tradesmen and tithe-payers, creditors, and debtors. Yet, in spite of
the insufficiency of his two hundred a-year to meet all or half his
wants, Mr Armstrong was not an unhappy man. At any moment of social
enjoyment he forgot all his cares and poverty, and was always the
first to laugh, and the last to cease to do so. He never refused an
invitation to dinner, and if he did not entertain many in his own
house, it was his fortune, and not his heart, that prevented him from
doing so. He could hardly be called a good clergyman, and yet his
remissness was not so much his own fault as that of circumstances. How
could a Protestant rector be a good parish clergyman, with but one old
lady and her daughters, for the exercise of his clerical energies and
talents? He constantly lauded the zeal of St. Paul for proselytism;
but, as he himself once observed, even St. Paul had never had to deal
with the obstinacy of an Irish Roman Catholic. He often regretted the
want of work, and grieved that his profession, as far as he saw and had
been instructed, required nothing of him but a short service on every
Sunday morning, and the celebration of the Eucharist four times a-year;
but such were the facts; and the idleness which this want of work
engendered, and the habits which his poverty induced, had given him
a character as a clergyman, very different from that which the high
feelings and strict principles which animated him at his ordination
would have seemed to ensure. He was, in fact, a loose, slovenly man,
somewhat too fond of his tumbler of punch; a little lax, perhaps, as to
clerical discipline, but very staunch as to doctrine. He possessed no
industry or energy of any kind; but he was good-natured and charitable,
lived on friendly terms with all his neighbours, and was intimate with
every one that dwelt within ten miles of him, priest and parson, lord
and commoner.

Such was the neighbourhood of Kelly's Court, and among such Lord