His preaching in London at this early period was for the most part at an out-of-the-way chapel, in connection with a Foundling Hospital; but he gave a series of Philosophic Lectures at the Royal Institution--never reckoned by himself with his good work--which were besieged by people who came to enjoy his witty sayings. In a few years, however, he secured a valuable church gift in Yorkshire, where he built a rectory--the ugliest and “honest-est house” in the county--and entertained London and Scottish friends there, and grew to enjoy--much as he could--the trees, flowers, and lawns which he planted, and with which he coquetted, though only in a half-hearted way. His supreme love was for cities and crowds; he counting the country at its best only a kind of “healthy grave”; flowers, turf, birds are very well in their way, he says, but not worth an hour of the rational conversation only to be had where a million are gathered in one spot.[33] And he does at last come to the million--getting, after his Whig friends came into power, and after the Reform revolution was over, the royal appointment to a canonry in connection with St. Paul’s Cathedral.[34] He also has the gift of a new country “living” in Somersetshire, where he passes his later summer in another delightfully equipped home; and between these two church holdings, and certain legacies conveniently falling due, he has a large income at command, and enjoys it, and makes the poor of his parishes enjoy it too. He has taken a lusty hand in that passage of the Reform bill (1832), and while its success seemed still to be threatened by the sullen opposition of the House of Lords, he made that famous witty comparison in which he likened the popular interest in Reform to a great storm and tide which had set in from the Atlantic, and the opposition of the Lords, to the efforts of Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, and-- “who was seen at the door of her house with mops and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington’s spirit was up. But I need not tell you the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest.” And this happy and droll comparison was met with a great roar of laughter and of applause that ran all over England. The same tactics of witty ridicule belonged also to his attacks upon Tractarianism and Puseyism, which made stir in his latter days. Indeed, his bump of veneration was very small; and his drollery creeps into his letters as into his speech. He writes of a visit to Edinboro’: