“‘Well, reverend sir,’ said he, with a bland smile on his face, ‘I am here at your own request. How you found out my place of abode I am at some loss to discover, and what your particular business may be with me, I can still less conjecture. I shall doubtless learn both at your convenience.’ “There was nothing in the words of this address to give the slightest offence; yet there was something in the tone in which it was uttered, to excite uncomfortable feelings in my mind, and I saw Mr. Walker slightly colour, as if he felt somewhat nettled at the manner at least of the address. Yet the feeling, if such existed, soon passed off; and he resumed his usual calm yet somewhat firm expression of countenance as he said: “‘The second part of your difficulty, sir, you have a right to have solved, as it shall soon be; with regard to the first it seems less to the purpose. I ought in the first place to say, that it is simply in my public character as the authorized preacher of the Gospel in this parish, that I have taken what would otherwise seem a great liberty with a perfect stranger, to request an interview with him, without first assigning grounds for the request. That you have so readily complied with it, I beg to offer you my thanks.’ “I was much struck with the somewhat stately form of language which Mr. Walker in this case assumed—so different from his ordinary discourse with his plain country parishioners. He took up the tone of the scholar and the gentleman with more ease than I had thought it possible for one whose course of life had been so long removed from the society of his equals. “‘Sir,’ said the stranger, ‘before you proceed further, allow me to protest against your assumption, that in your public character you have a right to exercise over me any superintendence or control. I belong not to your flock, I subscribe not to your creed. Even the tyrannical Church of Rome professes to fetter the minds and torture the limbs of those only who have at some period professed allegiance to her doctrines; and these are not days when the Church of England can safely arrogate to herself a power (however anxiously she may long to do so) which would rouse the dormant spirit even of an Italian slave.’