.” The word, therefore, is legitimately used in its ecclesiastical sense, and can apparently be legitimately used in no other sense; but, nevertheless, it has no pleasantly ecclesiastical flavour, and carries with itself none of that acknowledged right to respect which is attached to other clerical titles. To be named as a curate is almost better than to be named as an incumbent; for the curate is supposed to be young, and is on his proper road to higher church grades, whereas the incumbent is one who has obtained his promotion, but who is, after all, only an--incumbent. Every parish parson in the kingdom is no doubt an incumbent, but in ordinary parlance we hardly apply the name to the country rector or to the vicar blessed with a pleasant parsonage. The incumbent, as we generally recognize him, is a clergyman who has obtained a town district, who has a church of his own therein from whence he draws what income he may make, chiefly by the letting of sittings, and is so called simply because no other clerical title seems properly to belong to him. No clerical aspirant would be an incumbent,--so to be called,--who could become a parson proper.

The town incumbent, therefore, is rarely a man well to do in the world. He is one who earns his bread hardly in the sweat of his brow, and too often earns but very poor bread. It is not he who has married or who will marry the bishop’s daughter. Indeed, before he becomes a town incumbent he has generally put himself beyond such promotion as that by marrying the girl of his heart without a penny. Had he not done so, and thus become terribly in want of an income,--an income at once, though it be a small income,--he would not have taken a district church, and have submitted his neck to the yoke of town incumbency. He knows that in doing so he is consenting to place himself in that branch of his profession which is the least honoured, though not perhaps the least honourable. He is subjecting himself to the heaviest clerical work with but a small prospect of large clerical loaves or fine clerical fishes; and he is prepared to live in a much lower social rank than that which is enjoyed by his more fortunate brothers in the country. The country parson is all but the squire’s equal,--is below the squire in parish standing only as a younger brother is below his elder; but the town incumbent is not equal to the town mayor, and in the estimation of many of his fellow-townsmen is hardly superior to the town beadle. Indeed, he is too often simply recognized as the professional gentleman who has taken his family into the last built new house in Albert Terrace. There, in Albert Terrace, he looks out upon a brickfield, and writes his sermons with very little of that prestige which belongs to the genuine British parson of the parish. His flock are his hearers, not his parishioners. They sit under him, some because his district church of St. Mary is the nearest to them, some because the sittings at St. Mary’s are 5_s_. 6_d_. a year cheaper than they are at the next place of worship,--for St. Mary’s is a place of worship rather than a church to the minds of the townsmen,--and some because they prefer his preaching to the preaching of another town incumbent. They sit under him, but they are not his people jure divino, for him to deal with them concerning their eternal welfare as he may please. He does not even know the name of the man who lives next door to him in Albert Terrace; whereas the true parson of the parish knows every detail as to every child born within his domain. The one is simply the town incumbent of St. Mary’s as another man may be an attorney, and a third an apothecary; whereas the rural parson is the personage of his parish.

To the position of the town incumbent are attached none of those half-barbarous but picturesque circumstances which still make the position of our country parsons almost unintelligible to the inquiring foreigner. One clergyman, with little or nothing to do in his parish, has fifteen hundred a year and a beautiful house for doing that little,--which after all is done by a curate; while his neighbour in the next parish with four times the area and eight times the population, receives one hundred and fifty pounds a year in lieu of the little tithes! And yet neither does the one feel himself to have been unduly favoured, nor does the other think himself to be injured! Such are the more-than-half-barbarous, but still picturesque circumstances of our rural parishes. But there is nothing either barbarous or picturesque about the town incumbent. He has allotted to him a district, with such or such a population,--a certain number of thousands over whom it must be much beyond his power to achieve anything approaching to a pastoral surveillance,--with a church in the middle of it, and an income which will fluctuate as the seats in it may be full or empty. Here, in this arrangement, all the principles of political economy are kept in view. Here are supply and demand. Those who want him will come to him and pay him,--as they do to the baker or the dentist. If they don’t think he suits them, they will leave him,--as also in similar circumstances they leave their baker and their dentist. If he can fill his church he will live well and become sleek. If his gifts in preaching are small, or if his piety be unrecognized and his labours disregarded, he will live badly and his outward man will become rusty. Among town incumbents the rusty greatly exceed the sleek in numbers.

