thinking gravely of rebuilding the palace, partly because he was anxious to see his son well settled in the world.

Mr. Primrose beginning one morning to ridicule the vegetarian heresy, as he called it, got himself unexpectedly snubbed. The Bishop took up the cause of the peas against the ducks, and disparaged the lamb while he magnified the spinach. Nor was this mere table-talk. Tom was put upon vegetable diet soon after, Mr. Primrose began to tremble for his saddle of mutton and haunch of venison, and a feeling of alarm and insecurity, beginning with the chaplain, crept from parish to parish, and soon pervaded the whole diocese. Who could tell where such a revolution would stop? The larder in danger, would the cellar long be safe? Serious encroachments on the Protestant religion have often excited less apprehension in the minds of a portion of the clergy of the Church of England. Some of the very divines whose gorge rose upon this occasion at the idea of dining on a cauliflower, have since been known to swallow crucifixes and candlesticks, things the hardest, one would suppose, to be stomached by a clergyman of the Church of England.

After corresponding with his grandson for some time on the most improved modes of cultivating and cooking vegetables, to make them as worthy as possible of being used exclusively for the food of man, his lordship was seized with a sudden desire to see with his own eyes how Mr. Medlicott practised the system both in the garden and the kitchen, and announced his resolution to pay him a visit. No day however was fixed, nor could the Bishop be prevailed on to fix one, which was most uncomfortable for Mrs. Medlicott, for she was kept in a state of continual anxiety, not knowing the moment when a personage of such consequence would arrive. The house being so small, it was decided to remove to Mr. Cox's town residence (for he happened to be absent at the time), and surrender Virginia entirely to the Wyndhams during their stay. The Bishop for weeks continued shilly-shally, and at length arrived at the most unlucky of all possible moments. Mr. Medlicott and his father were dining with Canon Oldport, whose dining days were not yet over. Mary had gone with her children to her aged mother's cottage, leaving full instructions with her trusty maids how to act in case visitors should arrive, for it had been arranged that whenever the Bishop came, he should call first at the house in town. Dorothy and Jenny, however, saw no reason for expecting the Bishop on that evening more than another, and they thought they might very well

venture to pop out for a quarter of an hour, to gossip with their acquaintances in the neighbourhood. They had not deserted their posts for five minutes, when a huge travelling coach-andfour drove up to Mr. Cox's, just such a coach as Squire Wronghead in the play travels up to London in. Old Matthew's door never experienced such a thundering salute. Again, again, and again, more like cannonading than knocking, with no reply but the echo of the empty house, while the choler of a very stout old gentleman, with a shovel-hat, who was mounted on the box, with a blooming boy at his side, rose at every unavailing application to the knocker. At length a little group of idlers collected, attracted by the noise, and curious to see a bishop on so unusual a bench.

Mr. Primrose alighted, and asked the civilest-looking of the bystanders whether this was not Mr. Cox's house.

"Yes."

"And is not Mr. Medlicott residing here at present ?"
"What Mr. Medlicott ?"

Primrose was amazed at the question.

"Such is popularity," growled the Bishop, unable to avoid philosophising, angry as he was. "Mr. Reuben Medlicott," said the chaplain.

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"Is it the market-gardener ?" asked another of the loungers. Oh, it's orator Medlicott the gentleman wants," said a third; "but he doesn't live here, sir, he lives at the Snuff-Box."

"We had better go at once to Virginia," said the sweet voice of Blanche from the inside; "Virginia is a prettier name than the Snuff-Box," she added, with a mile, aside to the chaplain.

"Drive to Virginia," called the Bishop to the postillions. The chaplain asked advice as to the road, and away dashed the coach-and-four up the green lane.

It was the same thing at Virginia; the bell that hung in the horse-chestnut was nearly pulled down with ringing. The Bishop shouted to make himself heard, but there was nobody there to hear him, nor any rejoinder but the honest bark of Constable, who seemed to be the only officer in charge of the premises. In fact it was a very ugly business altogether, and there seemed no remedy but to return to Chichester and go to the Parrot. However, when they came back to Mr. Cox's house, all was right; Mr. Medlicott was at the door, just returned from Mr. Oldport's. There was no time, of course, to lecture the maids that night. It was almost dark. Reuben mounted the dickey, and con

ducted the party back again to Virginia, where, before they were settled for the night, there was an hour of such fuss as that quiet retreat had never experienced before. Among other causes of confusion, it turned out that in place of a portmanteau with the Bishop's ordinary linen, a trunk with his lawn-sleeves and mitre had been brought down to the country. There was always some mistake of the kind wherever he went. Mr. Medlicott did the best he could to redress grievances, and then returned to town to rejoin his wife.

