full well that I was not acting properly in so doing. So as I said, only a few of us being left, Mr. Fitz-Adam winked to Father Peter, for the steward has a great way of making himself understood by winks and innuendoes,* whereupon the father got up, and having disappeared a while, presently returned with certain bottles of wine, which having opened, he poured into a large silver cup,t which he gave us to drink. Now it is necessary that, in order to explain this, I should inform my reader, that the father at one time claimed the privilege of keeping the key of the wine cellar; but because it was found that he made great gains, by endeavouring to sell that which the servants had a right to without payment by the charter of the house, the key was after a while taken from him, and he was permitted only to keep the command of a particular bin, the wine of which is of a peculiar quality, and though most pleasing to the taste, most injurious to the constitution.

So as I said, the father filled the cup, and it was handed round, but the doctor passed it, alleging that he had drank sufficiently, and it would have been well had I followed his example, but I was tempted by the sparkling colour, and so quaffed a large draught,-which I had no sooner done than I began to see the fine wrought ceiling of the hall under my feet, and the figures of my companions so mingled, that I could not tell one from the other; and presently all sorts of strange and gaudy

"A naughty person, a wicked man, walketh with a froward mouth. He winketh with his eyes, he speaketh with his feet, he teacheth with his fingers; frowardness is in his heart, he deviseth mischief continually; he soweth discord. Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly; suddenly shall he be broken without remedy." Prov. vi. 12-15.

+"And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. And great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath." Rev. xvi. 17, 19.

"Judah, and the land of Israel, they were thy merchants; they traded in thy market wheat of Minnith, and Pannag, and honey, and oil, and balm." Ezekiel xxvii. 17.

"Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." Isa. lv. 1.

"For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter." Deut. xxxii. 32.

fancies began to fill my mind, and I thought myself superior to other men, and as it were, winged and lifted into the clouds;* after which I fell fast asleep in my easy chair. How long I slept I know not; but when I opened my eyes, it was dark, and there was no one in the hall but the steward and the father, and they were talking together in under tones. The few words which I heard the steward utter fixed my attention, for I had slept myself sober; I therefore lay quiet, and was supposed to be still asleep.

"The plan of the doctor," said the steward, "is an invention of his own brain, in order, no doubt, that he may increase his popularity. If he resembled the secretary in his utter contempt of all honour which does not proceed from him he calls Master, and if, in short, he did not resemble other men in the desire of making himself a name, we should have no more hold upon him than we have upon the secretary. Madame le Monde was the first person who pointed out to me the advantage we might derive, in attacking him on this his weak side, and hitherto we have caught him everywhere, by following her suggestions. For instance, where he had established a school,"

"Which was done," remarked Father Peter, interrupting the steward," in opposition to me."

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True," resumed Mr. Fitz-Adam, "it was so in some degree, but as I was saying, when he established his charity school, for his school is, you know, for the lowest of the people, viz. the strangers and orphans on the estate, what must we do (or rather Madame le Monde, for I give her the credit of this contrivance) but affect to patronise it with all our influence; in consequence of which the poor doctor was so flattered, that he permitted Madame to nominate the teachers, and in some degree, to recommend the books. The consequence is this, father (and the steward laughed, and sipped his wine, and laughed again), that this same school, which

"Who hath wo? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eye shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter per verse things." Prov. xxiii. 29–33.

has been in action several years, has actually and in bona fide turned out more individuals attached to me and to my person, and my party, and my principles, and those of Madame le Monde, I say more individuals, in the proportion perhaps of ten to one, attached to me and to her, than to the other party; and the best of all is, that the worthy chaplain-he loves to be called worthyvaunts himself on the great good his school has effected, and prides himself on the efforts he has made for the advancement of his Master's kingdom; for it is one of his speculations, that we are all to be converted one day or another; and even the great Fitz-Adam, and the superb Madame le Monde, the venerable Father Peter, the librarian, and all of us are to be converted, and through his means no doubt; and then we are, masters, and servants, and all together, to be as the shepherds and flocks of the golden age, living in all sweet simplicity, and having no other pleasure or delight than in singing the praises of the Lord of the land, to the notes of the good doctor's harp; for of course he must lead the tune, or it would not be right. Such," continued Mr. Fitz-Adam, are his dreams and speculations; but I much fear, could he bring his pastoral visions into effect, he would find one character rather more allied to that of the wolf, than to that of the shepherd of the flock."

