ad become a scholar
in his youth, not from love of scholarship, but as a means to success.
The Church had become his profession, and he had worked hard at his
calling. He had taught himself to be courteous and urbane, because he had
been clever enough to see that courtesy and urbanity are agreeable to men
in high places. As a bishop he never spared himself the work which a
bishop ought to do. He answered letters, he studied the characters of the
clergymen under him, he was just with his patronage, he endeavoured to be
efficacious with his charges, he confirmed children in cold weather as
well as in warm, he occasionally preached sermons, and he was beautiful
and decorous in his gait of manner, as it behoves a clergyman of the
Church of England to be. He liked to be master; but even to be master he
would not encounter the abominable nuisance of a quarrel. When first
coming to the diocese he had had some little difficulty with our Doctor;
but the Bishop had abstained from violent assertion, and they had, on the
whole, been friends. There was, however, on the Bishop's part, something
of a feeling that the Doctor was the bigger man; and it was probable that,
without active malignity, he would take advantage of any chance which
might lower the Doctor a little, and bring him more within episcopal
power. In some degree he begrudged the Doctor his manliness.

He listened with many smiles and with perfect courtesy to the story as it
was told to him, and was much less severe on the unfortunates than Mr.
Puddicombe had been. It was not the wickedness of the two people in
living together, or their wickedness in keeping their secret, which
offended him so much, as the evil which they were likely to do,--and to
have done. "No doubt," he said, "an ill-living man may preach a good
sermon, perhaps a better one than a pious God-fearing clergyman, whose
intellect may be inferior though his morals are much better;--but coming
from tainted lips, the better sermon will not carry a blessing with it."
At this the Doctor shook his head. "Bringing a blessing" was a phrase
which the Doctor hated. He shook his head not too civilly, saying that he
had not intended to trouble his lordship on so difficult a point in
ecclesiastical morals. "But we cannot but remember," said the Bishop,
"that he has been preaching in your parish church, and the people will
know that he has acted among them as a clergyman."

"I hope the people, my lord, may