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than first-class. Of course, he would always read the 'Times' and give a shilling to the waiter. Lastly, he would have a gold watch, a mourning ring, and drink a glass of sherry after luncheon, standing at the table while the ladies were going out, and crumbling at the same time a piece of plum or seed cake. We are, however, not adequate to the material portrayal of the British gentleman. Our readers who want to see him in his habit as he lives must go to the pages of ' Punch.' The late Mr. Du Maurier has drawn him again and again. In his exquisite designs the British gentleman riots and revels in a hundred scenes. In Sir Pompey Bedell, indeed, he achieves the archetypal form. Who looks for all the British gentleman can be will find him there.

CLERGYMEN'S WIVES

IN much of the controversy that gathers round that insurrection, en permanence the revolt of the curates, there is an undertone audible, 'We can stand the vicar, but what we can't and won't stand is the vicar's wife.' To back up this view of the case stories have been told of clergywomen who have dared to give a bit of their mind to the curate, who have criticised his sermons and his dress, and who have even engaged him through an advertisement in a church newspaper.

No doubt there are managing vicars' wives-women who do not scruple to say to the most saintly and eloquent of unbeneficed priests, 'I've arranged with Mr. Jones, the junior curate, that he shall take the evening service next Sunday, as the Smithsons are expecting a niece of the Bishop, and will doubtless bring her with them, and I should like her to be favourably impressed with our church. You will therefore be so kind as to take St. Saviour's [the iron church near the canal]. It will be better for the vicar not to take any duty next Sunday, as I am afraid of his getting his feet wet after his bad cold.' Of course this sort of clergyman's wife is very trying to men who stand 6 ft. 2 in. in their socks, who stroked the College boat, and who, if pressed, will modestly admit that they try,

perhaps not altogether unsuccessfully, to combine the piety and learning of Cyprian and the rest of the Fathers with the eloquence of Bossuet and the tact and worldly discretion of the ablest of the great ecclesiastics of Rome.

In spite, however, of such cases, there is another side to the matter. It is very easy to make fun of clergymen's wives, and to represent them as the bustling tyrants of the parish; but, take them as a whole, we do not believe that there exists a nobler, a more devoted, or a more useful set of women on the face of the earth. No members of the community discharge better the duties which they are called upon to perform, or, acting as soldiers in the army of the State, acquit themselves more bravely and more efficiently. We give little verbal praise or apparent honour to the mother who brings up a body of vigorous sons and daughters, and trains them so that they shall possess the healthy mind in a healthy body. Yet she who performs this task, by no means an easy one, especially on slender means, is, in the truest sense, a patriot. To mould strong, selfreliant, God-fearing men, and to send them out fitted to do their duty to their country, is as important an act of patriotism as to serve the State directly.

Think of the number of governing men in India and the Colonies, of the Generals, Admirals, Judges, and great civil servants who were reared in country vicarages and rectories. The women who made the homes whence such men sprung deserve to be remembered. But if clergymen's wives are, as a class, admirable in their capacity of mothers and trainers of the strong and vigorous men that are needed so greatly by

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a governing race like the English, they are no less admirable as wives. Their fault, indeed, is that they are too good wives, and often spoil their husbands abominably. If instances of pure unselfishness are wanted, search the vicarages of England. The homes of the clergy are, as a rule, the homes of poor men with large families, but at the same time of men with that high standard of comfort and physical well-being which is taught in the Universities, and which characterises the cultivated class in England.

But in many cases the maintenance of this high standard of comfort means that the clergyman's wife must work as hard as a busy tradesman at managing and contriving for the vicar luxuries which she herself professes not to care for. Of course, there are plenty of instances to the contrary, but in hundreds of clerical households the whole energy of the establishment is concentrated upon making life soft for the man. It is thought nothing but right and natural that the vicar should have the best food, that his clothes should be new and good, that he should be the person to whom a pleasant holiday is an absolute necessity, and that his expensive hobby for books or coins or old oak or what not should be gratified. If the clergymen's wives merely denied themselves to pamper their husbands they might perhaps be pronounced to be more foolish than heroic, but it is the same story with the sons and daughters. The personal sacrifices that are made to send the boys to good schools, to keep them at college, and to give the girls a chance, are untold.

No doubt the clergyman makes sacrifices too, but in nine cases out of ten the real pinch falls upon the wife

It is she who spends the bulk of the family income, and it is therefore she who has to make the economies, and, as a rule, she does it without complaining. The bravery of the clergyman's wife and the way in which she faces her difficulties is often really magnificent. You see her at a garden party with her best bonnet on talking to the wife of Mr. Brown, the retired City man, about the way in which the neighbourhood has degenerated socially, and it seems impossible that she can be bringing up seven children on 400l. a year and a house. It is only when you notice the grey hair and the determined ring of her voice that you realise that she is a person whose life is a daily hand-to-hand struggle with domestic worries, small and great. One sometimes wonders that clergymen's wives, at any rate those of the selfish ones, should hold, as they undoubtedly do, a higher rather than a lower view of the priestly office. One knows what the abler courtiers, when they speak the truth, feel as to the more magnificent pretensions of Kings. They may be personally very much attached to their King, but they, most of all men, realise that 'dread sovereign' and 'august majesty' are merely useful forms of words. When you see people in a rage about nothing, or foolishly influenced by the absurd flatteries of a knave or a fool, you are forced to believe that there is a great deal of human nature even in Royalty-for even the best and worthiest of Royalties are liable, like the rest of us, to get occasionally into childish rages, or to make themselves foolish about little things.

In the same way, it must be very trying to hear a man preach with a passionate earnestness of conviction against unselfishness and want of self-control, and extol

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