"Then perhaps "he" won't die. Go home as fast as you can, and pour in porter and port wine."

So far I had, with the best intentions, only made a mistake. It might have been wiser, no doubt, to have previously satisfied myself about the dose; but my intentions were very pure. For what I did afterwards I do not pretend to offer any excuse; but I tell the whole story as some warning to my younger brethren, who may be tempted to dabble in physic; and as shewing that "a little knowledge"-that is to say, about the worst kind of ignorance" is a dangerous thing."

About ten days after my first escape and his, he came to me again,-what a precious thing unbounded confidence is to be sure; and how careful we should be not to abuse it.

But I confess that I did abuse it in this case. He went on:

"I should like some more of that there physic."

Ah," said I, "I was sure it would do you so much good that, if you felt poorly again, you would come and tell me."

"Well," he said, "to be sure, who should I go to but you? I think, perhaps, I might have not quite so much

as time before."

"Oh, no," I said, assuming an attitude of pensive consideration of the case, "of course not; this time I should not give you more than half of what I gave the first time." "That will do very nicely," said he.

Half, was thirty grains rhubarb, fifteen magnesia; having regard to the antecedents of the case, and specially to Wootton's allowance of eighteen grains ad max.: I think many people have been hanged for a less offence than mine, in giving 45 + 15 on the second occasion.

However, Finlay survived it, and was alive ten years after; and upon the modern principle of English capital punishment that, whatever your intentions to kill may have been proved to be, you are not to be hanged if you don't succeed in killing,-a principle which has always

been an extreme puzzle to me,-I am so far entitled to an acquittal.

After these two escapes, and a third, where I was really not to blame, in giving an aged woman ninety-three drops of laudanum in half-an-hour, dose after dose; being greatly exercised upon hearing of the use made of my liberal supply, but finding the old thing sitting on the end of her bed in a happy state, I locked up my little chest, put it away with book and key, and have kept aloof from it ever since.

At Cuddesdon all things were pretty much in my hands; and being of a despotic turn of mind, I ruled with a high hand. The outward discipline of the place was consequently somewhat exact, as the following instance serves to shew.

The church has a central tower, and north and south transept. I warmed the church by putting a stove in the centre of the space under the tower. The stove had a descending flue as far as north-east corner of north transept, where it mounted up the angle, and by a shameful blunder of construction, passed out close over the wall-plate.

Christmas morning it was very cold, and we had a roaring fire. The people were generally very quiet and orderly in church; but that morning I noticed that before I got to the end of the First Lesson everybody was fidgeting and looking about.

This increased so much, that I turned to the clerk, who by a peculiar arrangement sat just behind me, and said, "Mortimer, what is all this disturbance about?"

Please, sir," he said, "if you don't stop reading we shall all be burnt alive."

"Burnt alive! what do you mean?”

"Please, sir, the church be on fire."

I looked over my right shoulder, and saw sure enough that in the corner, where the flue-pipe crossed the wallplate, about 3 ft. square of the ceiling was red-hot.

Upon this I said to the people, "I see there is a little

accident, you had better go and get ladders and plenty of water."

Then, upon permission given, but not till then, out they went, and the church was cleared, so to speak, all in

a moment.

When we came to pull off the roofing out burst the flames. We soon got the fire under; but if it had been after service, and I verily believe if, being in service, I had not told them to go, the church would have been burnt, and it may be some "burnt alive."

My cottage narrowly escaped destruction twice in the six years of my occupation. Once by the big fires I used to keep laying hold of a principal beam of the house cunningly laid across the chimney; the other time was upon a fête-giving occasion. There was to be a cricketmatch in my field, and great preparations made for a banquet in a tent.

Getting up next morning, I smelt a fiery smell; opened the door, it was all over the house. Rang my bell for my servant Henry Gunn, lately promoted from the plough. "Henry, what's the meaning of all this smell?"

"Please, sir, it's the tarts."

"Go and tell the tarts they mustn't smell so much." "Yes, sir."

I went down, and the servants came in to prayers, just as if nothing was the matter. The smell increased. After prayers I went into the kitchen to ask a question or two about the smell and the banquet generally. My cook said, "Please, sir, there's carrot-soup, and gravy soup; but if you please, sir, there's a bad accident happened upstairs."

"What's the matter?"

"Please, sir, the house is on fire."

Then she and the other maidens dissolved into tears. I rushed upstairs, and sure enough there were three men tearing up the floor in the maids' room, and pouring down water by buckets. I found that the flue of the oven had been ingeniously brought with its covering close to the floor-boards, and that the exigencies of the tarts being

beyond Henry Gunn's control, had turned smouldering into flame.

Poor Henry Gunn; I often think I was unkind to him. In his first year, I think, a neighbour came to me to complain that he was very often at his house courting one of the maidens. I told him I would stop it. So I sent for Henry, and having asked his age, and being told nineteen, desired I might hear no more of it. He said I should not.

Mr. Drury came that day, and I told him.

"Foolish boy: waits at dinner I suppose?" "Oh, yes."

"Then I'll tell you what we'll do. You shall begin with a story about James Pistol, and the dreadful consequences of his early and imprudent marriage; I will cap it with a story more dreadful about Philip Cannon. You again with even greater horrors about Frederic Musket; and I will come in finally with a climax about John Firearms. Mind you don't blunder, or send him out of the room for anything; let all be done easily and naturally, and it will be very wholesome to the boy."

It was all carried out. It seems to me now, as often since, that it was a great despotic cruelty.

Early in 1838, my brother Edward, Bishop of Salisbury, gave me the living of Broadwinsor, Dorset. Sept. 4, the same year, I married Georgiana, eldest daughter of Mr. Henley.

My Cuddesdon recollections are endeared to me by relations near and loving with the Bishop, Lady Harriet, and all their children. They are bound up with the prime blessing of all my life, my most beloved wife, with the ties uniting me to her dear father and mother, and all theirs.

I have had a long life, and many great privileges and blessings: next to my wife, no one greater than the intimate knowledge of, the deep love and reverence for Mr. Henley of more than forty years.

I

CHAPTER V.

THE OPPOSING FORCES. 1828-1878.

SET down here as concisely as I can, what are the constituent parts of the opposing forces on the side of the assault, and of the defence, for the last fifty years. I began very early in the struggle to take a keen interest in it; my active personal share in it is a thing of about thirty-five years old.

On the side of the assault—

I. The Nonconformist Power;

2. The Roman Catholic Power;

3. The Jewish Power;

4. The Erastian Power;

5. The Indifferent Power;

6. The Critical and Scientific Power.

Most of these do not love one another more than they love the Church: but as against the Church they combine readily. The grounds of their hostility are of a mixed character. Note, that the Indifferent Power is always in its nature active as against Catholic Truth and order, if it be neutral as respects other things.

On the side of the defence

1. The Church Power;

2. The Establishment Power.

At the time when the assault began to take its present form, the Church Power cannot be said to have been more than latent. Even now it has very little organised action, and no Corporate action. It is indeed gathering strength every year, by word and act of individual Churchmen and congregations; but there is as yet no concentrated and abiding strength about it. The lee-way it has to make up is very great, the adverse influences insidious and powerful, the surrenders under pressure many. It seems to me that modern Churchmen have