often broke out in every parish, and helped to fill the conventicles. Though occupying the position of a gentleman, he was treated with scant respect, and seldom regarded by his squire or his lady as an equal. Hospitality or attention was rarely shown him except when he was wanted to take a hand at cards, to fill a vacant place at the table, or to give information upon some subject of which he was supposed to possess especial knowledge. Between him and his scanty congregation there was little love or regard; the one looked upon his duties as weary and monotonous, whilst the poor knew from the means of "Sir Crape" that their necessities could not be relieved. Ast a rule the country vicar was always married, and often, if we credit the satire of the period, to "My Lady's antiquated waiting maid," who, perhaps, in her youth had not been cruel to My Lord. Did not that pliant divine, the Rev. Mr. Tusher, of Castlewood, link himself to the tirewoman of My Lady? Yet if the position of the rural parson was degrading, that of the domestic chaplain was still more so. He was the butt of the household, the object of derision to the boys of the family he was sometimes called upon to teach, the scorn of the servants, and, though he dined at the table of his patron, was expected to retire when the sweets were served. If he resisted this custom, his opposition, as we see from the Tatler, sometimes cost him his post. "I am chaplain," writes Addison in the guise of one of these clerical menials, "to an honourable family, very regular at the hours of devotion, and, I hope, of an unblameable life; but for not offering to rise at the second course I found my patron and his lady very sullen and out of humour, though at first I did not know the reason of it. At length, when I happened to help myself to a jelly, the lady of the house, otherwise a devout woman, told me that it did not become a man of my cloth to delight in such frivolous food : but as I still continued to sit out the last course I was yesterday informed by the butler that his lordship had no farther occasion for my service." What a flood of light is thrown upon the position of the unhappy chaplain by these words, "informed by the butler !”

When the parson took his walks abroad he was always dressed in cassock and gown and his head covered with the heavy wig of the period. Then, as now, there were dandies in the sacred profession-though only in London-who prided themselves upon their powdered periwigs, their white hands, the sheen of their gowns and polish of their shoes, the dulcet tones in which they appealed to the fair sex and the expressive sentimentality of their gaze. Steele takes these "pretty fellows in sacred orders" to task. "I therefore earnestly desire," he writes in a Tatler, "our young missionaries from the Universities to consider where they are, and not dress and look and move like young officers. It is no disadvantage to have a very handsome white hand, but were I to preach repentance to a gallery of ladies, I would, methinks, keep my gloves on." Nor were the arts of these "pretty fellows" wholly ineffectual. What satirist is it who said that the religion of young ladies is-curates? Thus writes in a Tatler Miss Penitence Gentle to one the Rev. Mr. Ralph Incense, chaplain to the dowager Countess of Brumpton. "I heard and saw you preach last Sunday. I am an ignorant young woman and understood not half you said: but ah! your manner when you held up both your hands towards our pew! Did you design to win me to Heaven or yourself?" Can the nineteenth century say that the race of Penitence Gentle's and Ralph Incense's has wholly died out? As long as the

mechanism of a creed has to be maintained in order to regulate and exalt its animating spirit, hero-worship of this description will never lack a shrine.

We have but alluded to the prominent features of this reign which are presented to us in the papers of the four volumes of the Tatler. No period is richer in the contemporary materials it offers for a complete and vivid history of its times than the reign of Queen Anne, and of these materials the essays penned by Addison and Steele are among the richest. Not a subject which interested our ancestors but is brought forward, discussed and dismissed. The style of the Tatler is here and there somewhat less light than that of its

more popular contemporary the Spectator; but embedded in its pages are essays so humorous, so truthful, so suggestive, so replete with advice and instruction of the highest order, that they well deserve to be separated from their fellows and taken out of the oblivion in which they have too long been allowed to remain. This selection has now been attempted, and it is hoped not without success.

