Two clergymen of the seventeenth century are now before us, reader, but they belong to neither extreme, and the difference between them, though very great, only serves to show that even the middle ground admitted of much variety. The first who entered advanced, after a momentary look around him, directly toward the master of the house, and took him by the hand with kindly warmth.
"Mr. Woodhall," he said, with the slightest possible touch on an Irish accent, "I am delighted to see you again. It is full six months since we last met, for I stayed behind my lord, being obliged to remain in London on account of having to go to Dublin about some little affairs of my own; my dear aunt having at length thought fit to take her departure for the realms of bliss, when, faith, I thought she had put off the journey altogether. She left me--God bless her!--a neat little comfortable income of two hundred pounds English, a large China bowl, and a pair of Tangier slippers. Heaven reward her, as I am sure it should, for she never troubled it till she could not help it."
"I am glad to see you back, Mr. M'Feely," replied the master of the house; "you have been much wanted to bless the venison up at the hall."
"Oh, the currant-jelly does that mighty well without me," replied the chaplain. "Mr. Ralph, I am right glad to see you. Alma Mater abandoned, I hear. Done with the old lady, eh? Well, it must be so with all fathers and mothers. Children will quit them, must quit them; and there is no use of going cackling about like a hen after a brood of young ducklings when first she sees them take to the water. Every animal knows its own element, and will find it sooner or later. My poor mother, rest her soul, was sadly afraid that I might fall into the errors of popery, and yield to the seductions of the scarlet woman; but, faith, I had no turn for vows of celibacy, and so I came over to England to be out of harm's way. No, no, wedlock is an honorable estate--especially when there is another estate to back it; and as to being married to the Church, upon my soul and conscience I never yet saw the church, be it stone or wood, that I would like to marry any how."
While this part of the worthy gentleman's discourse was going on, addressed to the son, the father had been welcoming his other guest, the parson of the parish.
"Good evening, doctor, give you good evening," he said; "you have caught me here, the lean and slippered pantaloon; but, good faith, Ralph and I were so earnest in talk that I forgot how time went. Nevertheless, 'tis well as it is. Conversation never walks so much at ease as when slipshod; and we will scant ceremony to-night. Come, lay aside your periwig, and we will have a bowl of punch anon."
We will pass over the brewing of the punch and the conversation which sweetened it, whether that conversation turned upon the decline of lemons, which the chaplain declared were not half as juicy as when he was a boy, or upon the enormous price of sugar, which the good parson mourned over sincerely. After the two first ladlefuls had passed round, however, other more important topics were started; rumors from London, tales from France, an epigram, a court ball, a passage of Lucan, and a newly-discovered method of solving some very puzzled questions connected with conic sections were all mentioned and discussed.
Ralph Woodhall had no interest in any of these things. Of some he was ignorant, of some he was tired; and at length he rose, saying he would go out and take a walk for half an hour.
"To study the stars, Ralph?" said his father.
"Nay, to write a sonnet to the pale-faced moon," replied his son, laughing, and away he went.