unfortunate lack of advantages; but he was never unaware that intercourse with him involved his companions in an effort, a distinct, a would-be Christlike effort to make the best of him.  It was the same kind of effort they would soon be making when as Deacons they sought for the sick, poor, and impotent people of the Parish.  Mark might have expected to find among them one or two of whom it might be prophesied that they would go far.  But he was unlucky.  All the brilliant young candidates for Ordination must have betaken themselves to Cuddesdon or Wells or Lichfield that year.

Of the eighteen graduates from Oxford, half took their religion as a hot bath, the other half as a cold one.  Nine resembled the pale young curates of domestic legend, nine the muscular Christian that is for some reason attributed to the example of Charles Kingsley.  Of the twelve graduates from Cambridge, six treated religion as a cricket match played before the man in the street with God as umpire, six regarded it as a respectable livelihood for young men with normal brains, social connexions, and weak digestions.  The young man from Durham looked upon religion as a more than respectable livelihood for one who had plenty of brains, an excellent digestion, and no social connexions whatever.

Mark wondered if the Bishop of Silchester’s design in placing him amid such surroundings was to cure him for ever of moderation.  As was his custom when he was puzzled, he wrote to the Rector.

     The Theological College,

     Silchester.

     All Souls, ’03.

     My dear Rector,

My first impressions have not undergone much change.  The young men are as good as gold, but oh dear, the gold is the gold of Mediocritas.  The only thing that kindles a mild phosphorescence, a dim luminousness as of a bedside match-tray in the dark, in their eyes is when they hear of somebody’s what they call conspicuous moderation.  I suppose every deacon carries a bishop’s apron in his sponge-bag or an archbishop’s crosier among his golf-clubs.  But in this lot I simply cannot perceive even an embryonic archdeacon.  I rather expected when I came here that I should be up against men of brains and culture.  I was looking forward to being trampled on by ruthless logicians.  I hoped that latitudinarian opinions were going to make my flesh creep and my hair stand on end.  But nothing of the kind.  I’ve always got rather angry when I’ve read caricatures of curates in books with jokes about goloshes and bath-buns.  Yet honestly, half my fellows might easily serve as models to any literary cheapjack of the moment.  I’m willing to admit that probably most of them will develop under the pressure of life, but a few are bound to remain what they are.  I know we get some eccentrics and hotheads and a few sensual knaves among the Catholic clergy, but we do not get these anaemic creatures.  I feel that before I came here I knew nothing about the Church of England.