Six days out of seven, and nine hours out of twenty-four, the reverend and learned Dr Gregory Greendale sat surrounded with open volumes, and immersed in profound thoughts, which ever and anon he committed to writing. For twenty years had this been his regular practice, and to this dull monotony of being nothing could have reconciled him but a strong sense of duty, seasoned with a little spice of theological ambition. But his ambition was not for worldly honour or for filthy lucre. His aspirings were not after mitres, stalls, and deaneries, nor was his anticipated recompense compounded, in his mind, of pounds, shillings, and pence. Far purer and sublimer motives prompted his diligence and filled his hopes. It was his ambition to occupy a distinguished station among the defenders of the faith, and to be hereafter celebrated in the records of ecclesiastical history as the most irrefragable polemic that ever wrote or reasoned. It was his opinion, that the church established by law was the best and purest in Christendom; and that if its tenets were fully and clearly stated, accompanied with such refutation of sectarian errors as he in his wisdom and logic could furnish, all sects would be converted, and all heresies expire for ever. In this most laudable pursuit the doctor was not altogether free from obstacles, disappointments, and interruptions. Frequently when he thought that he had only to sail quietly and smoothly into harbour, a fresh breeze of controversy sprung up, driving him out again into the unfathomable ocean. Oftentimes when, after a long, tedious, and multifarious series of references and quotations, he fancied that his argument had been completed, and the key-stone of his logic immoveably fixed, he found that some very unaccountable oversight, some trifling neglect, let the whole fabric sink down in confusion. And very, very many times, was the thread of his argument snapped asunder by the intrusion of the bustling, active, clever, managing, contriving, economical Mrs Greendale. With one of these interruptions our history commences.