It will probably be admitted that the Reverend Joseph Brown, much as he was liked by all who knew him at St. Lazarus, and much as he was respected by those who were brought into collegiate relations with him, was not the very best pastor whom the Church of England could have given to the people of Eiderdown; but many who will admit this will still think that in being ordained as a young man on the title of his fellowship, he did that which was becoming to him as one who had passed through his university education with honour and success. Fellows of colleges always have been clergymen, holding high characters as such in their profession, and why not the Reverend Joseph Brown? Is it not also known to us that such a man, located as a bachelor in his college, is more likely to lead a good and sober life as a clergyman than he would do as a layman? Such, probably, would be the arguments used in defence of clerical fellowships; and we will admit that the Reverend Joseph Brown has throughout his whole career given support to such arguments by his conduct. But yet he has never in truth been a clergyman. Though an ordained priest, he has done no priestly work, and has always been somewhat angry when any one has suggested to him that he should take a part in any clerical duties. At first, indeed, he was somewhat careful in maintaining outward clerical symbols, and was occasionally anxious to feed himself with inward clerical thoughts, having been moved thereto by the terrible earnestness of his ordination,--by the solemnity of a ceremony which, though he had determined to regard it simply as the means of placing him in the possession of certain temporal advantages, so impressed itself upon him as being personal to himself, that he could not at once escape from its bonds. But gradually he overcame that weakness, and found himself enabled to live, as any other gentleman might live, an easy pleasant life, with nothing of the clergyman about him but the word Reverend attached to his name on his cards and letters. The colour of his lower vestments approaches perhaps nearer to black than it would have done had he not been so encumbered, and men in the world at large are perhaps a little less free in their remarks before him than they would be before other men. This he regrets painfully; but it is all that he has to regret. The fellows, his predecessors in the old days,--who were, in fact, monks as well as fellows,--were called upon to live in accordance with certain monastic and ascetic rules, which they either obeyed to their supposed glory, or disobeyed to their supposed peril. Matins, lauds, nones, vespers, complines, and what not, were their lot,--and came upon them heavily enough, no doubt, if they did their duty; but now-a-days we do not care much, even at our universities, for lauds and complines. Undergraduates indeed must “keep” so many chapels a week, but the clerical fellow is under no such bond.