through the windows, how grateful the odour
of dinner, rising like the smoke of an evening
sacrifice about six P.M. Handsome were the
equipages of Canon Rolls and Canon Blagdon,
plump and stately the horses, soft-springed
the carriages. The Church was a comfortable
warm cozy profession then;

No Low Church zeal and indignation,
No High Church zeal and innovation.

There was not too much to do, and the
canons of Salisbury did it. There was Canon
Broacher, who always went to bed after a
corporation dinner and remained there for a day
or two, subsisting on pills and black draughts;
there was Canon Brouncher, who always had
a blister applied to the top of his skull after
the tremendous exertion of his annual sermon.
There was, also, the never-to-be-forgotten Canon
Rolls, the poet, and Thomas Moore's friend and
Lord Lansdown's ally, who lived in good style
in the Close and gave musical parties, and who,
when he went out of residence, retired to his snug
country-house, where he had on gala days a
man dressed as a hermit to sit in a damp sham
grotto that he had hung with his own sonnets.
This worthy foe of Byron on the question of
Pope's merits as a poet, always travelled in good
style; but he had an intense horror of runaway
horses, and, when the turn-out for his return
home was ready, the horses fretting the gravel,
the postilions twisting their whips and looking
round from their saddles, the old canon would
come out and walk round and scrutinise the
steeds. Often he would stop in horror, and
exclaim: " Good Heavens! what have you got
there? Why, that horse is thorough-bred; or,
if he is not quite thorough-bred, he's almost
half. Take him out, or I won't go at all;
take him back directly!" Then there was
poor old Davis, who became imbecile at last,
and used to be drawn about in a Bath-chair
by an old servant who tyrannised over him,
and who used sometimes, when his master was
especially rebellious, to turn round and threaten
to leave his service; upon which the old man
used to burst into tears, and entreat " dear
Wilkins, good Wilkins," to stop with him.
Poor Davis had been a very religious man, but
when his mind went and his brain softened,
singularly enough, he used, when any good book
was read to him, to often say: "Pooh! don't
read that nonsense to me. Why do you read
that d——d nonsense?"

But the greatest of all ecclesiastical oddities
among the canons, was Lord Wilson, brother of
that great naval hero, Admiral Wilson. He
used to attend the market regularly, and buy
his own fish, fruit, and poultry. On one occasion,
his lordship, booted and heavily coated,
was knocked down and hurt by a rebellious
brewer's dray. He was carried at once into the
chief inn at Salisbury—the White Hart—and
put to bed, in spite of his assurances to the
doctor that he could get home. All that night
the servants of the inn heard the old canon
talking to himself as he lay in the great bed in
the state-room.

"No," he muttered; "Tom Rolton shan't
have it; I'll cheat him yet. Then there's my
prebendary at Durham; old Shaw thinks he'll
get it, but he won't; I'll cheat them all. I ain't.
going to die yet, and they need not think it.
Then there's the Dorsetshire property; they
think they're going to step into that; no, not
yet, Tommy Rolton, not yet!"

Many of the canons were connoisseurs in
art. It was a great joke against Canon Barnes
his misadventure with "a genuine Corregio."
The story ran in this way. Poking about one
day in a small upholsterer's shop, the canon
lighted upon a dingy murky picture, not without
merit—subject, a Nymph, or something of
that kind—a smiling head (allegorical) looming
through a brown treacly fog. By dint of soap
and water, and a little ammonia as detergent,
the canon found the picture had merit, and was
even Corregiesque. Five pounds purchased
the picture. Brought home, more ammonia
and more patent something, developed more
smiling nymph and less liquorice fog. Still
more washing elucidated the name. What
name? The name of the great painter—of
Corregio himself. Elated, chuckling,
enthusiastic, the canon gave a grand dinner to his
brother divines and the Salisbury cognoscenti
generally, to celebrate this remarkable
discovery.

At a given signal, the canon's butler drew
back the green curtain that veiled the immortal
picture. The purchaser's partisans were in
raptures; the sceptical were pooh-poohed and
laughed down. The canon beamed with smiles;
he waved his gold eye-glass patronisingly at
the picture, and discoursed on Italian art. He
was triumphant, and no one dared oppose him.
A few months afterwards, however, a young
painter and glazier in the town unfortunately
came forward and recognised the picture as a
copy he had made and given away, three years
before. The canon, who had refused one thousand
pounds for the picture, threw it into a
sale, in his mortification, and it was sold there
for seventeen shillings and sixpence. That was
the end of the "genuine Corregio," and not a
bad one either—for, between ourselves, it was
not really worth twopence.

Among the doctors of the old time, Dr.
Bruton was the most celebrated. He was
fanatically fond of his profession, and, if he let
a patient die, he at all events despatched him
secundum artem: which was a consolation to
the survivors, and, after all, was justifiable
homicide. There was one case of skin-disease,
almost leprosy, that had much puzzled the doctors.
Bruton talked of it, wrote about it, and staked his
reputation on the cure. The disease at last got
daily better. But the obstinate rascal persisted
in getting worse, which was unbearable. One
day an eminent medical man, who had
corresponded with Dr. Bruton on the subject of his
stubborn patient, came to the, hospital to see
the case and report on it in the London medical