One of the ablest men, although a mumbling kind of preacher, in those times, was the Rev. Mr. Kidd, who was for so many years one of the curates of Liverpool, a kind of Church serf, who could never rise to be a Church ruler. He had many kind friends, and at many a table which we could mention a plate and knife and fork were always laid for the poor curate. But he ever appeared to us to be an oppressed and depressed man, with a weight upon his spirits which nothing could shake off. There was indeed a romance attached to his history, although he was perhaps the most unromantic looking person that the human eye ever rested upon. He was a brilliant scholar, when a student at Brasenose College, Oxford, and his hopes and ambition naturally aspired to a fellowship. It was supposed to be within his grasp. But how wide is the distance between the cup and the lip! The principal was unpopular, and some of his doings were severely flogged in a satirical poem which appeared without a name. Its cleverness led him to suspect Mr. Kidd, and, without looking for any other proof of the authorship, he became his sworn enemy, and used all his influence, and only too successfully, to turn the election against him. Some love affair, we have also heard, but this was, it may be, only “one of the tales of our grand-father,” went wrong with him about the same time. So that, altogether, he was thrown upon the world a sad and downcast man, with blighted hopes and blasted expectations from his very youth, and settled down into the curacy of Liverpool, where he saw more than one generation of inferior men, inferior in scholarship, in learning, in wit, in all and everything, promoted over his head. A pleasant, agreeable, quaint and original companion was poor Kidd amongst his intimates, but tongue-tied in a large party. He saw through the hollowness of the world, and despised it. There was nobody like him for unmasking a sham, and reducing a pretender to his real and proper dimensions. And then his chuckling laugh when he had accomplished such a feat, and impaled the human cockchafer upon the point of his sarcasm! And how bitterly he would allude to his curate’s poverty, as, smacking his lips over a glass of old port at some friend’s table, and he did not dislike his glass of port, he would tell us that his own domestic allowance of the same was “to smell at the cork on a week-day, and to take a single glass to support him through his duties on a Sunday.” Poor fellow! Once upon a time, and such godsends did not often fall to his portion, he had married a couple among the higher orders, and received for it a banknote which perfectly dazzled him. Then came the marriage breakfast, then the marriage dinner. He was a guest at both, and perhaps took his share of the good things which were stirring. His way home was through the Haymarket. Another gentleman, whose path was in the same direction, hearing a great noise, came up and found our friend fighting