These tempers are for the most part lions in the way difficult to propitiate. The elementary doctrines of Christianity must be preached of course, and sin must be held up as the thing to avoid, while virtue must be complimented as the thing to be followed, and a spiritual state of mind must be discreetly advocated. These are safe generalities; but the dangers of application are many. How to preach of duties to a body of men and women who have thrown off every national and local obligation?--who have left their estates to be managed by agents, their houses to be filled by strangers, who have given up their share of interest in the school and the village reading-room, the poor and the parish generally--men and women who have handed themselves over to indolence and pleasure-seeking, the luxurious enjoyment of a fine climate, the pleasant increase of income to be got by comparative cheapness of breadstuffs, and the abandonment of all those outgoings roughly comprised under the head of local duties and local obligations?--how, indeed? They have no duties to be reminded of in those moral generalizations which touch all and offend none; and the clergyman who should go into details affecting his congregation personally, who should preach against sloth and slander, pleasure-seeking and selfishness, would soon preach to empty pews and be cut by his friends as an impertinent going beyond his office. His congregation too, composed of educated ladies and gentlemen, is sure to be critical, and therefore all but impossible to teach. If he inclines a hair's breadth to the right or the left beyond the point at which they themselves stand, he is held to be unsound. His sermons are gravely canvassed in the afternoon conclaves which meet at each other's houses to discuss the excitement of the Sunday morning in the new arrivals or the new toilets. Has he dwelt on the humanity underlying the Christian faith? He is drifting into Socinianism; and those whose inclinations go for abstract dogmas well backed by brimstone say that he does not preach the Gospel. Has he exalted the functions of the minister, and tried to invest his office with a spiritual dignity and power that would furnish a good leverage over his flock? He is accused of sacerdotalism, and the free-citizen blood of his listening Erastians is up and flaming. Does he, to avoid these stumbling-blocks, wander into the deeper mysteries and discourse on things which no man can either explain or understand? He is accused of presumption and profanity, and is advised to stick to the Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount. If he is earnest he is impertinent; if he is level he is cold. Each member of his congregation, subscribing a couple of guineas towards his support, feels as if he or she had claims to that amount over the body and soul and mind and powers of the poor parson in his or her pay; and the claim is generally worked out in snippets, not individually dangerous