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 tippling."

"Your see appears to entertain a very strange opinion of the English,"
said I.

"Not altogether an unjust one," said the man in black, lifting the glass
to his mouth.

"Well," said I, "it is certainly very kind on its part to wish to bring
back such a set of beings beneath its wing."

"Why, as to the kindness of my see," said the man in black, "I have not
much to say; my see has generally in what it does a tolerably good
motive; these heretics possess in plenty what my see has a great
hankering for, and can turn to a good account--money!"

"The founder of the Christian religion cared nothing for money," said I.

"What have we to do with what the founder of the Christian religion cared
for?" said the man in black; "how could our temples be built, and our
priests supported without money? but you are unwise to reproach us with a
desire of obtaining money; you forget that your own church, if the Church
of England be your own church, as I suppose it is, from the willingness
which you displayed in the public-house to fight for it, is equally
avaricious; look at your greedy Bishops, and your