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N confequence of a proper attention to the admonitions contained in the preceding chapters, your are now a canon of Windfor, or prebendary of Durham, Canterbury, Winchester, or fome other opulent cathedral. You have be. fides, livings of five or fix hundred a-year, where the duty is done by your curates for thirty or at molt forty pounds per annum each. If they happen to have wives and families, they may poffibly have frequent occafion to exert their economical faculties. So much the better. Luxury in the inferior clergy is a vice. The apostles were all poor men. Parfon Adams, to the best of my recollection, had not above twenty pounds a-year, and yet he was perfectly contented and happy. These arguments, if they fhould prefume to complain, will ftop their mouths; befides curates are a mere drug; fo that they may decamp whenever they please. An advertisement in the papers will give you the choice of half a score. Charity begins at home. A prebendary has occafion for every fhilling of his revenue. He must keep fervants, a good table, and a carriage. His wife and daughters must drefs fashionably, frequent public diverfions, and play at cards.

"Cards are now no longer the amufement, but the principal occupation, the bufinefs of the polite world: therefore, as most of your time must be appropriated to this rational, this inftructive, this philofophical, this moral employment, you cannot fpend your mornings better than in the ftudy of Hoyle, which, with the other red

book, will fufficiently occupy all your leifure. The rest of your library is totally ufelefs, except now and then a Review, in order to enable you to give your opinion occasion. ally on recent publications. Books of divinity are quite out of the question: of thefe you have read enough when you had no better employment: befides, in the prefent conftitution of things, they are all become obfolete.

"If, out of frolic, you should at any time chufe to preach a fermon, let the fubject be fome mystical point of divinity; fo that it may be totally unintelligible to the congregation. The people of which congregations are generally compofed, admire most what they leaft understand. As to the chriftian duties of humility, charity, abfinence, mortification, and felf-denial, they might do well enough whilst you were a poor curate. Such topics would now give occafion to invidious reflexions: they are duties, with which, in your prefent fituation, you have no concern. I remember a young cler gyman's preaching a fermon againt adultery, who the night before had been furprized in bed with the wife of one of his parishioners. As he came out of the church, the injured hufband feized him by the collar and threw him into a horse-pond.

"We learn from an old adage, that a man is best known by the character of his affociates. For this reafon, I must admonish you not to admit the minor canons to any degree of familiarity. They are poor, and confequently men of no character. You may employ them

as preceptors to your children, or to fuperintend your household during your abfence, and you may now and then admit them to your table when you have no better company. When you want to get rid of them, as foon as they have drank Church and King, you may take out your watch, and, looking towards the bottom of the table, fay, you fancy it is almot time for evening prayers. When these thread-bare drudges are gone, you push back your wig, feat yourself afresh on your chair, open your countenance, and patting the lid of your inuff-bo, facetioufly apologize to the company for the neceffity of now and then admitting inferiors to one's tab'e. You then whisper a toast to the baronet, on your right hand, and fetting down your glafs, you exclaim, Vive la bagatelie! Thus the laick part of the company are relieved from all eftraint, and the evening is fpent in facial jocundity and eafe. About eight o'clock, tea being announced, you join the ladies in the drawingroom, where the card-tables being prepared, the company its down to crown whift, with half a guinea or a guinea on the rubber, and you break up between eleven and twelve. Such were the lives of the apoftles and primitive fathers of the church. "If there happens to be a company of trolling players in the town, three nights in the weck, attended by your wife and daughters, you may spend at the theatre; but you must not fo far forget your rank as to mix with the actreffes behind the scenes; that privilege belongs to the younger clergy. Plays, you know, afford a most rational entertainment; and that they have a natural tendency to promote morality, is evinced by the virtu

ous lives of those who frequent the theatres.

"But, though this neceffary round of aniufements will occupy much the greatest part of your time, butinefs must not be entirely neglected. The ftudy of the two red books, with the perfect knowledge of which your intereft is fo infeparably connected, muit, on no account, be omitted. One will teach you how to fill your card-purfe, and from the other you will learn the names of the great men in power, whom you are to court in expectation of a bifhoprick. Thefe fevere ftudies will generally employ your morning hours: nevertheless, you will find it neceflary to appropriate fome portion of your time to the receipt of your rents, and correfpondence with your curates concerning your tythes. You will alfo have frequent occafion to write letters to the lawyers and attornies employed in carrying on law-fuits againft your parifhioners. On this fubject let me conjure you never to let the feelings of humanity clath with the facred interest of the church, nor warp the pious severity of divine juftice." If you yourfelf were only concerned in thefe litigations, you would be the laft man in the world to ruin a poor man for the non-payment of his rent, his tythe, or modus; but this is the caufe of the church, of religion, of the whole body of the clergy to the lateft pofterity: befides to fpeak the truth, thefe farmers are fuch a pack of rafcals that they deferve no compaffion.

