As for dinners he gave none, except a few fragments of his family’s scanty meal to some hungry, perhaps, deserted children, or to a sick laborer when abandoned by his landlord or employer, the moment he became unable to work.  From the gentry of the neighborhood he got no invitations, because he would neither sing—­dance—­drink—­nor countenance the profligacies of their sons—­nor flatter the pride and vanity of their wives and daughters.  For these reasons, and because he dared to preach home truths from his pulpit, he and his unpretending children had been frequently made objects of their ridicule and insolence.  What right, then, had any one to assert that the Rev. Mr. Clement had received injustice by the promotion over his head of the Rev. Phineas Lucre, to the wealthy living of Castle Cumber, when he had no plausible or just grounds beyond those to which we have adverted, on which to rest his claim for preferment?  The curate was pious, we admit, but, then, his wife’s uncle was not a lord.  He was learned, but, then, he had neither power nor the inclination to repay his patrons—­supposing him to have such, by a genius for intrigue, or the possession of political influence.  He discharged his religious duties as well as the health of a frame worn by affliction, toil, and poverty, permitted him; but, then, he wrote no pamphlets adapted to the politics by which he might rise in the church.  He visited the sick and prayed with them; but he employed not his abilities in proving to the world that the Establishment rewarded piety and learning, rather than venal talents for state intrigue or family influence.

Far different from him was his aforenamed rector, the Rev. Phineas Lucre.  Though immeasurably inferior to his curate in learning, and all the requisite qualifications for a minister of God, yet was he sufficiently well read in the theology of his day, to keep up a splendid equipage.  Without piety to God, or charity to man, he possessed, however, fervent attachment, to his church, and unconquerable devotion to his party.  If he neglected the widow and the orphan whom he could serve, he did not neglect the great and honorable, who could serve himself.  He was inaccessible to the poor, ’tis true; but on the other hand, what man exhibited such polished courtesy, and urbanity of manner, to the rich and exalted.  Inferiors complained that he was haughty and insolent; yet it was well known, in the teeth of all this, that no man ever gave more signal proofs of humility and obedience to those who held patronage over him.  It mattered little, therefore, that he had no virtues for the sick, or poverty-stricken, in private life, when he possessed so many excellent ones for those in whose eyes it was worth while to be virtuous as a public man.