“sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal,” because lacking in that holy charity “which suffereth long and is kind.” It was a barbarous act to “inhibit” Dr. Mivart,--it was still more barbarous to refuse his body the sacred burial-rites,--and though the great Cardinal has now followed his victim to that world where all the secrets of the soul are made manifest, his cruelty remains as a blot on his mortal career,--a black smirch, ugly to look upon in the chronicle of his various virtues and excellencies. No ordained minister of the Gospel has the right to be intolerant. He has not the slightest excuse for arrogating to himself any other code of ethics or conduct than that which is set out plainly for him in the New Testament. Away from that he should not dare to go, if he truly believes what he elects to preach,--and if he does not believe, he should at once resign his office and not live on the proceeds of what in his own private conscience he considers untrue. Most of us have met with many a mean little curate,--many a sly, spiteful, scandal-mongering hypocritical parson,--in the daily round of our common lives and duties. Most of us know the “salad” cleric,--the gentleman who is a doubtful compound of oil and vinegar, with a good deal of tough green vegetable matter growing where the brain should be,--coarse weed of bigotry, prejudice, and rank obstinacy. None of us are entirely ignorant of the sedately amorous parson who is either looking out for a wife on his own account, or attempting a “Christianly” conversion of the wife of somebody else. In country towns we can scarcely fail to have come across the domineering vicar,--the small and petty tyrant, who whips the souls committed to his charge with rods steeped in his own particular pickle of arrogance, austerity and coercion, playing the part of a little despot over terrorized Sunday-school children, and laying down the law for his parishioners by way of a “new dispensation” wherein the Gospel has no part. One such petty martinet, well known in a certain rural parish, plays regular “ogre” to his choir boys. It is always a case of “Fee, fi, fa, fo, fum, I smell the blood of a chorister,” with him. Should one of these unfortunate minstrels chance to sneeze during service, this vicar straightway imposes a penny fine (sometimes more) on the unlucky little wretch for yielding to an irresistible nasal impulse! This kind of thing is, of course, ridiculous, and would merit nothing but laughter, were it not for the dislike, distrust and contempt engendered in the minds of the boys by the display of such a peevish spirit of trumpery oppression on the part of a man who is placed in the position he holds to be an example of kindness, good temper, cheerfulness and amiability to all. True, the vicar in question is what may be called “liverish,” and a small boy’s sneeze may seem, to a mind perverted by bilious bodily secretions, like the collapse of a universe.