The overhauling of the delinquent maids at an early hour on the following morning was a sight worth the seeing. Old Matthew's wainscoted dining-room was the court of sessions: there sat the ex-member for Chichester in Mat's elbow chair (a chair from which justice had often before uttered her oracles), a self-constituted magistrate within his private domestic jurisdiction. Not far off sat his wife, in her semi-Quakerly habit, the gray silk gown, and the crisp white muslin, more than usually sedate, as became the gravity of the occasion. You heard the sighings and dolorous interjections of the offenders before they came to the bar. The meekest possible tap at the door heralded their appearance, and they entered in their neat tight jackets and gay petticoats, with their faces buried in their bosoms, their hands industrious with the strings of their snowy aprons, neither pressing herself forward, but rather wishing to prefer the other to the place of honor. One of the poor things was ordered to shut-to the door. Then Reuben began, and never did any justice of the peace paint crime in livelier colours, or so sting to the quick the conscience of the trembling criminals before him, as he did that morning in the rating he gave his delinquent handmaids; while at the end of every sentence his wife nodded her full approbation, as one judge upon the bench is seen to sanction in dumb-show the law as laid down by his learned brother. Reuben expounded the duties of domestics lucidly; what faith was reposed in them, what diligence and fidelity was expected from them; how they were trustees of their master's goods and chattels in his absence, how the safety of houses and the wellbeing of families depended upon their vigilance and good behaviour. Then he detailed instances of fires, and examples of robberies, which had taken place because maids preferred gadding to minding their business; and Mrs. Medlicott, as amica curiæ, reminded him of one or two cases in point which had escaped his recollection. If these topics made the guilty crea

tures tremble, imagine how they felt when ne went on to deliver the law of the land; with what eyes it regarded and with what correction it punished disorderly servants. Here he spoke with particular authority, for, as member for the city, he had been ex officio a visitor, and in some sort a controller of bridewells, and could reveal the secrets of the prison-house; but even this was not the climax of his address. It was not until, with artfully lowered voice and touching manner, he came to speak of the kindness and favour with which you Dorothy, and you Jenny, had been invariably treated by the mildest and best of mistresses, not overworked and under-fed like many of your degree, never grudged a holiday, never forbidden to see an aunt or a godmother, it was not until he came to this that the grand effect was produced; and the fair penitents, unable to bear more, began to weep and sob so, that had their eloquent master intended to close his address with a sentence, the girls were scarcely in a condition to hear or understand it. However, even had the judgment-seat been so austere, the mercy-seat was there, with the gracious Mary upon it, to mitigate whatever doom should be pronounced. The girls had done wisely in throwing themselves upon the clemency of the court, and they were dismissed, still weeping, with the simple condition of never transgressing again while they wore petticoats, at least while they wore Mr. Medlicott's colours.

The day commenced early, because the Medlicotts were anxious to join their guests at the country-house. Thither they repaired immediately, laughing children, repentant maids, and all to be in time to receive the Bishop and his suite at breakfast. On the way, Mrs. Medlicott told her husband that she was very uneasy in her mind, having dreamed last night that the roof of the house had fallen in under the weight of the flower-beds, directly over the room occupied by the Bishop. Reuben smiled, repeated his conviction that all was perfectly safe, and in a few moments there was proof enough that his wife's dream had come through the ivory portal; for when they entered the grounds, the first person they saw was the glorious old prelate himself, going round the house and round the house, and planning and almost ordering some alteration or reconstruction of every part of it. At intervals he would pause, and scold either his chaplain or his wife about his shirts, desiring to know whether they intended him to walk about the fields in full canonicals, as if it was a coronation or the opening of Parliament.

Mr. Primrose ventured to observe that as the episcopal office was a pastoral one, there would be no great impropriety in his lordship wearing his lawn-sleeves in the meadows.

Mr. Medlicott said that Bacon's observations on the monarch's crown would apply equally well to the bishop's mitre, that to wear it with ease it ought to be worn every day.

The Bishop took no notice of what any of them said, but walked about with Tom by the hand, admiring the garden, which really deserved the praise he gave it, for between the finest of vegetables and the finest of flowers, it was nothing short of a wilderness of beauty.

"You have done well, sir," said the Bishop, "to couple Flora with Pomona; what can be more odoriferous than those beans? what gayer than those scarlet-runners? that cabbage-rose is not disgraced by growing beside the worthy vegetable from which it derives its name.'

"Observe, sir, the extraordinary diameter of that head," said Reuben; "it measures nearly two feet from pole to pole. I am proud to have produced it; it makes me feel like the creator of a world."

"There is a world of nourishment in it," said the Bishop, "and as much wonder to the eye of the philosopher as in the great globe itself."

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Gardening, sir, after all, is a noble employment," said Mr.

Medlicott.

The Bishop assented without speaking.

"Rather earthly, is it not?" said the chaplain.

"No, sir," said his master, turning round upon him with severity, "not earthlier than any other human employment, nor so earthly as many; it well represents the proper division of the mind of man between this world and the next. While the gardener digs the ground, his looks are fixed upon it; when he rests upon his spade, he lifts his eyes to heaven."

There was a sublimity not only in the thought, but in the Bishop's tone and manner of expressing it.

"Os homini sublime dedit, cœlumque tueri," said Mr. Primrose, to cover his defeat.

"Noble verse," said Reuben.

"It ought to be Virgil's," said the Bishop.

"Breakfast is ready," said little Chichester, creeping in among them all, a messenger from his mother, who had been busy all this time preparing the morning repast.