the duty of patience and gentleness, and next day or the same evening see him in a black ill-temper because his slippers have not been put to warm in front of the fire, or, worse, because the cook has not done the vegetables as he likes them. 'I've asked you, my dear, a hundred times to tell the cook that potatoes done like this are utterly disgusting.' Mrs. Thrale once asked Dr. Johnson whether he ever 'huffed' his wife about the dinner. 'Repeatedly,' he replied, until one day she cured me by asking me if I were not ashamed to ask a blessing on food which I was next minute going to declare unfit to eat.' Plenty of other men's wives in all classes have no doubt been inclined to ask that question, but to a clergyman's wife such thoughts must arise not merely in regard to grace before meat, but as to a hundred petty incidents of life. In the abstract, one would think indeed that the position must be intolerable.

It is impossible for a man to be a hero to his wife, and yet a clergyman has to be something more than a hero. Very likely, clergymen are not more selfish and unheroic in little things than other men. Probably, as a class, they are quite as good, if not better; but then other men have not to set up the same high standard--and remember the standard applies quite as much to little as to big things. The question- Why don't you practise what you preach?' does not greatly affect Jones and Robinson, because, as a matter of fact, they do not preach unselfishness, patience, and kindliness, but it comes home with frightful force to the unfortunate clergyman. It really leaves him no room to practise in comfort any of the smaller vices, to be sulky or irritable, rude or lazy, or to indulge even now and again in a 'you may go to

the devil for all I care' attitude towards his fellow-men. The impossibility of being a saintly hero to his wife. might, indeed, be used as a strong abstract argument against a married clergy. 'If,' it might be said, 'you allow clergymen to marry you will turn their wives into sceptics; they will not be able to bear the contrast between the professions that a priest is bound to make and the sight at close quarters of his necessarily great shortcomings.'

But those who argued thus would know little of human nature. The effect produced on clergymen's wives is not the least that which might be expected. They seem hardly ever to apply with strictness the maxim of principle and practice in the small affairs of life, or to feel disenchanted if the vicar shows himself mortal in such matters as his dinner and his little comforts. As a rule, we should say that there were no more sincere upholders of the notion that the priestly office sanctifies the man and raises him above his fellows than the wives of clergymen. The love of the wife quite neutralises the effects of the contrast between what the clergyman as the expounder of God's word must preach and what as a man he is only too likely to practise in the rough and tumble of life. No argument for a celibate clergy can possibly be founded on the disillusionment of the clergyman's wife.

Clergymen's wives, however, afford on the other hand a very good argument in favour of a married clergy. See what excellent work they do for the Church and for humanity in the districts in which their husbands have their cures. In many cases, nay, in the majority, half the work of social amelioration in the

parish is done by the vicar's wife, and it is work that no curate could do-work for which a woman is alone competent, or, again, work which can best be done by a man and woman working together. And in practice this means work that can be done best by husband and wife in co-operation. Thus the marriage of the clergy means the introduction of women into a sphere of work half spiritual and half social, which is peculiarly theirs, but which they could hardly do except as clergymen's wives. The clergymen's wives constitute, in fact, a great body of volunteer workers among the poor.

But though we believe very strongly in the clergyman's wife, admire her unselfishness and heroism, and recognise the good work she does, we are quite willing to admit that she has her faults, like the rest of us. One of these faults requires special notice. We believe that the vicar's wife is often responsible for the unfortunate way, to use the mildest term, in which, in country districts, the Dissenters are sometimes treated by the clergy. The vicar is perhaps easy-going, and has knowledge enough of the world not to apply too strictly even so cherished a principle as the wickedness of tolerating schism. But his wife, womanlike, is against all compromises. She eggs him on to treat the Nonconformist minister as a heretic, a perverter of the people, and a far greater danger to the parish than the wildest profligate. Nulla salus extra ecclesiam is a motto which is to be driven in up to the hilt with all its odious consequences. Her absence of worldliness and her narrow sincerity do not allow her to admit that there is any truth but the one truth.

The most serious defect of the English Church

system in our rural districts is a certain want of urbanity, of kindliness, and of the fostering of a feeling of brotherhood towards the Nonconformist clergy. If only the vicar's wife could be a source of conciliation, instead of the reverse, rural England would be far more united than it is at present. It will, however, be a long time before this happy change is effected. It is to be feared, indeed, that the last persons to think of the Nonconformist clergy as anything but the subjects for that galling virtue, toleration, will be the clergymen's wives.

THE INTERROGATIVE BORE

UNDOUBTEDLY Socrates has much to answer for. The abuse of the Socratic method has shown the world, to borrow and slightly modify a phrase from Dr. South, what a dangerous and dreadful weapon a question may be in the hands of an expert bore. There is no torture greater than that which can be inflicted by a dull and persevering person whose manhood, like that of Uncle Joseph in 'The Wrong Box,' has been early sapped by a thirst for general information. It is possible that when he begins he asks questions with a desire to obtain information, but that phase of the domestic Grand Inquisitor soon wears off, and in the end he probes the knowledge of his friends from pure love of probing. The question is sufficient to itself. The answer is not really material. No subject is too great and none too small for investigations which, strange to say, are both vague and microscopic, and of time and place, appropriateness and inappropriateness, he recks nothing.

The questioning bore will ask you during breakfast (1) What is your opinion of the immortality of the soul? (2) Who is Mr. Billings of whom I hear you talk so much?'-Billings is a local solicitor who is engaged to your wife's second cousin, and his name was