they bore one another, and his agony at parting from
them. He depicted the execution in a manner startling, terrible,
and picturesque. He did not introduce into his sermon the Scripture
phraseology, such as Harry had been accustomed to hear it from those
somewhat Calvinistic preachers whom his mother loved to frequent, but
rather spoke as one man of the world to other sinful people, who might
be likely to profit by good advice. The unhappy man just gone, had begun
as a farmer of good prospects; he had taken to drinking, card-playing,
horse-racing, cock-fighting, the vices of the age; against which the
young clergyman was generously indignant. Then he had got to poaching
and to horse-stealing, for which he suffered. The divine rapidly drew
striking and fearful pictures of these rustic crimes. He startled his
hearers by showing that the Eye of the Law was watching the poacher
at midnight, and setting traps to catch the criminal. He galloped the
stolen horse over highway and common, and from one county into another,
but showed Retribution ever galloping after, seizing the malefactor in
the country fair, carrying him before the justice, and never unlocking
his manacles till he dropped them at the gallows-foot. Heaven be pitiful
to the sinner! The clergyman acted the scene. He whispered in the
criminal's ear at the cart. He dropped his handkerchief on the clerk's
head. Harry started back as that handkerchief dropped. The clergyman had
been talking for more than twenty minutes. Harry could have heard
him for an hour more, and thought he had not been five minutes in the
pulpit. The gentlefolks in the great pew were very much enlivened by the
discourse. Once or twice, Harry, who could see the pew where the house
servants sate, remarked these very attentive; and especially Gumbo, his
own man, in an attitude of intense consternation. But the smockfrocks
did not seem to heed, and clamped out of church quite unconcerned.
Gaffer Brown and Gammer Jones took the matter as it came, and the
rosy-cheeked, red-cloaked village lasses sate under their broad
hats entirely unmoved. My lord, from his pew, nodded slightly to the
clergyman in the pulpit, when that divine's head and wig surged up from
the cushion.

"Sampson has been strong to-day," said his lordship. "He has assaulted
the Philistines in great force."

"Beautiful, beautiful!" says Harry.

"Bet five to four it was his Assize sermon. He has been over to Winton
to preach, and to s