But the gates of Paradise is a far way to follow their Lordships; so let us trip down again lest awkward questions be asked there about our own favourite vices too.
And don't let us give way to the vulgar prejudice, that clergymen are an over-paid and luxurious body of men.

When that eminent ascetic, the late Sydney Smith--( by the way, by what law of nature is it that so many Smiths in this world are called Sydney Smith ?)--lauded the system of great prizes in the Church,--without which he said gentlemen would not be induced to follow the clerical profession, he admitted most pathetically that the clergy in general were by no means to be envied for their worldly prosperity.

From reading the works of some modern writers of repute, you would fancy that a parson's life was passed in gorging himself with plum-pudding and port-wine; and that his Reverence's fat chaps were always greasy with the crackling of tithe pigs.

Caricaturists delight to represent him so: round, short-necked, pimple-faced, apoplectic, bursting out of waistcoat, like a black-pudding, a shovel-hatted fuzz-wigged Silenus.

Whereas, if you take the real man, the poor fellow's flesh-pots are very scantily furnished with meat.