While his nephew’s whiskers have been budding, and his brother-in-law has been spending his money and leave, Mr. Honeyman’s hopes have been withering, his sermons growing stale, his once blooming popularity drooping and running to seed. Many causes have contributed to bring him to his present melancholy strait. When you go to Lady Whittlesea’s Chapel now, it is by no means crowded. Gaps are in the pews: there is not the least difficulty in getting a snug place near the pulpit, whence the preacher can look over his pocket-handkerchief and see Lord Dozeley no more: his lordship has long gone to sleep elsewhere and a host of the fashionable faithful have migrated too. The incumbent can no more cast his fine eyes upon the French bonnets of the female aristocracy and see some of the loveliest faces in Mayfair regarding his with expressions of admiration. Actual dowdy tradesmen of the neighbourhood are seated with their families in the aisles: Ridley and his wife and son have one of the very best seats. To be sure Ridley looks like a nobleman, with his large waistcoat, bald head, and gilt book: J. J. has a fine head; but Mrs. Ridley! cook and housekeeper is written on her round face. The music is by no means of its former good quality. That rebellious and ill-conditioned basso Bellew has seceded, and seduced the four best singing boys, who now perform glees at the Cave of Harmony. Honeyman has a right to speak of persecution, and to compare himself to a hermit in so far that he preaches in a desert. Once, like another hermit, St. Hierome, he used to be visited by lions. None such come to him now. Such lions as frequent the clergy are gone off to lick the feet of other ecclesiastics. They are weary of poor Honeyman’s old sermons.