The town incumbent of whom we are here speaking generally finds himself located among the growing outskirts of a manufacturing town. Here he sees the world increasing around him with wonderful rapidity, and sees also much of the success of the world. The man who began his struggle in life as a manufacturer, when he, the incumbent, also began his struggle, soon rises from step to step, adding chimney to chimney, and buys his villa residence and sets up his carriage. In his career, failure was, of course, possible, but the road to success was open to him, and has been quickly reached. This his neighbour, the clergyman, sees, and tells himself, not without bitterness, that for him there is no such road. For him there must always be poverty and hard work,--that worst of all poverty which has to hide itself under a black coat, and work which is not only ceaseless, but too often thankless and apparently without adequate result! This must be his lot in life, he tells himself,--unless he can preach himself into a reputation. If he can do that, if he can be a M‘Neale or an English Ward Beecher, then, indeed, there will be a career open to him. Then he will be sleek, and people will ask him to dinner, and the wife of his bosom will hold up her head among other dames, and his name will become familiar in the columns of newspapers. This after all is what men want, town incumbents as well as others; and so the town incumbent sets himself to work to make a reputation for himself by pulpit eloquence. As he walks along the dull new streets of his district he fills himself with this ambition, and declares to himself that he will be great as a preacher. He will fill his seats, and draw men to him,--or, if not men, at least women. He will denounce sins with a loud voice and eager accents. And he will denounce not only sins, but heresies also, and lax doctrines. By denouncing simply sin few clerical aspirants have become noted among their neighbours, but the man who will denounce his neighbours’ opinions as well as his sins will become famous. And so the town incumbent settles himself to his desk and goes to work.

It will be said, no doubt, that a monstrous accusation is here brought against a body of men who are very eager in doing good works. It is not meant as any accusation. No charge is intended to be made against town incumbents, or against any clergyman, in the description here given. They endeavour simply to succeed in their profession, as every man blessed with activity will attempt to succeed in his profession if it be one in which there is room for success. Given the church to fill, and the incumbency to be made valuable by filling it, and it is simply human nature that an energetic man shall endeavour to fill his church and make his profession valuable. He cannot fill his church by visiting the poor. He cannot earn for himself even a decent position in the district in which he lives by a careful performance of ordinary clerical duties. If he simply reads the services and officiates at the communion table, and preaches drowsy sermons, he will starve on some 200_l._ a year, and never get his head above water, either as regards money or reputation. Of course he will do his best for himself, and of course he will teach himself to believe that in doing so he is doing the best for the cause which he really loves in his heart. He is not a bad man, or a hypocrite, because he denounces heresies and lax doctrines in a loud voice, instead of endeavouring to teach his people simply that they should not lie, or get drunk, or steal. He is probably a very good man; but he is a good man who would like to have 1,000_l._ a year and a name, instead of 200_l._ a year and no name at all.

But he probably fails. It is sad to say it, and sad to think of it, but failure is the ordinary lot of man. A few among us do advance far enough in the accomplishment of their aspirations to merit the reputation of success, and they are heard of in the world; but the mass of men strive for a while to do something, and then sink down into the common ruck, finding the struggle to be too hard for them. They earn bread and live; and at last, perhaps, are contented. So it is with the town incumbent. He preaches for a while with all his force. He spends sleepless nights in the composition of his sermons. He becomes bolder and bolder in his denouncings. But it is of no avail. He has not the gift of pouring forth either honey or liquid fire from his lips, and his energy is all wasted. He throws himself in despair on the bosom of his wife, who alone has believed in him, and declares that his people have adders’ ears and hearts of stone. From that time forth, with saddened spirit and heart all sick within him, he trudges on upon his daily round of duties, not cursing the day, but reviling the day with an asperity purely clerical, on which he became--a town incumbent.

But it is possible that he does not fail. There are, no doubt, town incumbents who succeed in preaching themselves into fortunes and reputations, and who become very sleek and very famous, who are able to mount higher than their pulpits, on to platforms, and can then enjoy the inestimable privilege of abusing their opponents without fear of reply. But, of all clergymen, the successful town preacher seems to be the farthest removed from those clerical excellences of charity and good-will among men, and the farthest also from those special clerical duties for which our clergy are most valued. They will preach;--yes, by the hour together! Nine times a week we have heard of such a one preaching, and have then known him to speak of himself as a martyr in the service! But they will do nothing else.

For the unsuccessful town incumbent we all of us have sympathy. His work is hard, his payment is small, and his lines have fallen to him in unpleasant places. But for the successful town incumbent, for the clergyman who fills his church with prayerful, tearful, excitable, but at the same time remunerative ladies, few men can have any sympathy.

