He had been vicar of Yatton for about thirty years, having been presented to it by the late Mr. Aubrey, with whom he had been intimate at college. He was a delightful specimen of a country parson. Cheerful, unaffected, and good-natured, there was a dash of quaintness or roughness about his manners, that reminded you of the crust in very fine old port. He had been a widower, and childless, for fifteen years. His parish had been ever since his family, whom he still watched over with an affectionate vigilance. He was respected and beloved by all. Almost every man, woman, and child that had died in Yatton, during nearly thirty years, had departed with the sound of his kind and solemn voice in their ears. He claimed a sort of personal acquaintance with almost all the gravestones in his little churchyard; he knew the names of all who slept beneath them; and when he looked at those gravestones, his conscience bore him witness, that he had done his duty by the dust of whom they spoke. He was at the bedside of a sick person almost as soon, and as often, as the doctor--no matter what sort of weather, or at what hour of the day or night. Methinks I see him now, bustling about the village, with healthy ruddy cheek, a clear, cheerful eye, hair white as snow! with a small stout figure, clothed in a suit of somewhat rusty black, (knee-breeches and gaiters all round the year,) and with a small shovel-hat. No one lives in the vicarage with him but an elderly woman, his housekeeper, and her husband, whose chief business is to look after the doctor's old mare and the little garden; in which I have often seen him and his master, with his coat off, digging for an hour or two together. He rises at five in the winter, and four in the summer, being occupied till breakfast with his studies; for he was an excellent scholar, and has not forgotten, in the zealous discharge of his sacred duties, the pursuits of literature and philosophy, in which he had gained no inconsiderable distinction in his youth. He derives a very moderate income from his living; but it is even more than sufficient for his necessities. Ever since Mr. Aubrey's devotion to politics has carried him away from Yatton for a considerable portion of each year, Dr. Tatham has been the right hand counsellor of old Mrs. Aubrey, in all her pious and charitable plans and purposes. Every New-year's day, there come from the Hall to the vicarage six dozen of fine old port wine--a present from Mrs. Aubrey; but the little doctor (though he never tells her so) scarce drinks six bottles of them in a year. Two dozen of them go, within a few days' time, to a poor brother parson in an adjoining parish, who, with his wife and three children--all in feeble health--can hardly keep body and soul together, and who, but for this generous brother, would not probably taste wine throughout the year, except on certain occasions when the very humblest may moisten their poor lips