Harry Drury, who was perhaps foremost in his feeling of antagonism to the vicar, was a man of decidedly literary tastes, though they shared his devotion with those of a _bon vivant_. He was a ripe scholar, and undoubtedly the vicar’s superior in talent and intellect. But he was essentially a coarse man, coarse in manner and coarse in feeling. Cunningham was the reverse of all this. He was, I believe, the son of a London hatter, but in external manner and appearance he was a more gentlemanlike man than any of the Harrow masters of that day, save Dr. Butler. He had the advantage, too, of a handsome person and good presence. But there was a something _too_ suave and _too_ soft, carrying with it a certain suspicion of insincerity which prevented him from presenting a genuine specimen of the real article. I believe his father purchased the living for him under circumstances which were not altogether free from suspicion of simony. I know nothing, however, of these circumstances, and my impressions on the subject are doubtless derived from the flouts and skits of his avowed enemies the Drurys. There was, I remember, a story of his having, soon after coming to Harrow, in conversation with some of his new parishioners, attributed with much self-complacency his presentation to the living to his having upon some occasion preached before Lord Northwick!--a result which no Harrow inhabitant, clerk or layman, would have believed in the case of his lordship, then often a resident on his property there, if the preacher had been St. Paul. But again, _Audi alteram partem!_ which I had no chance of doing, for we, though living on terms of neighbourly intercourse with the vicar, were of the Drury faction. I remember well an incident which may serve to illustrate the condition of “tension” which prevailed during those years in the little Harrow world. Mark Drury had two remarkably pretty daughters. They were in all respects as thoroughly good and charming girls as they were pretty, and were universal favourites in the society. Now Mark Drury’s pew in the parish church, where of course he never appeared himself, for the reason assigned on a former page, was situated immediately below the pulpit. And on one occasion the vicar saw, or thought he saw, the two young ladies in question laughing during his sermon, and so far forgot himself, and was sufficiently ill-judged, indiscreet, wrong-headed, and wrong-hearted to stop in his discourse, and, leaning over the pulpit cushion to say aloud that he would resume it when his hearers could listen to it with decency! The amount of ill-feeling and heart-burning which the incident gave rise to may be imagined. Harry Drury, the cousin of the young ladies, and, as I have said, Cunningham’s principal antagonist, never for a long time afterwards came within speaking distance of the vicar without growling “Brawler!” in a perfectly audible voice.