is undisturbed; we are able to dream that we are doing much good—­and we do a little.  Thus it was with Amos Barton on that very Thursday evening, when he was the subject of the conversation at Cross Farm.  He had been dining at Mr. Farquhar’s, the secondary squire of the parish, and, stimulated by unwonted gravies and port-wine, had been delivering his opinion on affairs parochial and otherwise with considerable animation.  And he was now returning home in the moonlight—­a little chill, it is true, for he had just now no greatcoat compatible with clerical dignity, and a fur boa round one’s neck, with a waterproof cape over one’s shoulders, doesn’t frighten away the cold from one’s legs; but entirely unsuspicious, not only of Mr. Hackit’s estimate of his oratorical powers, but also of the critical remarks passed on him by the Misses Farquhar as soon as the drawing-room door had closed behind him.  Miss Julia had observed that she never heard any one sniff so frightfully as Mr. Barton did—­she had a great mind to offer him her pocket-handkerchief; and Miss Arabella wondered why he always said he was going for to do a thing.  He, excellent man! was meditating fresh pastoral exertions on the morrow; he would set on foot his lending library; in which he had introduced some books that would be a pretty sharp blow to the Dissenters—­one especially, purporting to be written by a working man who, out of pure zeal for the welfare of his class, took the trouble to warn them in this way against those hypocritical thieves, the Dissenting preachers.  The Rev. Amos Barton profoundly believed in the existence of that working man, and had thoughts of writing to him.  Dissent, he considered, would have its head bruised in Shepperton, for did he not attack it in two ways?  He preached Low-Church doctrine—­as evangelical as anything to be heard in the Independent Chapel; and he made a High-Church assertion of ecclesiastical powers and functions.  Clearly, the Dissenters would feel that ‘the parson’ was too many for them.  Nothing like a man who combines shrewdness with energy.  The wisdom of the serpent, Mr. Barton considered, was one of his strong points.

Look at him as he winds through the little churchyard!  The silver light that falls aslant on church and tomb, enables you to see his slim black figure, made all the slimmer by tight pantaloons, as it flits past the pale gravestones.  He walks with a quick step, and is now rapping with sharp decision at the vicarage door.  It is opened without delay by the nurse, cook, and housemaid, all at once—­that is to say, by the robust maid-of-all-work, Nanny; and as Mr. Barton hangs up his hat in the passage, you see that a narrow face of no particular complexion—­even the small-pox that has attacked it seems to have been of a mongrel, indefinite kind—­with features of no particular shape, and an eye of no particular expression is surmounted by a slope of baldness gently rising from brow to crown.  You judge him, rightly,