Such recreations are now unclerical in the highest degree, or if
not in the highest, they are only one degree less so than
hunting. The theatre was especially a respectable clerical
resource, and we may still occasionally see heads of colleges in
the stalls, or perhaps a dean, or some rector, unambitious of
further promotion. But should a young curate show himself in the
pit, he would be but a lost sheep of the house of Israel. And
latterly there went forth, at any rate in one diocese, a firman
against cricket ! Novels, too, are forbidden; though the fact
that they may be enjoyed in solitude saves the clergy from
absolute ignorance as to that branch of our national literature.
All this is hard upon men who, let them struggle as they may to
love the asceticisms of a religious life, are only men; and it
has a strong tendency to keep out of the Church that very
class, the younger sons of country gentlemen, whom all Churchmen
should wish to see enter it. Young men who think of the matter
when the time for taking orders is coming near, do not feel
themselves qualified to rival St. Paul in their lives; and they
who have not thought of it find themselves to be cruelly used
when they are expected to make the attempt.

But of all the amusements which a layman may follow and a
clergyman may not, hunting is thought to be by much the worst.
There is a savour of wickedness about it in the eyes of the old
ladies which almost takes it out of their list of innocent
amusements even for laymen. By the term old ladies it will be
understood, perhaps, that I do not allude simply to matrons and
spinsters who may be over the age of sixty, but to that most
respectable portion of the world which has taught itself to abhor
the pomps and vanities. Pomps and vanities are undoubtedly bad,