halloo them on against all those who were obnoxious to us.'

'Horseflesh and bitter ale!' I replied.

'Yes,' said the man in black; 'horseflesh and bitter ale--the favourite
delicacies of their Saxon ancestors, who were always ready to do our
bidding after a liberal allowance of such cheer. There is a tradition in
our Church, that before the Northumbrian rabble, at the instigation of
Austin, attacked and massacred the presbyterian monks of Bangor, they had
been allowed a good gorge of horseflesh and bitter ale. He! he! he!'
continued the man in black, 'what a fine spectacle to see such a mob,
headed by a fellow like our friend the landlord, sack the house of
another Priestley!'

'Then you don't deny that we have had a Priestley,' said I, 'and admit
the possibility of our having another? You were lately observing that
all English literary men were sycophants?'

'Lickspittles,' said the man in black; 'yes, I admit that you have had a
Priestley, but he was a Dissenter of the old class; you have had him, and
perhaps may have another.'

'Perhaps we may,' said I. 'But with respect to the lower classes, have
you mixed much with them?'

'I have mixed with all classes,' said the man in black, 'and with the
lower not less than the upper and middle; they are much as I have
described them; and of the three, the lower are the worst. I never knew
one of them that possessed the slightest principle, no, not ---. It is
true, there was one fellow whom I once met, who--; but it is a long
story, and the affair happened abroad.--I ought to know something of the
English people,' he continued, after a moment's pause; 'I have been many
years amongst them, labouring in the cause of the Church.'

'Your See must have had great confidence in your powers when it selected
you to labour for it in these parts,' said I.

'They chose me,' said the man in black, 'principally because, being of
British extraction and education, I could speak the English language and
bear a glass of something strong. It is the opinion of my See that it
would hardly do to send a missionary into a country like this who is not
well versed in English--a country where, they think, so far from
understanding any language besides his own, scarcely one individual in
ten speaks his own intelligibly; or an ascetic person where, as they say,
high and low, male and female, are, at some period of their lives, fond
of a renovating glass, as it is styled--in other words, of