As for dinners he gave none, except a few fragments of his family's scanty meal to some hungry, perhaps, deserted children, or to a sick laborer when abandoned by his landlord or employer, the moment he became unable to work.

From the gentry of the neighborhood he got no invitations, because he would neither sing--dance--drink--nor countenance the profligacies of their sons--nor flatter the pride and vanity of their wives and daughters.

For these reasons, and because he dared to preach home truths from his pulpit, he and his unpretending children had been frequently made objects of their ridicule and insolence.

What right, then, had any one to assert that the Rev.Mr.Clement had received injustice by the promotion over his head of the Rev.Phineas Lucre, to the wealthy living of Castle Cumber, when he had no plausible or just grounds beyond those to which we have adverted, on which to rest his claim for preferment?
The curate was pious, we admit, but, then, his wife's uncle was not a lord.

He was learned, but, then, he had neither power nor the inclination to repay his patrons--supposing him to have such, by a genius for intrigue, or the possession of political influence.