Under the mystic number “nine,” I come to that William Archbishop of York, who was the nephew of Stephen King of England, and whom old St. Bernard belaboured with as many hard words as ever Sir Richard Birnie hurled, on a Monday morning, on ex-inebriated tailors captured on the preceding Saturday night. I do not believe a word of what the irate St. Bernard says against St. William, whom he accuses of the most horrible crimes. The slightest charge in the bill of indictment drawn up by him, whom Hurden calls a wicked old impostor, is love of good living. St. William, like honest Archiepiscopus Wilfred, had a tender inclination for roast goose! Oh, benedicte Gulielme! may you have found the bird ever as your inclination,—tender! The sacred goose is an appanage of the tailors, and it dates from that jovial St. William whom St. Bernard hated as cordially as though the former had made the latter’s hair-shirt too tight to comfortably breathe in after supper. Our tenth example is the St. William who was bishop of St. Brieux, in Brittany, who often pawned his robes to purchase corn for the poor. Here we see whence the society of tailors borrow their authority for depositing pledges, in order to purchase distillations from corn, and for the poor also,—their poor selves. This is highly satisfactory. There was one more William, namely, he who, English by birth, was the introducer of Christianity into Denmark, and who was of such good repute when living that he was buried in the mausoleum of the Danish kings, at Roeskild, after death. It was remarked of him that when he was reproving “drunken Denmark,” he invariably held his pastoral staff as though he were taking measure, as he probably was of the royal bad habits; and perhaps on this account he has come in for a share of the patronage exercised over the guild whose members take measure of men. And now let it be observed, that although I have mentioned eleven Williams, there are only _nine_ of them who really rank among the canonized saints. Is not _that_ suggestive? The fraternity, of whom it takes nine members to make a man, have naturally supposed that it would take nine saints to make one patron. It is clear, then, that it is not to _one_ William, but to _nine_ combined, that the guild address, or did in olden times address, their vows and acknowledgments; and exactly for the reason that there are nine Saint Williams have the English tailors chosen them, in a mass, for their one consolidated patron. _Quod erat demonstrandum!_ And now, having seen how the tailors took their patron, let us consider them generally. There have been many of note, either of themselves or in their sons. Church, bar, army, navy, poetry, and the stage,—they have by turns excelled in all.