hands, and, it is to be presumed, honouring Mortal Action with a call! The 'Ingoldsby' humour is to be seen in it,-taking humour in its proper sense. Barham was not then far from turning with his face towards the Temple. Seeming chance impelled him to all his turns. It is, at least, believed that the suicide of a fellow-collegian, who destroyed himself in mistaken despair at having survived his father's love, had that sobering influence which gave to the church and its duties the semblance of a quiet field of action, a rest, and a refuge. But rest was the last thing a man with an active spirit, duties to perform, and responsibilities to look to is likely to find, or, if he be wise, cares to find. When Young Rapid exclaimed, "Push along! keep moving!" he gave a slang word to the dictionary, under which there is sound philosophy. The standers-still are the uncomfortable men in this world. Barham entered on a new career altogether, when, after taking his Bachelor's degree and receiving ordination, he took the curacy of Ashford, in 1813; went with a newly-married young wife, the next year, to Westwell, and subsequently accepted Warehorn, which may be said to be on, in, near, and about Romney Marsh. But old Owlers were there too, and Barham tapped those ancient smugglers and drew from them many a tradition or illustration which he afterwards worked into 'Ingoldsby.' His very enforced quiet gave him a cue for activity; and if he had not broken his leg by being upset in a gig, he would probably not have earned £20 by writing his first novel, Baldwin,' or had leisure to think out his better romance, 'My Cousin Nicholas.' Moreover, Barham was one of those men who are electric in recognising and laying hold of opportunity. He had come up to town to consult Sir Astley Cooper, when Barham met, in the Strand, a friend with a letter in his hand, ready for the post, and containing an invitation to a country curate to come up and be a candidate for a vacant minor canonry at St. Paul's. Of course, the letter was not posted, and Barham was elected to the modest dignity. He bade adieu to rural life in verses which indicated that he loved the shady side of Pall Mall better than the Mesh, as the natives call it, from which he was about to escape. A faint 'Ingoldsby' touch is in one of the stanzas: "Farewell the composts and perfume,— Farewell rum-punch, nectareous liquor! The noses of the squire and vicar!" There came with him to London, a wife, two boys, a girl, and an expectation." Hard work awaited, and was welcomed by him; for it was chiefly the literary work that he loved. Barham etched this bit of home-life in his diary: "My wife goes to bed at ten to rise at eight, and look after the children and other matrimonial duties. I sit up till three in the morning, working at rubbish for 'Blackwood.' VOL. XXXI. F She is the slave of the Ring, and I, of the Lamp!" This home was in Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields,-a street which has had among its inhabitants a variety of characters that might have figured in an 'Ingoldsby' series. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, when only the south side was built, could sit at his window and smell the hay-ricks in St. Pancras meadows. Thence General Fairfax-fit hero for a stirring ballad-issued his proclamation of 1648; and from Lord-Chancellor Finch's house Sadler stole the mace and purse. There Kneller and Dr. Radcliffe were neighbours, and had that famous quarrel about the garden-door. The Doctor said Sir Godfrey might do anything with it but paint it; and Kneller rejoined that he could take anything from Dr. Radcliffe but his physic! There Perdita Robinson first began to understand that beauty may be a misfortune, and Miss Pope dwelt on the memories of her bright acting days. Barham little thought when he had his home there that a society, with literary tastes like his own, would ever be named after him, or after the mask which he wore. The Ingoldsby Club hold their annual dinner at the Freemasons' Tavern, close to the spot where the earliest Ingoldsby legend was sketched. The members, like Barham, belong to the noble army of workers. Their labour conquers leisure, and yields enjoyment as their true and lawful prize. The Ingoldsby name suffers no disparagement in them. One of the members, Mr. James Albery, has given to the stage and to dramatic literature one of the most graceful of modern comedies The Two Roses.' In the London home, verse came to Barham as easy as benevolence; and benevolence was often the occasion of light and easy verse. From man down to cats, he had sympathy with all, and especially with cats. His house had several samples of the race, and to one of them whom he had rescued from the cruelty of street Arabs, and brought home in his coat-tails, half dead and half drowned, Barham addressed some true Ingoldsbian lines, when "Jerry" had grown saucy in prosperity. TO JERRY. Jerry, my cat, What would you be at? What makes you so restless?-you're sleek and you're fat, Soft rug you are lying on beats any mat. Your coat's smooth as silk, You've plenty of milk: You've the fish bones for dinner, and always o' nights What the deuce are you at? What is it, my Jerry, that fidgets you so? What is it you're wanting? (Jerry.) Moll Roe! Moll Roe! Oh, don't talk to me of such nonsense as that! As the Scotch would say, " Whiles You've been out on the tiles;" But you've sown your wild oats, and you very well know (Jerry). Moll Roe! Moll Roe! Well, Jerry, I'm really concerned for your case, By the edge of the wood, And have mus'd, that is, whistled, a sound just as good; (Jerry.) Moll Roe! Moll Roe! Wherever there is a house sanctified by honest labour, there too is generally much happiness. It was so here. There were rubs in the daily life, but they were made light of. The expense of sending a second son, Richard, to the University was coined into a joke. "He has now been a fortnight domiciled at Oriel," as he told Mrs. Hughes, "close to 'Sally.' An approximation," he adds, "which sounds rather dangerous, and at first affected his mother with a vague apprehension, not unlike that which seized on the mamma of a Cambridge student, on being told that her son was sticking close to Catharine Hall." Sally was the nickname for the college bell. Barham himself became a thorough London clergyman. Modest cathedral dignity and modest London parish promotion was all he attained to. For fifteen years he and his wife went on "growing" on one side of St. Paul's, and then only made a move to the other, in Amen