I have promifed to conduct you to the fummit of ecclefiaßical dignity and preferment; and I will fulfil that promite: but I must inform you, that your attention to my admonitions must increase in

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proportion to your proximity to the goal. Never forget that the king makes biflops, and that, con. fequently, the minister for the time being is your fole object. You are not yet fufficiently elevated to make a point blank attack on a chancel lor of the exchequer; but by gradually extending your influence in the corporation, and among the voters for the county in your feveral parihe, you will in time attain the honour of being mentioned to him by the peer that makes the members; and your interest at court will increase in proportion to the increase of your parliamentary interest in the county. Mean while, you must be exceedingly careful, even when converfing with your most intimate friends, never to let flip a fingle patriotic expreflion, nor feem diflatisfied with taxes nor with any other measure of goverament, There are indeed many examples in our history of turbulent men torcing themselves into power by oppofing the minifier; but, in the ecclefiatical line, that method does not fucceed; it is therefore wifely abandoned.

"As to the wifdom and honefly

of the minister, they are no concerni of yours. If you fuffer conscience to obftruct your road to preferment, I have done with you at once; and the best advice I can give you, is to retire to one of your livings in the country, and spend the remain. der of your life in obfcurity. But, Sir, prefume you have had a liberal education, and that you have by this time, fhook off the tramels of a religion of which humility, fcrupulous integrity, and felf-de nisl are the fundamental principles; a religion, that prefents an infur mountable bar to the attainment of wealth, rank, and power, the de fiderata of all mankind. Your fuperiors, in compliance with the times, have skipt over this bar with great agility. They yet preferse the femblance of the old imprac ticable religion; but it requires very little penetration to difcover, that they are fince profelytes to the doctrines of that fublime philofopher Epicurus who laughed at divine providence, who proved beyond a doubt that the foul dies with the body, and whose fummum bonum was pleasure."

ABSCHELIM, king of the Indies, poffeffed a li brary fo large, that it required a hundred Bramins to revife and keep it in order, and a thoufand dromedaries to carry the books. As he had no intention to read all it contained, he commanded his Bramins 10 make extracts from it, for his

ufe, of whatever they judged most valuable in every branch of literature. Thefe doctors immediately undertook to form fuch an abridg ment, and, after twenty years labour, compofed from their several collections a fmall Encyclopedia, confifting of twelve thoufand vo lumes, which thirty camels could

fcarcely

"Don Torribio was not very polite, though he valued himfelf on being intimately acquainted with the best company in hell. He told the dean he was welcome to feek elsewhere for a mafter in magic; for that, for his part, he was weary of an occupation which produced nothing but compliments and promifes, and that he would not difhonour the occult fciences, by proftituting them to the ungrate

ful.

:

"To the ungrateful! cried the dean has then the great Don Torribio met with perfons who have proved ungrateful! and can he fo far miftake me as to rank me with fuch monsters? He then repeated all the maxims and apophthegins which he had read, on the fubject of gratitude, and every refined fentiment his memory could furnifh.

"In fhort, he talked fo well that the conjurer, after having confidered a moment, confeffed he could refufe nothing to a man of fuch abilities and fo ready at pertinent quotations. Jacintha, faid he, calling to his old woman, lay down two partridges to the fire; I hope my friend, the dean, will do me the honour to fup with me to-night. At the fame time he takes him by the hand, and leads him into his c. binet; there, he touches his forehead, muttering three myfterious words, which I must request the reader not to forget, Ortobolan, Piftafrier, Onagriouf; then, without further preparation, he began to explain, with all poffible perfpicuity, the introductory elements of his profound fcience.

"His new diciple listened with an attention which fcarcely permitted him to breathe; when, on a fudden, Jacintha enters, followed by a little man, iu monstrous boots,

and covered with mud up to the neck, who defired to fpeak with the dean on very important bufinefs.

"This was the poftillion of his uncle, the bishop of Badajoz, who had been fent exprefs after him, and had galloped quite to Toledo, before he could overtake him; he came to bring him information that, fome hours after his departure, his grace had been attacked by fo violent an apoplexy that the moft terrible confequences were to be apprehended. The dean hear tily curfed (inwardly that is, and fo as to occafion no fcandal) at once the diforder, the patient, and the courier, who had certainly all three chofen the most impertinent time poffible. He difmiffed the poftillion, telling him to make hafte back by Badajoz, whither he would prefently follow him: after which he returned to his leffon, as if there were no fuch things as either uncles or apoplexies.

"A few days after he again received news from Badajoz, but fuch as was well worth hearing. The principal chanter and two old canons came to inform the dean that his uncle, the right reverend bifhop, had been taken to heaven to receive the reward of his piety; and that the chapter, canonically affembled, had chofen him to fill the vacant bithoprick, and humbly requested he would confole, by his prefence, the afflicted church of Badajoz, now become his fpiritual bride.

"Don Torribio, who was prefent at this harangue of the deputies, endeavoured to derive advan tage from what he had learned, and, taking afide the new bishop, after having paid him a well turned compliment on his promotion, proceeded to inform him that he