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"He builds these speculations," replied Father Peter, on certain messages in the Lord's letters, wherein, under language somewhat figurative indeed, we who are learned in these things have been made to understand that the Master's servants are to be gathered together as sheep, under one shepherd,* in the latter days, and to live in peace, and repose every man in his own place; neither do I doubt but that he supposes that he himself is to be the shepherd who is to gather and feed the sheep, and to rule them with his pastoral staff." "While you rather think, I make no doubt, that that honour is reserved for yourself, father," replied the steward.

"I do," returned the father, "and though I am now in the shade, yet the time was in which I was acknow

"And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." John x. 16.

ledged to be the only pastor of the faithful flock, the representative of the Master, and, in fact, his vicegerent in the house.* And I can even remember the period, Mr. Fitz-Adam, when you and Madame le Monde bowed to my sway."

"Be that as it may, father," replied the steward, "you and I were always, upon the whole, tolerably good friends; and to tell you the plain truth, I cannot say that I ever found your influence so galling to me as that of some of those who now set up to be teachers. You never gave me half the trouble that even this silly doctor does. To be sure, you are, as you say, now in the shade, but times may mend;-but to go on with what I was saying, I have explained how we counteracted the doctor's influence in the school; since the establishment of which, he has had several other plans which we have found means of rendering null in most instances. And now arises this new chimera,-this scheme for giving every one a copy of the Lord's letters, as they are called, for every fool to interpret his own way, and hence to think himself privileged to act according to his own interpretations. I am sure, Father Peter, you are not one who would approve of a measure of this kind." Certainly not," replied the father, "certainly not: for I hold that nothing can be more dangerous than to allow uninstructed persons to read those letters. But permit me to ask you, Mr. Fitz-Adam, if you disapprove of this measure, why do you give your countenance to it? why do you mean to honour it with your name, and that of Madame le Monde's, and why have you persuaded me to be present at the meeting?"

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"Why indeed," replied the steward, "why should I wish my friends and myself to have fingers in the pie which this pragmatical fellow the doctor has compounded, unless I had flattered myself that our whole hands might go in after them, and when that is done, if we do not spoil the dish, we are not so clever as I take it we are.

"But might it not answer just as well," returned Father Peter, "if you were to use your authority to

"And of the ten horns that were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell; even of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows." Dan. vii. 20.

quash the business at once. Give me only a little of your countenance, and I am assured that there are many individuals in the family whom I would bring to reason, or at any rate terrify into some sort of submission to old authorities."

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"The times will not bear it," replied the steward; 66 the inarch of intellect is such, Father Peter, owing in some measure to our improvements on the good doctor's outline of general instruction, that you cannot rule the house with your bugbears as you formerly did, and frighten the grooms and housemaids with your stuffed owls, and bats, and dry bones, as you did in the olden times the people have more sense. And the other party," he added, lowering his tone, are fearfully increased, and are daily increasing, and would indeed have multiplied, as far as I can see, to the utter subversion of my authority in this house, had we not found means to turn the doctor out of his course, and stop him short as it were in his career; for when first restored to his place, and set in authority in the house, he put me in fear, I can tell you, for he was for pleading the cause of him he calls Master, in season and out of season. But Madame le Monde was my best friend on the occasion-and to do her justice, she managed him much better than I could have done; for what must she devise but pretend to have been convinced by him, and so taking hold of him by his weak side viz. his vanity, she contrived to put it into his head, that he had already arrived at the perfection of his ministry, and having done so well hitherto, he must not advance one step farther, lest he should offend, and so drive many from him who were now his sincere admirers and followers. So he was induced to draw in his horns by her gentle touch; and as we had anticipated, the fears and doubts suggested by Madame le Monde, viz. the fear of injuring his followers by injudicious exposures of the truths contained in the letters of him, by some called Lord, and the doubts of the effect which might be produced on the servants' minds by such exposures, gradually worked upon his own mind, and cooled his zeal, rendering him such as you now see him, a troublesome pragmatical fellow indeed on some occasions, but one whom I have made more useful than any man in the house, in checking the forwardness of the secretary and his party, who, after all, are the persons most to be dreaded by me,