knowledge _in their own flocks_! Oh, brave wine-merchant! What a prince of godliness must this wine-merchant be! I say wine-merchant, or late wine-merchant, of Mincing Lane, Fenchurch Street, London. And, for God's sake, some good parson, do send me up a copy of the King's circular, and also of the bishop's order to send the money to Joshua Watson; for some precious sport we will have with Joshua and his "Society" before we have done with them! After "service" I mounted my horse and jogged on through Milkhouse Street to Benenden, where I passed through the estate, and in sight of the house of Mr. Hodges. He keeps it very neat and has planted a good deal. His _ash_ do very well; but the _chestnut_ do not, as it seems to me. He ought to have the American chestnut, if he have any. If I could discover _an everlasting hop-pole_, and one, too, that would grow faster even than the ash, would not these Kentish hop-planters put me in the Kalendar along with their famous Saint Thomas of Canterbury? We shall see this one of these days. Coming through the village of Benenden, I heard a man at my right talking very loud about _houses! houses! houses!_ It was a Methodist parson, in a house close by the roadside. I pulled up, and stood still, in the middle of the road, but looking, in silent soberness, into the window (which was open) of the room in which the preacher was at work. I believe my stopping rather disconcerted him; for he got into shocking _repetition_. "Do you _know_," said he, laying great stress on the word _know_: "do you _know_, that you have ready for you houses, houses I say; I say do you know; do you know that you have houses in the heavens not made with hands? Do you know this from _experience_? Has the blessed Jesus _told you so_?" And on he went to say that, if Jesus had told them so, they would be saved, and that if He had not, and did not, they would be damned. Some girls whom I saw in the room, plump and rosy as could be, did not seem at all daunted by these menaces; and, indeed, they appeared to me to be thinking much more about getting houses for themselves _in this world first_; just to _see a little_ before they entered, or endeavoured to enter, or even thought much about, those "_houses_" of which the parson was speaking: _houses_ with pig-styes and little snug gardens attached to them, together with all the other domestic and conjugal circumstances, these girls seemed to me to be preparing themselves for. The truth is, these fellows have no power on the minds of any but the miserable.