A few years ago, Mr. Putney Giles had not unreasonably availed himself of the position which he so usefully and so honorably filled, to recommend this gentleman to the guardians of Lothair to fill a vacant benefice. The Reverend Dionysius Smylie had distinguished himself at Trinity College, Dublin, and had gained a Hebrew scholarship there; after that he had written a work on the Revelations, which clearly settled the long-controverted point whether Rome in the great apocalypse was signified by Babylon. The bishop shrugged his shoulders when he received Mr. Smylie’s papers, the examining chaplain sighed, and the archdeacon groaned. But man is proverbially short-sighted. The doctrine of evolution affords no instances so striking as those of sacerdotal development. Placed under the favoring conditions of clime and soil, the real character of the Reverend Dionysius Smylie gradually, but powerfully, developed itself. Where he now ministered, he was attended by acolytes, and incensed by thurifers. The shoulders of a fellow countryman were alone equal to the burden of the enormous cross which preceded him; while his ecclesiastical wardrobe furnished him with many colored garments, suited to every season of the year, and every festival of the Church. At first there was indignation, and rumors or prophecies that we should soon have another case of perversion, and that Mr. Smylie was going over to Rome; but these superficial commentators misapprehended the vigorous vanity of the man. “Rome may come to me,” said Mr. Smylie, “and it is perhaps the best thing it could do. This is the real Church without Romish error.” The bishop and his reverend stuff, who were at first so much annoyed at the preferment of Mr. Smylie, had now, with respect to him, only one duty, and that was to restrain his exuberant priestliness; but they fulfilled that duty in a kindly and charitable spirit; and, when the Reverend Dionysius Smylie was appointed chaplain to Lothair, the bishop did not shrug his shoulders, the chaplain did not sigh, nor the archdeacon groan.