who conceive, or profess it to be their duty, to dive into the hearts and consciences of their fellow-creatures, and to regulate the very thoughts and feelings of all the unfortunate people within their reach, are not very scrupulous as to the methods used to obtain that inward knowledge. Mr. Cartwright, according to the usual custom of divines of his class, had his village matron, ostensibly only a merchant of apples, gingerbread, and lollypops, but intrusted with as many secret missions of inquiry as the most jealous pontiff ever committed to a faithful and favoured nuncio on quitting the gates of Rome. She could tell, and was not ill paid for that precious knowledge, how often Betty Jackson went to buy baccy; and how many times in the day Sally Wright looked over her shoulder at the passers-by while walking out with her master's children; and how many pots of porter were carried to one house, and how many times the ladies walked forth from another; besides innumerable other facts and anecdotes, which, though apparently not of sufficient importance to record, were nevertheless of great value to the vicar and to his curate, as themes to lecture upon in private, and preach upon in public.

Sources of information such as these had never been overlooked or neglected by Mr. Cartwright at any period of his ministry; but hitherto he had held them to be important rather to the general welfare of the Christian world than to his own family: no sooner, however, did he find himself placed in the responsible position of master of a large household, than, besides taking the butler into a sort of partnership for the discovery of petty offences, and having moreover an elected stable-boy, who made a daily report of all that he saw and heard, and a little more, he determined that all letters addressed to any member of the family should pass through his hand; and in like manner, that all those put into the letter-box in the hall, of which he kept the key himself, should be submitted to the same species of religious examination before they were deposited in the post-bag.

In the execution of this part of his duty Mr. Cartwright displayed, to himself at least, considerable mechanical skill—for the letters were excellently well re-sealed—and likewise great equanimity of temper; for, scanty as the family correspondence proved to be, he chanced to fall upon some few passages which might have shaken the philosophy of a mind less admirably regulated.

In former times, if any Mowbray had wished to send a note from the Park to the village