After a circulation of some twenty months the Tatler suddenly ceased to appear, Jan. 2, 1711. Various reasons have been given for its withdrawal at the height of its prosperity, but if we criticise the politics of the hour the one real reason is not difficult to discover. According to Steele the Tatler was discontinued because the world had ascertained that he himself was its editor and chief contributor. So long as he wrote anonymously and his personality was kept in the background the strength of his attacks upon gambling, duelling, and the other vices of the age was unimpaired. The sermon was excellent, provided the preacher was unknown. But what was to be said of the discourse when the pulpit orator was found to be more than liberally endowed with the frailties of our erring nature, and to practise seldom what he so eloquently enlarged upon? "I never designed in my articles," writes Steele, when announcing the withdrawal of the Tatler, "to give any man any secret wound by my concealment, but spoke in the character of an old man, a philosopher, a humourist, an astrologer and a censor, to allure my reader with the variety of my subjects and insinuate if I could the weight of reason with the agreeableness of wit. The general purpose of the whole has been to recommend truth, innocence, honour and virtue as the chief ornaments of life; but I considered that severity of manners was absolutely necessary to him who would censure others; and for that reason, and that only, chose to talk in a mask. I shall not carry my humility so far as to call myself a vicious man; but at the same time must confess, my life is at best but pardonable. And with no greater character than this, a man would make an indifferent progress in attacking prevailing and fashionable vices, which

Mr. Bickerstaff has done with a freedom of spirit that would have lost both its beauty and efficacy, had it been pretended to by Mr. Steele." Yet this statement is but half the truth. The stripping off the "mask" may have had some connection with the extinction of the Tatler, but we fancy that in Steele's dismissal from his post as Gazetteer lies the actual and dominant reason. It was from his official position as Gazetteer, that Steele was indebted for the early and trustworthy news with which he supplied his paper, and which caused the Tatler to triumph over all its rivals. The London Post, the Postboy, and Dyer's News Letter, in discussing foreign intelligence, were greatly at a disadvantage when compared with the most popular journal of the time, which drew its information direct from the fountain-head. Deprived of his office Steele saw that the days of the Tatler were numbered, and that it must either exist, like the rest, as a political paper, or develop its social and humorous articles. He preferred the latter course, and from the ashes of the defunct Tatler arose the Spectator.

Why was Steele compelled to resign his office as Gazetteer? It appears that he permitted certain articles, though apparently not written by himself, reflecting upon the State, and especially upon Harley, to find their way into the columns of the Tatler.

As we have already related, Steele was indebted for his appointment of Gazetteer to Arthur Mainwaring, who had obtained it from Harley, then one of the two Secretaries of State, the other being Lord Sunderland, the son-in-law of the great Marlborough. Owing to the tactics of party warfare, the Whigs, divided and disheartened, were now gradually being ousted from office. At last the trial of Sacheverell completed their overthrow. Sunderland, from whose office at Whitehall so many of Steele's letters had been dated, was dismissed, and was succeeded by Lord Dartmouth, a staunch but violent Tory. A few months, however, before his resignation Sunderland had appointed Steele to a Commissionership of Stamps, a vacancy having been created by the nomination of John Molesworth as envoy to the Court of Tuscany. And now it was that there appeared in the Tatler three papers which were supposed to

reflect upon Harley, then scheming for supreme power. Whether Steele penned these strictures or not he was regarded by all parties as their author, and his periodical looked upon with suspicion by the now dominant Tories. In the preface to the fourth volume of his Tatler Steele distinctly denies that he wrote the articles complained of. As editor he was responsible for their insertion, but of the venom they contained he was innocent. He held the quiver, but did not manufacture the poisoned arrows.

Denial was, however, useless. Steele was an object of suspicion to the Tories; he had made the now absolute Harley his enemy, and he declined to imitate the example of the bitter Dean of St. Patrick's and attach himself to the victorious party. It was considered a mischievous precedent that one holding the post of Gazetteer should lend himself to the heat and spite of faction. An official, it was said, should not engage in parties." Steele was accordingly dismissed from his office, and it was also thought that his three hundred a year, which he received as Commissioner of Stamps, would have, after a similar fashion, to be sacrificed. Swift, who had been employing his efforts for the poet Congreve to retain his official post, now performed the same service for Steele.

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"I was this morning," he writes in his Diary, "with Mr. Lewis, the Under-Secretary to Lord Dartmouth, two hours talking politics, and contriving to keep Steele in his office of stamped paper; he has lost his place of Gazetteer, three hundred pounds a year, for writing a Tatler, some months ago, against Mr. Harley, who gave it him at first, and raised the salary from sixty to three hundred pounds. This was devilish ungrateful, and Lewis was telling me the particulars; but I had a hint given me that I might save him in the other employment, and leave was given me to clear matters with Steele." Accordingly, Swift continues, he proceeded the same evening "to sit with Mr. Addison and offer the matter at distance to him as the discreeter person, but found Party had so possessed him that he talked as if he suspected me, and would not fall in with anything I said. So I stopped short in my overture,