X. The High Church Clerical Meeting (continued) 117 XI. The High Church Dinner Party STEEPLETON. CHAPTER I. EARLY TRAINING. AH! who can tell how hard it is to climb BEATTIE'S Minstrel. ABOUT that eventful period, twelve years ago, when the Church seemed to be awaking from the sleep of a century, Frank Faithful entered the ministry. The history of an individual is often an index, if not a history, of the state of the times in which he lived. This was eminently the case with the subject of this narrative; and therefore it may be instructive, as well as interesting, if we give some account of his early training and course preparatory to his entering upon the duties and trials of his sacred calling, just at a time when parties in the Church were brought into a new and unexpected relative position. It had been Frank Faithful's desire, from as early an age as he could first lisp his wishes, to become a B clergyman; and even when quite a child he took it into his head to lay by all the little gifts that he received from friends, in order, as he said, to get money enough to build a church: his idea then being, that every clergyman built his own church, as a man builds his own house. How this desire could have arisen in his mind seems singular, as his parents were in no way connected with ecclesiastical concerns. His father, indeed, was a churchman, of the kind that was common at the period of Frank's childhood; that is, he usually attended his parish church once on a Sunday; and, as soon as he was old enough to go, he commonly took Frank with him. From this habit Frank grew up in a prepossession for the Church, without knowing any particular reason for his preference of it to any of the various forms of dissent. As to what is called "party," or the distinction of " High Church," and "Low Church," he knew it not, even in name, for many years. His father being a man of business, and not taught to regard religion as any more than a Sunday affair, never thought of giving his son any systematic religious instruction. So long as he was educated as most others in his own rank then were, he was satisfied. Frank's chief performance in his youth of a religious character was to read two chapters every Sunday evening out of the Bible in his father's family; and, having a good voice, and a great ambition at that time to be a parson, he would read them with as loud and parson-like a tone as possible. His friends, and the servants of the house, all pronounced his reading to be equal to that of Parson Stentor's, the rector of the parish, which of course highly gratified Frank's ambition. "Frank Faithful is cut out to be a clergyman," became the general observation. His father, however, entered not into this feeling, be |