ate her imaginative power.

G. R.

CONTENTS

The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton

Mr. Gilfil's Love Story

Janet's Repentance

SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE

THE SAD FORTUNES OF THE REV. AMOS BARTON

Chapter 1

Shepperton Church was a very different-looking building five-and-twenty
years ago. To be sure, its substantial stone tower looks at you through
its intelligent eye, the clock, with the friendly expression of former
days; but in everything else what changes! Now there is a wide span of
slated roof flanking the old steeple; the windows are tall and
symmetrical; the outer doors are resplendent with oak-graining, the inner
doors reverentially noiseless with a garment of red baize; and the walls,
you are convinced, no lichen will ever again effect a settlement on--they
are smooth and innutrient as the summit of the Rev. Amos Barton's head,
after ten years of baldness and supererogatory soap. Pass through the
baize doors and you will see the nave filled with well-shaped benches,
understood to be free seats; while in certain eligible corners, less
directly under the fire of the clergyman's eye, there are pews reserved
for the Shepperton gentility. Ample galleries are supported on iron
pillars, and in one of them stands the crowning glory, the very clasp or
aigrette of Shepperton church-adornment--namely, an organ, not very much
out of repair, on which a collector of small rents, differentiated by the
force of circumstances into an organist, will accompany the alacrity of
your departure after the blessing, by a sacred minuet or an easy
'Gloria'.

Immense improvement! says the well-regulated mind, which unintermittingly
rejoices in the New Police, the Tithe Commutation Act, the penny-post,
and all guarantees of human advancement, and has no moments when
conservative-reforming intellect takes a nap, while imagination does a
little Toryism by the sly, revelling in regret that dear, old, brown,
crumbling, picturesque inefficiency is everywhere giving place to
spick-and-span new-painted, new-varnished efficiency, which will yield
endless diagrams, plans, elevations, and sections, but alas! no picture.
Mine, I fear, is not a well-regulated mind: it has an occasional
tenderness for old abuses; it lingers with a certain fondness over the
days of nasal clerks and top-booted parsons, and has a sigh for the
departed s