I really don't know what we should do without Arabin.
It's a great thing for me to have him so near me, and if anything can put Slope down, Arabin will do it." The Reverend Francis Arabin was a fellow of Lazarus, the favoured disciple of the great Dr.Gwynne, a High Churchman at all points--so high, indeed, that at one period of his career he had all but toppled over into the cesspool of Rome--a poet and also a polemical writer, a great pet in the common-rooms at Oxford, an eloquent clergyman, a droll, odd, humorous, energetic, conscientious man, and, as the archdeacon had boasted of him, a thorough gentleman.

As he will hereafter be brought more closely to our notice, it is now only necessary to add that he had just been presented to the vicarage of St.Ewold by Dr.Grantly, in whose gift as archdeacon the living lay.
St.Ewold is a parish lying just without the city of Barchester.

The suburbs of the new town, indeed, are partly within its precincts, and the pretty church and parsonage are not much above a mile distant from the city gate.
St.Ewold is not a rich piece of preferment--it is worth some three or four hundred a year at most, and has generally been held by a clergyman attached to the cathedral choir.

The archdeacon, however, felt, when the living on this occasion became vacant, that it imperatively behoved him to aid the force of his party with some tower of strength, if any such tower could be got to occupy St.
Ewold's.

He had discussed the matter with his brethren in Barchester, not in any weak spirit as the holder of patronage to be used for his own or his family's benefit, but as one to whom was committed a trust on the due administration of which much of the church's welfare might depend.