and rival prelates beat the drum ecclesiastic with Herculean vigour,
till the one wound up his series of syllogisms with the very orthodox
conclusion of roasting the other.

But the dearest friend of Mr Glowry, and his most welcome guest,
was Mr Toobad, the Manichaean Millenarian. The twelfth verse of the
twelfth chapter of Revelations was always in his mouth: 'Woe to the
inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come among
you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short
time.' He maintained that the supreme dominion of the world was, for
wise purposes, given over for a while to the Evil Principle; and that
this precise period of time, commonly called the enlightened age, was
the point of his plenitude of power. He used to add that by and by he
would be cast down, and a high and happy order of things succeed; but
he never omitted the saving clause, 'Not in our time'; which last
words were always echoed in doleful response by the sympathetic Mr
Glowry.

Another and very frequent visitor, was the Reverend Mr Larynx, the
vicar of Claydyke, a village about ten miles distant;--a good-natured
accommodating divine, who was always most obligingly ready to take a
dinner and a bed at the house of any country gentleman in distress
for a companion. Nothing came amiss to him,--a game at billiards, at
chess, at draughts, at backgammon, at piquet, or at all-fours in
a _tete-a-tete_,--or any game on the cards, round, square, or
triangular, in a party of any number exceeding two. He would even
dance among friends, rather than that a lady, even if she were on the
wrong side of thirty, should sit still for want of a partner. For a
ride, a walk, or a sail, in the morning,--a song after dinner, a ghost
story after supper,--a bottle of port with the squire, or a cup of