man well stricken in years, but still strong to do evil: he was one
who looked cruelly out of a hot, passionate, bloodshot eye; who had a
huge red nose with a carbuncle, thick lips, and a great double, flabby
chin, which swelled out into solid substance, like a turkey-cock's
comb, when sudden anger inspired him: he had a hot, furrowed, low
brow, from which a few grizzled hairs were not yet rubbed off by
the friction of his handkerchief: he wore a loose unstarched white
handkerchief, black loose ill-made clothes, and huge loose shoes,
adapted to many corns and various bunions: his husky voice told
tales of much daily port wine, and his language was not so decorous
as became a clergyman. Such was the master of Mr Sentiment's
"Almshouse." He was a widower, but at present accompanied by two
daughters, and a thin and somewhat insipid curate. One of the young
ladies was devoted to her father and the fashionable world, and she of
course was the favourite; the other was equally addicted to Puseyism
and the curate.

The second chapter of course introduced the reader to the more
especial inmates of the hospital. Here were discovered eight old
men; and it was given to be understood that four vacancies remained
unfilled, through the perverse ill-nature of the clerical gentleman
with the double chin. The state of these eight paupers was touchingly
dreadful: sixpence-farthing a day had been sufficient for their diet
when the almshouse was founded; and on sixpence-farthing a day were
they still doomed to starve, though food was four times as dear,
and money four times as plentiful. It was shocking to find how the
conversation of these eight starved old men in their dormitory shamed
that of the clergyman's family in his rich drawing-room. The absolute
words they uttered were not perhaps spoken in the purest English, and
it might be difficult to distinguish from their dialect to what part
of the country they belonged; the beauty of the sentiment, however,
amply atoned for the imperfection of the language; and it was really a
pity that these eight old men could not be sent through the country as
moral missionaries, instead of being immured and starved in that
wretched almshouse.

Bold finished the number; and as he threw it aside, he thought that
that at least had no direct appliance to Mr Harding, and that the
absurdly strong colouring of the picture would disenable the work from
doing either good or harm. He was wrong. The