or what their work
in the world is, or anything else, the neatest is that celibacy of the
clergy. I should like to have you with me in Spanish America, or in
France either, and see what you thought of it then. How it ever came
into mortal brains is to me the puzzle. I've often fancied, when
I've watched those priests--and very good fellows, too, some of them
are--that there must be a devil after all abroad in the world, as you
say; for no human insanity could ever have hit upon so complete and
'cute a device for making parsons do the more harm, the more good they
try to do. There, I've preached you a sermon, and made you angry."

"Not in the least: but I must go now and see some sick."

"Well, go, and prosper; only recollect that the said sick are men and
women."

And away Tom went, thinking to himself: "Well, that is a noble,
straightforward, honest fellow, and will do yet, if he'll only get a
wife. He's not one of those asses who have made up their minds by book
that the world is square, and won't believe it to be round for any
ocular demonstration. He'll find out what shape the world is before
long, and behave as such, and act accordingly."

Little did Tom think, as he went home that day in full-blown
satisfaction with his sermon to Frank, of the misery he had caused,
and was going to cause for many a day, to poor Grace Harvey. It was a
rude shock to her to find herself thus suspected; though perhaps it
was one which she needed. She had never, since one first trouble ten
years ago, known any real grief; and had therefore had all the more
time to make a luxury of unreal ones. She was treated by the simple
folk around her as all but inspired; and being possessed of real
powers as miraculous in her own eyes as those which were imputed to
her were in theirs (for what are real spiritual experiences but daily
miracles?) she was just in that temper of mind in which she required,
as ballast, all her real goodness, lest the moral balance should
topple headlong after the intellectual, and the downward course of
vanity, excitement, deception, blasphemous assumptions be entered on.
Happy for her that she was in Protestant and common-sense England, and
in a country parish, where mesmerism and spirit-rapping were unknown.
Had she been an American, she might have become one of the most
lucrative "mediums;" had she been born in a Romish country, she would
have probably become an even more famous personage. There is no reason
wh