OF late years an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England: they lie verythick on the hills; every parish has one or more of them; they are young enough to be very active, and ought to be doing a great deal of good. But not of late years are we about to speak; we are goingback to the beginning of this century: late years-present years are dusty, sunburnt, hot, arid; we willevade the noon, forget it in siesta, pass the midday in slumber, and dream of dawn.If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, younever were more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expectpassion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard.Something real, cool, and solid lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when allwho have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto. It isnot positively affirmed that you shall not have a taste of the exciting, perhaps towards the middleand close of the meal, but it is resolved that the first dish set upon the table shall be one that aCatholic-ay, even an Anglo-Catholic-might eat on Good Friday in Passion Week: it shall be coldlentils and vinegar without oil; it shall be unleavened bread with bitter herbs, and no roast lamb.Of late years, I say, an abundant shower of curates has fallen upon the north of England; but ineighteen-hundred-eleven-twelve that affluent rain had not descended. Curates were scarce then: there was no Pastoral Aid-no Additional Curates' Society to stretch a helping hand to worn-out oldrectors and incumbents, and give them the wherewithal to pay a vigorous young colleague fromOxford or Cambridge. The present successors of the apostles, disciples of Dr. Pusey and tools ofthe Propaganda, were at that time being hatched under cradle-blankets, or undergoing regenerationby nursery-baptism in wash-hand basins. You could not have guessed by looking at any one of themthat the Italian-ironed double frills of its net-cap surrounded the brows of a preordained, speciallysanctified successor of St. Paul, St. Peter, or St. John; nor could you have foreseen in the folds of itslong night-gown the white surplice in which it was hereafter cruelly to exercise the souls of itsparishioners, and strangely to nonplus its old-fashioned vicar by flourishing aloft in a pulpit theshirt-like raiment which had never before waved higher than the reading-des