nity. At other times his eye lacked lustre, his
gesture buoyancy, unless indeed he were called upon to follow the
cart to Tyburn, or to compose the Last Dying Speech of some notorious
malefactor.

Preaching was the master passion of his life. It was the pulpit that
reconciled him to exile within a great city, and persuaded him to the
enjoyment of roguish company. Those there were who deemed his career
unfortunate; but a sense of fitness might have checked their pity, and
it was only in his hours of maudlin confidence that the Reverend Thomas
confessed to disappointment. Born of respectable parents in the County
of Cambridgeshire, he nurtured his youth upon the exploits of James
Hind and the Golden Farmer. His boyish pleasure was to lie in the
ditch, which bounded his father's orchard, studying that now forgotten
masterpiece, 'There's no Jest like a True Jest.' Then it was that he
felt 'immortal longings in his blood.' He would take to the road, so he
swore, and hold up his enemies like a gentleman. Once, indeed, he was
surprised by the clergyman of the parish in act to escape from the
rectory with two volumes of sermons and a silver flagon. The divine was
minded to speak seriously to him concerning the dreadful sin of robbery,
and having strengthened him with texts and good counsel, to send him
forth unpunished. 'Thieving and covetousness,' said the parson, 'must
inevitably bring you to the gallows. If you would die in your bed,
repent you of your evildoing, and rob no more.' The exhortation was not
lost upon Pureney, who, chastened in spirit, straightly prevailed upon
his father to enter him a pensioner at Corpus Christi College in the
University of Cambridge, that at the proper time he might take orders.

At Cambridge he gathered no more knowledge than was necessary for his
profession, and wasted such hours as should have been given to study in
drinking, dicing, and even less reputable pleasures. Yet repentance
was always easy, and he accepted his first curacy, at Newmarket, with
a brave heart and a good hopefulness. Fortunate was the choice of this
early cure. Had he been gently guided at the outset, who knows but he
might have lived out his life in respectable obscurity? But Newmarket
then, as now, was a town of jollity and dissipation, and Pureney yielded
without persuasion to the pleasures denied his cloth. There was ever a
fire to extinguish at his throat, nor could he veil his wanton eye at
the sight of a prett