reverend gentleman, from this single stroke in his character, which I think
comes up to any of the honest refinements of the peerless knight of La
Mancha, whom, by the bye, with all his follies, I love more, and would
actually have gone farther to have paid a visit to, than the greatest hero
of antiquity.

But this is not the moral of my story: The thing I had in view was to shew
the temper of the world in the whole of this affair.--For you must know,
that so long as this explanation would have done the parson credit,--the
devil a soul could find it out,--I suppose his enemies would not, and that
his friends could not.--But no sooner did he bestir himself in behalf of
the midwife, and pay the expences of the ordinary's licence to set her up,-
-but the whole secret came out; every horse he had lost, and two horses
more than ever he had lost, with all the circumstances of their
destruction, were known and distinctly remembered.--The story ran like
wild-fire.--'The parson had a returning fit of pride which had just seized
him; and he was going to be well mounted once again in his life; and if it
was so, 'twas plain as the sun at noon-day, he would pocket the expence of
the licence ten times told, the very first year:--So that every body was
left to judge what were his views in this act of charity.'

What were his views in this, and in every other action of his life,--or
rather what were the opinions which floated in the brains of other people
concerning it, was a thought which too much floated in his own, and too
often broke in upon his rest, when he should have been sound asleep.

About ten years ago this gentleman had the good fortune to be made entirely
easy upon that score,--it being just so long since he left his parish,--and
the whole world at the same time behind him,--and stands accountable to a
Judge of whom he will have no cause to complain.