Corner. The garden at the back of this house he describes as containing three polyanthus' roots, a real tree, a brown box border, a snuffcoloured jessamine, a shrub which is either a dwarf acacia or an overgrown gooseberry bush, eight broken bottles, and a tortoiseshell tom cat asleep in the sunniest corner, with a varied and extensive prospect of the back of the Oxford Arms, and a fine hanging wood (the "new drop" at Newgate) in the distance. His own account of his household is equally humourous. When his son "Dick," who had "taken orders," was about to go on a tour in Wales, Barham wrote to his daughter, "Fan:" "I shall advise him not to bother himself about keeping a journal, in the persuasion that this will be the most likely method of inducing him to write one. He takes after mamma in this respect, whom I always beg to go out and take a walk if I particularly want her to stay at home. You are yourself of Founder's kin in this respect." The humourist and wit out of the pulpit of his churches-St. Augustine, and St. Faith, and St. Gregory-was a serious, but not particularly vigorous preacher in it. People who thought "Ingoldsby" "cut capers" in his academic gown were mistaken: they found him "high and dry," anti-Romanistic, polished and elaborate. His sermons had "something of a smack of the elder essayists about them." In or out of church, he was a thorough "Church and King man, and we hardly need to have been told that by Church, Barham understood Episcopacy and Protestantism; and by King, loyalty to the throne, and strict Tory principles. As an author, "Ingoldsby" was familiar as a household word in every parish in Great Britain. As a clergyman, Barham was little known beyond his own. In the latter respect he observed the good maxim which recommends every man to mind his own business; and Barham's own business was that of his parish, the welfare, necessities, and wants of his parishioners. It may be added, that his parish was not confined to the one which lies under shadow of St. Paul's: wherever a man was in sore want of counsel, courage, succour, advice,-or, if need be, a rebuke, Barham was ready to recognise in him a parishioner, to administer to his wants and to supply him with what he lacked. He enjoyed the luxury of doing good in a quiet way, and he knew no more of Exeter Hall than what he saw of the outside, on his way to or from the Chapel Royal. Whatever professional duties Barham had to perform, he never allowed his literary vocation or his pleasures to interfere with them. His cap-and-bells, moreover, never went with him into the pulpit. In his time, Barham encountered many strange specimens of the genus "parson." We stare at the Kentish incumbent who carted a load of bricks into his churchyard on a Sunday, for the repair of the chancel. We are not edified at another of "the cloth," who sat in a public-house, drinking his toddy, smoking his pipe, and driving bargains with dealers, while the bell was impatiently "ringing in." On one occasion, the bargain was not concluded when it was absolutely necessary to repair to church. But it did not drop from the vicar's mind. As he passed from the reading-desk to the pulpit, he leaned over the churchwarden's pew, and conclusively remarked: “Well, Smythers, I'll have that pig!" Accident, which so often served Barham, served him and others too as he happened to be in Harrow Church, taking the impression of a brass plate. He heard sounds of sorrow, and found them to proceed from a young couple who had given due notice of their coming to be married, but who had been forgotten by the clergyman, Mr. Bruce, who was nowhere to be found. Noon was approaching, when Barham announced his profession, and volunteered to knit the couple together. This was done to their satisfaction and the clerk's amazement. Mr. Bruce, for whom Barham left his card, probably thought it an impertinence, for he did not deign to notice his volunteer-deputy. Barham improved the incident by writing the following lines as he leant on the memorial tomb to Byron, in the churchyard: "Mr. Bruce, Mr. Bruce, When the matrimonial noose You ought here, at Harrow, to be tying, If you choose to ride away, As you know you did, to-day. No wonder bride and bridegroom should be crying. It's a very great abuse, Mr. Bruce, Mr. Bruce! And you're quite without excuse, And of very little use As a curate, Barham's readiness to do the work of absent, careless clergymen was not always rewarded with mere indifference. He was once terribly abused by a mob, for going to bury a corpse which the proper minister, his neighbour, had altogether forgotten. When Barham presented himself, the body had been detained, by the incumbent's carelessness, more than an hour in the churchyard. But Barham had more careless clergymen still among his acquaintances. That irreverend reverend gentleman, Mr. Cannon, the "Godfrey Moss" whom Hook made famous in his 'Maxwell,' thought nothing of leaving town and his duties at St. George's to take care of themselves. Frederick the Great, as that unclean butcher is called, was a child to Cannon at snuff-taking. The latter scattered more than he took, covered himself and filled a house with it. Once at the Chapel Royal, we are told, he set the Bishop of London sneezing through the whole of the Communion Service; and when the bishop subsequently remonstrated with the offender, the latter only wondered that the prelate did not take snuff. "I do," said Cannon, "and a good deal." He took it from an old fourpenny box, of which Croker was so ashamed that he showed his generosity and his wit by giving the reverend snuff-taker a handsome substitute, with a little gold cannon on the lid, and the appropriate motto, Non sine pulvere. Cannon's self-possession, on every occasion, was superior to that of his archbishop, Dr. Howley. At a dinner of the Sons of the Clergy, in Merchant Tailors' Hall, the primate had to give the simple toast, "Prosperity to the Merchant Tailors' Company;" but his nervousness tripped him into the expression, "Prosperity to the Merchant Company's Tailor." Of all the eccentrics of his day, the Rev. Mr. Cannon was the most eccentric. He had been a protégé of Lord Thurlow's, he became a favourite of the Prince of Wales. He was brilliant in wit and fascinating in manners, till "the drink, the drink, dear Hamlet," and that drink a never-ebbing tide of "ginnums," washed out his brilliancy and obliterated his fascination. He was the "Spoilt Child" of Carlton House, of ducal palaces, of troops of listening men and bevies of adoring |