he was known not to be a Hebrew scholar, and not in the
least suspected of being an accomplished Grecian. These lapses, in a man
who had gone through the Eleusinian mysteries of a university education,
surprised the young ladies of his parish extremely; especially the Misses
Farquhar, whom he had once addressed in a letter as Dear Mads.,
apparently an abbreviation for Madams. The persons least surprised at the
Rev. Amos's deficiencies were his clerical brethren, who had gone through
the mysteries themselves.

At eleven o'clock, Mr. Barton walked forth in cape and boa, with the
sleet driving in his face, to read prayers at the workhouse,
euphemistically called the 'College'. The College was a huge square stone
building, standing on the best apology for an elevation of ground that
could be seen for about ten miles around Shepperton. A flat ugly district
this; depressing enough to look at even on the brightest days. The roads
are black with coal-dust, the brick houses dingy with smoke; and at that
time--the time of handloom weavers--every other cottage had a loom at its
window, where you might see a pale, sickly-looking man or woman pressing
a narrow chest against a board, and doing a sort of treadmill work with
legs and arms. A troublesome district for a clergyman; at least to one
who, like Amos Barton, understood the 'cure of souls' in something more
than an official sense; for over and above the rustic stupidity furnished
by the farm-labourers, the miners brought obstreperous animalism, and the
weavers in an acrid Radicalism and Dissent. Indeed, Mrs. Hackit often
observed that the colliers, who many of them earned better wages than Mr.
Barton, 'passed their time in doing nothing but swilling ale and smoking,
like the beasts that perish' (speaking, we may presume, in a remotely
analogical sense); and in some of the alehouse corners the drink was
flavoured by a dingy kind of infidelity, something like rinsings of Tom
Paine in ditch-water. A certain amount of religious excitement created by
the popular preaching of Mr. Parry, Amos's predecessor, had nearly died
out, and the religious life of Shepperton was falling back towards
low-water mark. Here, you perceive, was a terrible stronghold of Satan;
and you may well pity the Rev. Amos Barton, who had to stand
single-handed and summon it to surrender. We read, indeed, that the walls
of Jericho fell down before the sound of trumpets; but we nowhere hear
that those trumpets were