from the London road, and is made through a ponderous
gateway under a heavy stone arch, unnecessary, one would

suppose, at any time, for the protection of twelve old men,
but greatly conducive to the good appearance of Hiram's

charity. On passing through this portal, never closed to anyone
from 6 A.M. till 10 P.M., and never open afterwards,

except on application to a huge, intricately hung mediaeval
bell, the handle of which no uninitiated intruder can possibly

find, the six doors of the old men's abodes are seen, and beyond
them is a slight iron screen, through which the more happy

portion of the Barchester elite pass into the Elysium of Mr
Harding's dwelling.

Mr Harding is a small man, now verging on sixty years, but
bearing few of the signs of age; his hair is rather grizzled,

though not gray; his eye is very mild, but clear and bright,
though the double glasses which are held swinging from his

hand, unless when fixed upon his nose, show that time has told
upon his sight; his hands are delicately white, and both

hands and feet are small; he always wears a black frock coat,
black knee-breeches, and black gaiters, and somewhat scandalises

some of his more hyperclerical brethren by a black
neck-handkerchief.

Mr Harding's warmest admirers cannot say that he was
ever an industrious man; the circumstances of his life have

not called on him to be so; and yet he can hardly be called
an idler. Since his appointment to his precentorship, he has

published, with all possible additions of vellum, typography,
and gilding, a collection of our ancient church music, with

some correct dissertations on Purcell, Crotch, and Nares. He
has greatly improved the choir of Barchester, which, under

his dominion, now rivals that of any cathedral in England.
He has taken something more than his fair share in the

cathedral services, and has played the violoncello daily to
such audiences as he could collect, or, faute de mieux, to no

audience at all.
We must mention one other peculiarity" target="_blank" title="n.特色；特性；怪癖">peculiarity of Mr Harding. As

we have before stated, he has an income of eight hundred a
year, and has no family but his one daughter; and yet he is

never quite at ease in money matters. The vellum and gilding
of 'Harding's Church Music' cost more than any one knows,

except the author, the publisher, and the Rev. Theophilus
Grantly, who allows none of his father-in-law's extravagances

to escape him. Then he is generous to his daughter, for whose
service he keeps a small carriage and pair of ponies. He is,

indeed, generous to all, but especially to the twelve old men
who are in a peculiar manner under his care. No doubt with

such an income Mr Harding should be above the world, as
the saying is; but, at any rate, he is not above Archdeacon

Theophilus Grantly, for he is always more or less in debt to
his son-in-law, who has, to a certain extent, assumed the

arrangement of the precentor's pecuniary affairs.
CHAPTER II

The Barchester Reformer
Mr Harding has been now precentor of Barchester for

ten years; and, alas, the murmurs respecting the proceeds
of Hiram's estate are again becoming audible. It is not

that any one begrudges to Mr Harding the income which he
enjoys, and the comfortable place which so well becomes him;

but such matters have begun to be talked of in various parts
of England. Eager pushing politicians have asserted in the

House of Commons, with very telling indignation, that the
grasping priests of the Church of England are gorged with the

wealth which the charity of former times has left for the solace
of the aged, or the education of the young. The well-known

case of the Hospital of St Cross has even come before the law
courts of the country, and the struggles of Mr Whiston, at

Rochester, have met with sympathy and support. Men are
beginning to say that these things must be looked into.

Mr Harding, whose conscience in the matter is clear, and
who has never felt that he had received a pound from Hiram's

will to which he was not entitled, has naturally taken the part
of the church in talking over these matters with his friend, the

bishop, and his son-in-law, the archdeacon. The archdeacon,
indeed, Dr Grantly, has been somewhat loud in the matter.

He is a personal friend of the dignitaries of the Rochester
Chapter, and has written letters in the public press on the

subject of that turbulent Dr Whiston, which, his admirers
think, must wellnigh set the question at rest. It is also known

at Oxford that he is the author of the pamphlet signed
'Sacerdos' on the subject of the Earl of Guildford and St

Cross, in which it is so clearly argued that the manners of the
present times do not admit of a literal adhesion to the very

words of the founder's will, but that the interests of the church
for which the founder was so deeply concerned are best consulted

in enabling its bishops to reward those shining lights whose
services have been most signally serviceable to Christianity.

In answer to this, it is asserted that Henry de Blois,
founder of St Cross, was not greatly interested in the welfare

of the reformed church, and that the masters of St Cross, for
many years past, cannot be called shining lights in the service

of Christianity; it is, however, stoutly maintained, and no
doubt felt, by all the archdeacon's friends, that his logic is

conclusive, and has not, in fact, been answered.
With such a tower of strength to back both his arguments

and his conscience, it may be imagined that Mr Harding has
never felt any compunction as to receiving his quarterly sum

of two hundred pounds. Indeed, the subject has never presented
itself to his mind in that shape. He has talked not unfrequently,

and heard very much about the wills of old founders and
the incomes arising from their estates, during the last year

or two; he did even, at one moment, feel a doubt (since expelled
by his son-in-law's logic) as to whether Lord Guildford

was clearly entitled to receive so enormous an income as he
does from the revenues of St Cross; but that he himself was

overpaid with his modest eight hundred pounds--he who, out
of that, voluntarily gave up sixty-two pounds eleven shillings

and fourpence a year to his twelve old neighbours--he who,
for the money, does his precentor's work as no precentor

has done it before, since Barchester Cathedral was built,--such
an idea has never sullied his quiet, or disturbed his conscience.

Nevertheless, Mr Harding is becoming uneasy at the rumour
which he knows to prevail in Barchester on the subject. He is

aware that, at any rate, two of his old men have been heard to
say, that if everyone had his own, they might each have their

hundred pounds a year, and live like gentlemen, instead of a
beggarly one shilling and sixpence a day; and that they had

slender cause to be thankful for a miserable dole of twopence,
when Mr Harding and Mr Chadwick, between them, ran

away with thousands of pounds which good old John Hiram
never intended for the like of them. It is the ingratitude of

this which stings Mr Harding. One of this discontented pair,
Abel Handy, was put into the hospital by himself; he had

been a stone-mason in Barchester, and had broken his thigh
by a fall from a scaffolding, while employed about the cathedral;

and Mr Harding had given him the first vacancy in the
hospital after the occurrence, although Dr Grantly had been

very anxious to put into it an insufferable clerk of his at
Plumstead Episcopi, who had lost all his teeth, and whom the

archdeacon hardly knew how to get rid of by other means. Dr
Grantly has not forgotten to remind Mr Harding how well

satisfied with his one-and-sixpence a day old Joe Mutters would
have been, and how injudicious it was on the part of Mr