The position of the town incumbent is not, in truth, in unison with the Church of England as established among us. The glory of the English parson is that his position is ensured to him whether he satisfies those whom he is called upon to serve, or whether he does not satisfy them. Consequently he can be, and is, independent of his congregation. He will wish of course to be on pleasant terms with them, but it will not be for his pocket’s sake. And it seems that such independence as this is essential to the position of a clergyman of the Church of England. It is doubtless true that the number of rural rectors and vicars among us will never be increased, whereas the number of town incumbents will continue to increase from year to year. As the population grows, so will their number grow. But it is to be hoped that the peculiar evils of their position may be remedied by altered arrangements as to their income. If this be not possible, or be not done, we shall hardly find that sons of English gentlemen will continue to seek the Church as a profession.

VII.

THE COLLEGE FELLOW WHO HAS TAKEN ORDERS.

In speaking of a college fellow, a fellow of a college at Oxford or Cambridge is the fellow of whom we intend to speak. There may, probably, be other fellowships going in these prolific days, as there are other universities, and degrees given by other academical bodies; but we will claim, for the moment, to belong to the old school in such matters, and will recognize as college fellows only those who are presented to us as fellows by the two great sister universities.

When a man becomes a fellow various possessions and privileges are conferred upon him, such as a certain income, a certain rank in his college, a residence within his college, and a place at the high table in hall; and among these privileges and possessions is the great privilege--of a title to orders. In respect to some fellowships this privilege may be enjoyed or neglected according to the will of the individual fellow. In respect to others the fellow must avail himself of it, and must become a clergyman, if not absolutely at once, then within a short period of his election. And there is a third condition, such as that which prevails at the greatest of all our colleges, namely, Trinity, Cambridge, in accordance with which certain years of grace are allowed, and a fellow may remain a fellow for a period of years without taking orders. But, as we believe, at all these colleges a fellowship confers a title to orders,--the right, that is, on the part of the fellow to demand ordination from the bishop; and, as a rule, this privilege is enjoyed. As we are dealing in these sketches with none but clergymen, the fellow who has availed himself of this title is the fellow whom we will keep in view.

All our readers will know what is meant by taking orders,--the process by which a layman becomes a deacon or a priest under the bishop’s hands; and most of them will understand that a title to orders is the possession in prospect of such sacerdotal position as will justify a bishop in turning a layman into a clergyman. Thus, for instance, a man has a title to orders who can show that there is a living waiting for his enjoyment and for his services. The offer of a curacy confers a title, and this is the title by which the great body of aspirants to the sacerdotal profession claim their right to admission. Such claimants the bishop is bound to ordain, providing that they show themselves to be fit;--but without a title, or recognized place of clerical duty ready for the candidate as soon as he shall become a clergyman, no bishop will ordain any one. And among other titles there is the title conferred by a college fellowship. The fellow of a college goes before a bishop demanding to be ordained simply because he is a fellow,--and the bishop ordains him. It is a great privilege, for that man is Reverend from that time forth for evermore. In all future ages he will be written down as having been Reverend.

There can be no doubt that when this pleasant arrangement became a portion of college law there was good reason for it. The colleges were ecclesiastical bodies, generally if not entirely under ecclesiastical governance, and a fellow not an ecclesiastic would have been very much in the way at most of them. Men who were clergymen, and men who were not, differed much more strongly then than they do now, both as to the inner life of the man and the outward appearance of the man. And it was then recognized as a part of the great Church system of the day, that in many places ecclesiastics, who were of course unmarried, should live together, passing their time in that state which was then considered to be for them the most salutary and to others the most useful,--saying prayers for the laity which the laity could hardly be got to say for themselves, and maintaining by their continued presence at the universities something of the result of their education, and some show of learning and piety. In those days the fellows of our colleges were monks of a favoured order,--especially favoured because they were, or were presumed to be, especially learned. Looking at our Church, our colleges, and our religion, as they then existed, we shall feel little doubt as to the propriety of fellows having been clergymen in those days. But now,--now that things are so much altered in our Church and in our colleges and in our religion,--sometimes a doubt does creep upon us as to the expediency of this title to orders which a fellowship conveys, and the use which is made of this title.

In the Roman Catholic Church worship seems to have been ordained for the gratification of God. The people were, and indeed are still, taught that God and his saints like prayers and incense and church services, and will reward those who are liberal in bestowing them. It is, therefore, natural that in the Church of Rome there should be,--or, more natural still, that there should have been when this idea was more prevalent in Roman Catholic countries than it is now,--legions of priests whose church administrations were performed with a view to their effect on the Creator, and with no view to any effect on man. But in Protestant countries worship is used, as we suppose, simply for the use of man. It is the duty of the clergyman, as clergyman, to assist other men in worshipping rather than to achieve anything by worship on his own part. If such be the case,--and such appears to be at any rate the existing theory of our own Protestant Church,--it is difficult to conceive how any man can become a clergyman of the Church of England who has no intention whatsoever of helping others to worship,--who has not before him any prospect of performing the duties of a clergyman.

