naughty things. And ambition is a
great vice--as Mark Anthony told us a long time ago--a great vice,
no doubt, if the ambition of the man be with reference to his own
advancement, and not to the advancement of others. But then, how many
of us are there who are not ambitious in this vicious manner? And
there is nothing viler than the desire to know great people--people
of great rank, I should say; nothing worse than the hunting of titles
and worshipping of wealth. We all know this, and say it every day of
our lives. But presuming that a way into the society of Park Lane
was open to us, and a way also into that of Bedford Row, how many of
us are there who would prefer Bedford Row because it is so vile to
worship wealth and title?

I am led into these rather trite remarks by the necessity of putting
forward some sort of excuse for that frame of mind in which the Rev.
Mark Robarts awoke on the morning after his arrival at Chaldicotes.
And I trust that the fact of his being a clergyman will not be
allowed to press against him unfairly. Clergymen are subject to
the same passions as other men; and, as far as I can see, give way
to them, in one line or in another, almost as frequently. Every
clergyman should, by canonical rule, feel a personal disinclination
to a bishopric; but yet we do not believe that such personal
disinclination is generally very strong. Mark's first thoughts when
he woke on that morning flew back to Mr. Fothergill's invitation. The
duke had sent a special message to say how peculiarly glad he, the
duke, would be to make acquaintance with him, the parson! How much of
this message had been of Mr. Fothergill's own manufacture, that Mark
Robarts did not consider. He had obtained a living at an age when
other young clergymen are beginning to think of a curacy, and he
had obtained such a living as middle-aged parsons in their dreams
regard as a possible Paradise for their old years. Of course he
thought that all these good things had been the results of his own
peculiar merits. Of course he felt that he was different from other
parsons,--more fitted by nature for intimacy with great persons, more
urbane, more polished, and more richly endowed with modern clerical
well-to-do aptitudes. He was grateful to Lady Lufton for what she had
done for him; but perhaps not so grateful as he should have been.

At any rate he was not Lady Lufton's servant, nor even her dependant.
So much he had repeated to himself on many o