Horner had contrived to get introduced to Mrs Clyde almost as soon as she had settled in the place, before I had returned from Paris; and there was Mr Mawley the curate, too, exercising the privilege of his cloth by continually frequenting her house. He drove me to desperation by going in and out, apparently just as the fancy suited him, as if he were a tame cat about the place.

His conduct was perfectly odious—that is, to any right-thinking person.

Curates and cousins are, I consider, two of the greatest obstacles to an innocent layman’s intimacy with the diviner portion of creation; and, in these days of reform and disestablishment, of hereditary and other conservative grievances, something ought to be done to abolish the persons in question, or at least handicap them so that other deserving young men might have a fair chance in the race for beauty’s smile and Hymen’s chain. They have an enormous advantage, at present, over outside men-folk. Girls like to have a sort of good-natured lap-dog about them, to play with occasionally and run their errands, “do this” and “that” for the asking—like Cornelius the centurion’s obedient servant—and make himself generally useful, without looking for any ulterior reward on account of services rendered. You see, cousins and curates are regarded as “harmless”—“detrimentals with the chill off,” so to speak. His scrap of relationship throws a glimmer of possession around the one, endowing with inherent right every act of his ministry; while his “cloth” invests the other with a halo of sanctity and Platonic freedom that disarms gossip of the usual clothes-peg whereon it hangs its scandal. “Cousin Tom”—by-the-way, did you ever read Mackworth Praed’s lines on the same theme?—is allowed opportunities for, and latitude in, flirtation, which poor Corydon, not a cousin never so remote, may sigh in vain for; and, who would be so despicable as to impute secular motives to the Reverend Hobplush’s tender ministrations towards those sweet young “sisters,” who dote on his sucking sermons and work him carpet slippers and text-markers without limit? Certainly, not I.

I do not mean to say, however, that curates and cousins have it all their own way always. There’s a sweet little cupid who “sits up aloft,” like Jack’s guardian angel, to watch o’er the loves of poor laymen. Still, it is very galling, to one of an ardent temperament especially, to mark the anxious solicitude with which “Cousin Tom” may hang over the divine creature—whom you can only look upon from afar as some distant star—without attracting any observations anent his “attentions.” The confounded airs of possession he gives 

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