Harry. I suppose he must have had some
conversations with his lord at Castlewood, whom we have heard expressing
some intention of complimenting his chaplain with a good living or other
provision, in event of his being able to carry out his lordship's wishes
regarding a marriage for Lady Maria. If his good offices could help that
anxious lady to a husband, Sampson was ready to employ them: and he now
waited to see in what most effectual manner he could bring his influence
to bear.

Sampson's society was most agreeable, and he and his young friend were
intimate in the course of a few hours. The parson rejoiced in
high spirits, good appetite, good humour; pretended to no sort of
squeamishness, and indulged in no sanctified hypocritical conversation;
nevertheless, he took care not to shock his young friend by any needless
outbreaks of levity or immorality of talk, initiating his pupil, perhaps
from policy, perhaps from compunction, only into the minor mysteries,
as it were; and not telling him the secrets with which the unlucky adept
himself was only too familiar. With Harry, Sampson was only a brisk,
lively, jolly companion, ready for any drinking bout, or any sport, a
cock-fight, a shooting-match, a game at cards, or a gallop across the
common; but his conversation was decent, and he tried much more to
amuse the young man, than to lead him astray. The chaplain was quite
successful: he had immense animal spirits as well as natural wit, and
aptitude as well as experience in that business of toad-eater which
had been his calling and livelihood from his very earliest years,--ever
since he first entered college as a servitor, and cast about to see by
whose means he could make his fortune in life. That was but satire just
now, when we said there were no toad-eaters left in the world. There are
many men of Sampson's profession now, doubtless; nay, little boys at our
public schools are sent thither at the earliest age, instructed by their
parents, and put out apprentices to toad-eating. But the flattery is not
so manifest as it used to be a hundred years since. Young men and old
have hangers-on, and led captains, but they assume an appearance of
equality, borrow money, or swallow their toads in private, and walk
abroad arm-in-arm with the great man, and call him by his name without
his title. In those good old times, when Harry Warrington first came
to Europe, a gentleman's toad-eater pretended to no airs of equality at
all; open