bestowed on the poor. The report of a meeting of the Whigs generally
had an effect on his appetite; a resolution that was suspected of
emanating from Brookes's commonly robbed him of a dinner, and the
Radicals never seriously moved that he did not spend a sleepless
night, and pass a large portion of the next day in uttering words
that it would be hardly moral to repeat. I may without impropriety
add, however, that on such occasions he did not spare allusions to
the gallows; Sir Francis Burdett, in particular, was a target for a
good deal of billingsgate; and men as upright and as respectable
even as my lords Grey, Landsdowne, and Holland, were treated as if
they were no better than they should be. But on these little details
it is unnecessary to dwell, for it must be a subject of common
remark, that the more elevated and refined men become in their
political ethics, the more they are accustomed to throw dirt upon
their neighbors. I will just state, however, that most of what I
have here related has been transmitted to me by direct oral
traditions, for I seldom saw my ancestor, and when we did meet, it
was only to settle accounts, to eat a leg of mutton together, and to
part like those who, at least, have never quarrelled.

Not so with Dr. Etherington. Habit (to say nothing of my own merits)
had attached him to one who owed so much to his care, and his doors
were always as open to me as if I had been his own son.

It has been said that most of my idle time (omitting the part
misspent in the schools) was passed at the rectory.

The excellent divine had married a lovely woman, a year or two after
the death of my mother, who had left him a widower, and the father
of a little image of herself, before the expiration of a