one
to inflict evil, and did in some degree recognise it as a duty
attached to his splendour that he should be beneficent to the
inferiors with whom he was connected. Great as was his wrath against
the present Vicar of Bullhampton, and thoroughly as he conceived it
to be expedient that so evil-minded a pastor should be driven out of
the parish, nevertheless he felt some scruple at taking a step which
would be injurious to the parish vicar, let the parish vicar be who
he might. Packer was the sinner who had originated the new plan for
punishing Mr. Fenwick,--Packer, with the assistance of Mr. Puddleham;
and the Marquis, though he had in some sort authorised the plan, had
in truth thought very little about it. When the Vicar spoke of the
lasting injury to the Vicarage, and when Lord Trowbridge remembered
that he owned two thousand and two acres within the parish,--as Mr.
Puddleham had told him,--he began to think that the chapel had better
be built elsewhere. The Vicar was a pestilent man to whom punishment
was due, but the punishment should be made to attach itself to the
man, rather than to the man's office. So was working the Marquis's
mind, till the Marquis came upon that horrid passage in the Vicar's
letter, in which it was suggested that the building of a Methodist
chapel in his own park, immediately in front of his own august
hall-door might under certain circumstances be expedient. The remark
was almost as pernicious and unpardonable as that which had been
made about his lordship's daughters. It was manifest to him that the
Vicar intended to declare that marquises were no more than other
people,--and that the declaration was made and insisted on with the
determination of insulting him. Had this apostate priest been capable
of feeling any proper appreciation of his own position and that
of the Marquis, he would have said nothing of Turnover Park. When
the Marquis had read the letter a second time and had digested it
he perceived that its whole tenour was bad, that the writer was
evil-minded, and that no request made by him should be granted. Even
though the obnoxious chapel should have to be pulled down for the
benefit of another vicar, it should be put up for the punishment of
this vicar. A man who wants to have a favour done for him, can hardly
hope to be successful if he asks for the favour with insolence. So
the heart of the Marquis was hardened, and he was strengthened to do
that which misbecame him both as a