influential class must not be omitted from our notices of the great Snob
world.

Of these Clerics there are some whose claim to snobbishness is
undoubted, and yet it cannot be discussed here; for the same reason that
PUNCH would not set up his show in a Cathedral, out of respect for
the solemn service celebrated within. There are some places where he
acknowledges himself not privileged to make a noise, and puts away his
show, and silences his drum, and takes off his hat, and holds his peace.

And I know this, that if there are some Clerics who do wrong, there are
straightway a thousand newspapers to haul up those unfortunates, and
cry, 'Fie upon them, fie upon them!' while, though the press is always
ready to yell and bellow excommunication against these stray delinquent
parsons, it somehow takes very little count of the many good ones--of
the tens of thousands of honest men, who lead Christian lives, who give
to the poor generously, who deny themselves rigidly, and live and die
in their duty, without ever a newspaper paragraph in their favour. My
beloved friend and reader, I wish you and I could do the same: and let
me whisper my belief, ENTRE NOUS that of those eminent philosophers who
cry out against parsons the loudest, there are not many who have got
their knowledge of the church by going thither often.

But you who have ever listened to village bells, or walked to church as
children on sunny Sabbath mornings; you who have ever seen the parson's
wife tending the poor man's bedside; or the town clergyman threading the
dirty stairs of noxious alleys upon his business;--do not raise a shout
when one falls away, or yell with the mob that howls after him.

Every man can do that. When old Father Noah was overtaken in his cups,