secular education, and thinks it makes people discontented and
faithless. He is generous with his money, spending lavishly on the
Church, but he does not believe in what he calls indiscriminate
charity. The incident which has touched him more than any other in the
course of his ministry, he will tell you, is when a poor old woman on
her death-bed confided to him a few shillings to be spent on providing
an altar-frontal. He gives a Sunday-school feast every year, which
begins with a versicle and a response. "Thou openest Thine Hand," he
says in a rich voice and the children pipe in chorus, "And fillest all
things living with plenteousness." The day ends with a little service,
which he thoroughly enjoys.

Even the services themselves are a dreary business, because he insists
on the whole thing being choral; and little boys in short cassocks,
with stocking-legs underneath, howl the responses and monotone the
prayers to the accompaniment of a loud raw organ. He reads the lessons
in what he calls a devotional way, which consists in reciting all
episodes alike, the song of Deborah or the victories of Gideon, as if
they were melancholy and pathetic reflections. He is fond of Gregorians
and plain-song. The choirmen consist of a scrofulous invalid, his own
gardener and coachman, and a bankrupt carpenter, given to drink and
profuse repentance. But he is careful to say that he did not suggest
the introduction of a choral service--"it was forced upon him by the
wish of certain earnest and devoted helpers."

The fact is that the man is, as the children say, a real goose. There
is nothing manly, vigorous, or sensible about him; he sometimes
deplores the indifference of his parishioners to what he calls true
Churchmanship, but he never thinks of comparing his ideal with the
Gospel or with the actual conditions of the world. He seems to be
hopelessly befogged; he is as certain as only a virtuous or stupid man
can be that the religious system which he inculcates is the exact and
deliberate development of the Spirit of Christ; and to hear him talk,
you would suppose that the only joy in heaven resulted from a rumour
that another church was added to the list of sanctuaries which had
daily matins. The hopeless difficulty is that he considers his system
so pure and lovely that to modify it in any way would seem to be a
grievous compromise with worldliness, a violation of his high calling;
he looks forward confidently to the time when the