Alas! poor Baron! he does not seem to have at all foreseen what was to become of his own money! What would he have said to me, if I had answered his observations by predicting, that _he_ would give his great mass of money to a little parson for that parson's own private use; leave only a mere pittance to his own relations; leave the little parson his house in which we were then sitting (along with all his other real property); that the little parson would come into the house and take possession; and that his own relations (two nieces) would walk out! Yet, all this has actually taken place, and that, too, after the poor old Baron's four score years of jokes about the tricks of _Popish_ priests, practised, in the _dark ages_, upon the _ignorant_ and _superstitious_ people of Reigate. When I first knew the Baron he was a staunch _Church of England man_. He went to church every Sunday once, at least. He used to take me to Reigate church; and I observed, that he was very well versed in his prayer book. But a decisive proof of his zeal as a Church of England man is, that he settled an annual sum on the incumbent of Reigate, in order to induce him to preach, or pray (I forget which), in the church, twice on a Sunday, instead of once; and, in case this additional preaching, or praying, were not performed in Reigate church, the annuity was to go (and sometimes it does now go) to the poor of an adjoining parish, and not to those of Reigate, lest I suppose, the parson, the overseers, and other rate-payers, might happen to think that the Baron's annuity would be better laid out in food for the bodies than for the souls of the poor; or, in other words, lest the money should be taken annually and added to the poor-rates to ease the purses of the farmers. It did not, I dare say, occur to the poor Baron (when he was making this settlement), that he was now giving money to make a church parson put up additional prayers, though he had, all his lifetime, been laughing at those, who, in the _dark_ ages, gave money, for this purpose, to Catholic priests. Nor did it, I dare say, occur, to the Baron, that, in his contingent settlement of the annuity on the poor of an adjoining parish, he as good as declared his opinion, that he distrusted the piety of the parson, the overseers, the churchwardens, and, indeed, of all the people of Reigate: yes, at the very moment that he was providing additional prayers for them, he in the very same parchment, put a provision, which clearly showed that he was thoroughly convinced that they, overseers, churchwardens, people, parson and all, loved money better than prayers.