bitter in print. Mr Slope had endeavoured to strengthen his cause by calling Mr Arabin an owl, and Mr Arabin had retaliated by hinting that Mr Slope was an infidel. This battle had been commenced in the columns of the daily Jupiter, a powerful newspaper, the manager of which was very friendly to Mr Slope’s view of the case. The matter, however, had become too tedious for the readers of the Jupiter, and a little note had therefore been appended to one of Mr Slope’s most telling rejoinders, in which it had been stated that no further letters from the reverend gentlemen could be inserted except as advertisements.

Other methods of publication were, however, found less expensive than advertisements in the Jupiter; and the war went on merrily. Mr Slope declared that the main part of the consecration of a clergyman was the self–devotion of the inner man to the duties of the ministry. Mr Arabin contended that a man was not consecrated at all, had, indeed, no single attribute of a clergyman, unless he became so through the imposition of some bishop’s hands, who had become a bishop through the imposition of other hands, and so on in a direct line to one of the apostles. Each had repeatedly hung the other on the horns of a dilemma; but neither seemed to a whit the worse for the hanging; and so the war went on merrily.

Whether or no the near neighbourhood of the foe may have acted in any way as an inducement to Mr Arabin to accept the living of St Ewold, we will not pretend to say; but it had at any rate been settled in Dr Gwynne’s library, at Lazarus, that he would accept it, and that he would lend his assistance towards driving the enemy out of Barchester, or, at any rate, silencing him while he remained there. Mr Arabin intended to keep his rooms at Oxford, and to have the assistance of a curate at St Ewold; but he promised to give as much time as possible to the neighbourhood of Barchester, and from so great a man Dr Grantly was quite satisfied with such a promise. It was no small part of the satisfaction derivable from such an arrangement that Dr Proudie would be forced to institute into a living, immediately under his own nose, the enemy of his favourite chaplain.

All through the dinner the archdeacon’s good humour shone brightly in his face. He ate of the good things heartily, he drank wine with his wife and daughter, he talked pleasantly of his doings at Oxford, told his father–in–law that he ought to visit Dr Gwynne at Lazarus, and launched out again in praise of Dr Arabin.

‘Is Mr Arabin married, papa?’ asked Griselda.

‘No, my dear; the fellow of a college is never married.’

‘Is he a young man, papa?’

‘About forty, I believe,’ said the archdeacon.

‘Oh!’ said Griselda. Had her father said eighty, Mr Arabin would not have appeared to her to be very much older.

When the two gentlemen were left alone over their wine, Mr Harding told his tale of woe. But even this, sad as it was, did not much diminish the archdeacon’s good humour, though it greatly added to his pugnacity.

‘He can’t do it,’ said Dr Grantly over and over again, as his father–in–law explained to him the terms on which the new warden of the hospital was to be appointed; ‘he can’t do it. What he says is not worth the trouble of listening to. He can’t alter the duties of the place.’

‘Who can’t?’ asked the ex–warden.

‘Neither can the bishop nor the chaplain, nor yet the bishop’s wife, who, I take it, has really more to say to such matters than either of the other two. The whole body corporate of the palace together have no power to turn the warden of the hospital into a Sunday schoolmaster.’

‘But the bishop has the power to appoint whom he pleases, and—’