CHAPTER II

THE CURATE. THE OLD LADY. THE HALF-PAY CAPTAIN

We commenced our last chapter with the beadle of our parish, because we are deeply sensible of the importance and dignity of his office.  We will begin the present, with the clergyman.  Our curate is a young gentleman of such prepossessing appearance, and fascinating manners, that within one month after his first appearance in the parish, half the young-lady inhabitants were melancholy with religion, and the other half, desponding with love.  Never were so many young ladies seen in our parish church on Sunday before; and never had the little round angels’ faces on Mr. Tomkins’s monument in the side aisle, beheld such devotion on earth as they all exhibited.  He was about five-and-twenty when he first came to astonish the parishioners.  He parted his hair on the centre of his forehead in the form of a Norman arch, wore a brilliant of the first water on the fourth finger of his left hand (which he always applied to his left cheek when he read prayers), and had a deep sepulchral voice of unusual solemnity.  Innumerable were the calls made by prudent mammas on our new curate, and innumerable the invitations with which he was assailed, and which, to do him justice, he readily accepted.  If his manner in the pulpit had created an impression in his favour, the sensation was increased tenfold, by his appearance in private circles.  Pews in the immediate vicinity of the pulpit or reading-desk rose in value; sittings in the centre aisle were at a premium: an inch of room in the front row of the gallery could not be procured for love or money; and some people even went so far as to assert, that the three Miss Browns, who had an obscure family pew just behind the churchwardens’, were detected, one Sunday, in the free seats by the communion-table, actually lying in wait for the curate as he passed to the vestry!  He began to preach extempore sermons, and even grave papas caught the infection.  He got out of bed at half-past twelve o’clock one winter’s night, to half-baptise a washerwoman’s child in a slop-basin, and the gratitude of the parishioners knew no bounds — the very churchwardens grew generous, and insisted on the parish defraying the expense of the watch-box on wheels, which the new curate had ordered for himself, to perform the funeral service in, in wet weather.  He sent three pints of gruel and a quarter of a pound of tea to a poor woman who had been brought to bed of four small children, all at once — the parish were charmed.  He got up a subscription for her — the woman’s fortune was made.  He spoke for one hour and twenty-five minutes, at an anti-slavery meeting at the Goat and Boots — the enthusiasm was at its height.  A proposal was set on foot for presenting the curate with a piece of plate, as a mark of esteem for his valuable services rendered to the pari