,
her husband, and her flock of children fasted in Lent, and declared for
the High Church doctrines, Mrs. Hobson had paroxysms of alarm regarding
the progress of Popery, and shuddered out of the chapel where she had a
pew, because the clergyman there, for a very brief season, appeared to
preach in a surplice.

Poor bewildered Honeyman! it was a sad day for you, when you appeared in
your neat pulpit with your fragrant pocket-handkerchief (and your sermon
likewise all millefleurs), in a trim, prim, freshly mangled surplice,
which you thought became you! How did you look aghast, and pass your
jewelled hand through your curls, as you saw Mrs. Newcome, who had been
as good as five-and-twenty pounds a year to you, look up from her pew,
seize hold of Mr. Newcome, fling open the pew-door, drive out with her
parasol her little flock of children, bewildered but not ill-pleased to
get away from the sermon, and summon John from the back seats to bring
away the bag of prayer-books! Many a good dinner did Charles Honeyman
lose by assuming that unlucky ephod. Why did the high-priest of
his diocese order him to put it on? It was delightful to view him
afterwards, and the airs of martyrdom which he assumed. Had they been
going to tear him to pieces with wild beasts next day, he could scarcely
have looked more meek, or resigned himself more pathetically to the
persecutors. But I am advancing matters. At this early time of which I
write, a period not twenty years since, surplices were not even thought
of in conjunction with sermons: clerical gentlemen have appeared in
them, and under the heavy hand of persecution have sunk down in their
pulpits again, as Jack pops back into his box. Charles Honeyman's
elegant discourses were at this time preached in a rich silk Master of
Arts' gown, presented to him, along with a teapot full of sovereigns, by
his affectionate congregation at Leatherhead.

But that I may not be accused of prejudice in describing Mrs. Newcome
and her family, and lest the reader should suppose that some slight
offered to the writer by this wealthy and virtuous banker's lady was the
secret reason for this unfavourable sketch of her character, let me be
allowed to report, as accurately as I can remember them, the words of
a kinsman of her own, ---- Giles, Esquire, whom I had the honour of
meeting at her table, and who, as we walked away from Bryanstone Square,
was kind enough to discourse very freely about the relatives whom