his shell, and desired the servant to shew the gentleman in; he would
be with him in a moment. This was another phenomenon in morals! A
clergyman suffer, nay encourage, or, as it must be, command, his
servant to tell a lie? It was inconceivable! I knew nothing of
fashionable manners, and that being denied to people whom you do not
wish to see, instead of being thought insolent or false, was the
general practice of the well bred. At that time I understood no single
point of good breeding: I had it all to learn! But indeed, so dull am
I on such topics, that, to this hour, how it can be a clergyman's or
any honest man's duty or interest to teach servants to lie is to me
incomprehensible. The difficulty, as I have found it, is to teach both
them and all classes of people to tell the truth. What the morality of
the practice is cannot be a serious question.

Before I proceed with that part of my story in which the reverend
Enoch Ellis takes a share, it is necessary to remark that there has
sprung up in modern times a clerical order of men, very distinct in
manners and character from the subservient curate, or the lordly
parish priest. Houses in London have lately been built much faster
than churches. Yet, though the zeal of these times does not equal that
of ancient days, when our cities were divided into numerous small
parishes, when religion was the universal trade of mankind, and when
the temples of superstition reared their proud heads in every alley,
still men who know how to turn the penny have found it advantageous,
even in these days of infidelity, to build here and there a chapel,
and to let each of these chapels out to the best clerical bidder; who
in his turn uses all his influence to allure the neighbourhood to
hire, in retail, those bits and parcels, called pews, that, for the
gratification of pride, are measured off within the consecrated walls
which he has hired wholesale. In these undertakings, if the preacher