It will be said, doubtless, that the statement here made is wrong and untrue, because the clerical fellow of a college has always before him the prospect of succeeding to a college living, and does generally end his days as the parson of a parish to which he has been presented by his college in the regular order of good things accruing to him. It is quite true that the clerical fellow does in this way become a real clergyman, or a parson proper if I may so call him, in the latter half of his life, when at forty or forty-five he begins to feel that he would like to have something softer near to him than his gyp or laundrywoman, and bethinks himself of some Eliza whom he has long half loved, but would never before allow himself to love altogether,--because of his fellowship. The fellow then drops his fellowship, and takes a living, and goes to his parish and becomes a real clergyman. But the fact that he does so offers only another and a stronger objection to his original ordination, while it does not, in truth, at all invalidate that already stated. It is true that the fellow becomes a clergyman at last; but who will maintain that any man has fitly used a profession to which he has never applied himself during those years of his life in which his energy was the strongest, and which he embraced without any view to using it at all? The fellow of a college is ordained in order that he may hold his fellowship,--because in old days, when the fellowship was instituted, fellows were supposed to live the life of monks. We do not think that any existing fellow of a college at Oxford or Cambridge will declare that he has undergone ordination with an express view to the living to which he may succeed after ten or fifteen years.

And now we will venture to say a few words as to that stronger objection to the practice of ordaining fellows which we maintain is to be found in this practice of their succeeding to college livings by rotation. When we employ a doctor or a lawyer or an architect, we select a man who knows his profession, and who has proved that he knows it by his practice. Young men entering these professions make their way upwards to that reputation which will bring them practice by attaching themselves to those who are older and more experienced, or by consenting to practise for a while, as it were, experimentally, without much view to income. And in the Church generally the same order of things prevails. It is admitted on all hands within the church, by bishops, by archdeacons, by all working parish clergymen,--by all men who have interested themselves on the subject,--that the only fit education for a parish parson is to be found in a parish curacy. As a man to be a good bishop should have been a parish parson, so to be a good parson a man should have been a curate. That we take to be good clergyman’s law; but that law is infringed on every occasion on which a college living is taken by a resident college fellow. A college fellow may, of course, become a curate, and when such a one succeeds to his living all is well. But the man who does so should have been ordained on the title of his curacy, not on the title of his fellowship.

Does any man believe that that very pleasant fellow whom he has known at college, and who has sparkled so brightly in common room, who has been so energetic in the management of the college finances, and in the reform of college abuses,--who has gradually succeeded during his fifteen years of residence in putting off all those outward clerical symbols which as a novice he found himself constrained to adopt, and who during his annual visit to London has become a well-instructed man of the world,--can any one, we say, believe that such a one at the age of forty can be fit to go into a parish and undertake the cure of the parochial souls? There are, we fancy, some who do so believe; but they are those who think that nothing is necessary to make a parson but orders and a living,--that the profession of a clergyman is unlike any other trade or calling known, requiring for the due performance of its duties no special fitness, no training, no skill, no practice, no thought, and no preparation.

The Reverend Joseph Brown stands senior on the list of the fellows of St. Lazarus, within the walls of which happy institution he has lived as fellow and bursar for the last thirty years. No man understands better than the Reverend Joseph Brown the proper temperature of port wine, or the amount of service which a college servant should render. But at the age of fifty-five he falls into unexpectedly tender relations with an amiable female, and on that account he undertakes the pastoral care of the souls of the parish of Eiderdown! What if Eiderdown got its doctor in the same way, or its butcher? What if the ladies of Eiderdown were bound to employ a milliner sent to them after some such fashion? But no man or woman can conceive the possibility of any workman presuming to attempt to earn his bread by his work after such a fashion as this,--excepting always a clergyman. In the Church, because it is so picturesque and well-beloved in its old-fashioned garments, we can put up with anomalies which elsewhere would be unendurable. A bishop uses his patronage as personal property, and college fellows become clergymen and succeed to livings by right, as though in this business of the cure of souls, and in this business only, there were no necessity for that progress in skill and efficiency which all other callings demand! There was a time when men became captains of ships and colonels of regiments in much the same way; but the picturesque absurdities of the army and navy were less endearing than those of the Church, and they therefore have been made to succumb.