With respect to the profession of fools, in its connection with the Clergy, there are two circumstances which present themselves to our attention, and excite our surprise. In old pictures and woodcuts representing inner clerical life, the presence of the jester proves that he was an actual member of the godly and merry household. This is further certain by several edicts, which forbid, not only various church dignitaries therein named from maintaining fools, but also forbidding abbesses from making dull days in convents tolerable by employing jesters to help them through such heavy seasons. But if it be matter of some surprise, to find grave religious dignitaries and solemn lady abbesses taking pleasure in such jokes as the professional mirth-maker could manufacture for them, a still greater measure of surprise is excited by the fact, that these holy personages occasionally acted the fool themselves, at the tables of patrons whose particular favour they most earnestly desired. That this irregular practice must have prevailed to a very wide extent, is ascertained by a passage in a decree of the Council of Cahors, to this effect: “It is also our command, that the clergy shall not practise as jesters, fools, or buffoons (_Joculatores, Goliardi, seu Bufones_), declaring that if they exercise such disgraceful profession for one year, they are thereby deprived of every ecclesiastical privilege; and further ordering, that if they do not desist, after being duly admonished, they shall be subjected, in addition, to secular punishment.” I am afraid that the Council of Cahors would not even have granted exemption to Sydney Smith. Among the punishments alluded to, was whipping--after degradation. The last alone was no joke to a clerical jester. He was condemned to serve his brethren, and to go to communion as a simple laic. If such an offender travelled without testimonials, he was further subject to great annoyance and suspicion, as (to take an early example) when Chrysostom, at Constantinople, hospitably entertained some agreeable Egyptian monks, he was delighted with his visitors, but he would not admit them to the Eucharist. The joyous strangers might, for aught he knew, be under censure, and he treated them accordingly.