openly. He closed his prayer-book suddenly,
and walked out of the chapel. The manciple
came to know what was his reason for so
doing. He replied, The irreverent manner
in which service is conducted. On the following
day, after chapel service (from which the
Master himself was, as usual absent), the old
man was summoned by a verbal message
through a servant into the presence of the
Vicar of Cripplegate. He was preparing to
obey the summons, when the manciple burst
in, crying, "If you don't attend the Master
instantly, you'll be discommoned!" The old
gentleman did what every young gentleman
would have done—altered his mind and
remained where he was; disposed in hot blood,
to return the great autocrat for his polite
message, an answer couched in the same
style. No more was said; no charge was
notified to the Bore; no witness was
examined, until the date of the following order,
which contains the Master's revenge upon his
sinful Brother; we italicise one or two words:

CHARTERHOUSE.—At an assembly of the governors,
held on Saturday, the twenty-ninth day of March,
eighteen hundred and fifty-one:—Upon hearing the
Master's report, that complaint having been made to
him of the conduct of Simon Slow, one of the Poor
Brothers in the chapel, he had summoned him to
attend and answer such complaints, and that the said
Simon Slow had peremptorily, and in very disrespectful
language, refused to attend. And upon hearing
the said Simon Slow, we order that he leave the
hospital on or before Thursday next, the third day of
April, and be deprived of all benefit of his place for
three calendar months; and we warn the said Simon
Slow, that if, on his return to the hospital, such misconduct
be repeated, he will be expelled.

And so the old gentleman who had been
too obstinately reverent to his Great Master,
and too impatiently irreverent towards his
little master, was sent adrift to learn behaviour
to his betters. During his absence, the
order for his suspension was, in the usual
manner, posted in the public hall.

When he came back, the knowledge that he
had been posted in this way was the first wound
to Slow's feelings. He appealed to the
Master about that, and the great man poured
in balm by curtly telling him, that the
matter had been disposed of. But the old
subject of contention still existed: the old
man, with his stiff conscience, was as much a
Bore as ever. Next year there appeared,
accordingly, another order, setting forth that
upon the Master's statement relative to
Simon Slow's usual conduct in chapel, it is
ordered that he be deprived of all benefit of
his place for three calendar months. With
this order the reverend Master conveyed
private intimation, that on the old man's
writing an apology, it might be cancelled.
But old Simon felt, of course, in his obstinacy,
that he was a person wronged, not a
wrong-doer, and so he went adrift into the
world again. Upon his return he made an
attempt, in which he had before been checked
by an imperious Must from the head of the
establishment, to assure peace by absenting
himself from the chapel in which his sense of
religious duty was offended, and betaking
himself quietly to an adjacent church instead.
He did this at his peril, but for several
months did it unmolested. At last came the
peremptory order of the Master that he
should go to worship where there was for
him—though not necessarily for others—only
irreverence and discord; and, on the twenty-
second of March last year thus the final
order ran:

The Master having stated that one of the Poor
Brothers had again offended against the regulations of
the hospital, by removing from the place assigned to
him among the Poor Brothers in the chapel; that
although twice admonished, he had not returned to his
place, but had absented himself from divine service in
the chapel for a fortnight and upwards, the said Simon
Slow was called in, and what he had to say in answer
having been heard, it was ordered that he be not
permitted to reside in the hospital after the thirty-first day
of March instant, and that he leave the hospital accordingly;
but that he be allowed the sum of fifty pounds
per annum, payable quarterly, during the pleasure of
the governors, in lieu of his pension, and all other
benefits of his place as a Poor Brother.

The fifty pounds per annum Mr. Slow,
with the spirit of a gentleman still in him,
refuses to receive, and there the matter ends.
We do not wholly agree with the tone of the
pamphlet in which a friend of Mr. Slow's
has laid his case before Prince Albert, as one
of the governors of Charterhouse. We see
evidence in Mr. Slow of the existence of a
temper difficult to deal with in a worldly
way; the temper of an old gentleman
extremely obstinate upon his sense of right,
and perhaps more or less crotchety. But, in
another way—in the way of Christian
charity, which is supposed to be the main-
spring of the Charterhouse foundation—how
easily may all such cases be met! The
preceding narrative shows how the formalism
of the Poor Brother met the formalism of
Charterhouse, and how one crushed the
other. There is no hint that Mr. Slow was
any other than a most orthodox churchman
and a pious man. Would charity have been
outraged if, now a kindly preacher, now a
considerate Master, had dropped in at the old
gentleman's room, sat with him, listened to
him with respect, and, with the help of a
spirit of kindness, and the obvious
Christianity imparted by their bearing to the whole
tone of the place, had dissipated his objections,
set at rest his scruples, put him at ease in his
new position? If, after all, he did not like
the chapel service, why must he needs be
denied liberty to go where he could worship
more at ease? Throughout the case, we see
an old man fretted by imperious dictation.

Here and in other cases, insolence to the
Master seems to be the crime into which the
Poor Brother most easily falls, and for which
he is most frequently punished by suspension