customs’ duties; and the remedy would certainly arrive whenever the race of tax-gatherers should improve, which will be whenever the people shall learn their duty in respect of paying taxes. When all shall be done openly, and persons shall subscribe to government as they subscribe to any other institution, as a condition of sharing the privileges, there will be an end of secret informations and of perjury. Till then, as it is clear that there is far less of these grievances and crimes under a system of direct than indirect taxation, let those who dislike underhand enmity and false swearing advocate the utmost possible simplification of the system,—the imposition of few and direct, in place of many and complicated, taxes.
It was a sad necessity for Mr. Pritchard of the Turk’s Head to have to appear in the house of his rival of the Navarino; but it was necessary, not only to show himself, but to lose his cause. The Expedition stage-coach had started from the Turk’s Head from the time when Pritchard was the smartest of young innkeepers till now, when he was losing his energy and going out of fashion; and, during many a year, had he, the proprietor, paid the tax upon the two coaches which daily passed each other on the road. It had now suddenly occurred to Mr. Taplin that there must be a third coach always ready for use, in case of any accident happening to the other two. No protestations of the impossibility of more than two being wanted were of any use. The existence of the third could not be denied, nor its having been seen on the road within a month. Pritchard was compelled to pay for three.
And now was Richard’s turn. He happened to have a seal with a horse’s head and his initials upon it. Taplin charged him for armorial bearings.
Richard paid for these on his carriages, and he thought this enough. He stoutly argued his point about crests and coats of arms; and even went so far as to talk of appealing to the six judges if the commissioners decided against him. It was in vain. He threw down his 2_l._ 8_s._ at last, to save further trouble to himself and other people, and sighed over the seal, with the use of which he should indulge himself no more while in Mr. Taplin’s neighbourhood. He had nothing to say against the tax. There could hardly be a better, particularly as it was improving in productiveness; but he could not submit to use a seal in so expensive a way.
“It rather gives one pleasure to see you suffer,” observed Fanny, when one considers a surcharge on ourselves as a kind of reparation to the poor for their bearing, as a class, so much more than we do. It is a comfort to think that Mr. Taplin has not laid a finger on one poor “Except the poor fellow whose suffering, if inflicted, would have been ultimately owing to our game-laws. Those game-duties are fair enough while our gentry go on preserving their game, and bringing upon their heads the blood and moral destruction of the hundreds and thousands that are lost for their indulgence.”
Fanny observed that she had never thought so much about the old French nobility as since the gaol at A—— had been tenanted by offenders against Richard’s game.
“I cannot bear it,” said Richard. “I must go through with the affair, now it is begun, I suppose, for the sake of the country gentlemen in the neighbourhood: but it is the last time poor men shall first be tempted by me into what they do not consider crime, and then punished in a way which makes them criminal. I feel already as if I must be answerable for all the real crime and all the misery which must result from these men being separated from their families and their employments, and thrown into the corruption of a prison. I cannot bear it.”
“What will you do?”
“Leave off preserving my game; give it up as property; do anything rather than foster night meetings of poachers, and cause an annual transformation of some of them into burglars, or lawless wretches of some proscribed class or another. Ah! I know James and Wallace will be very angry. But let them go and sport elsewhere, if they must sport.
They shall not have my countenance in spoiling my neighbourhood. When they have to go a long way to find a bird, and have tried in vain to start a hare, they may invite themselves somewhere else, and leave me with my rooks, which I like better than my pheasants, after all.”
“But is it not rather a pity?” Fanny had some regrets.
“Certainly it will require some self-denial, even in me, who am careless about sport: but are we rich people so very sorely exercised in self-denial that, living in a country where food is the one scarce thing, we must forbid the half-starved labourer to touch the tempting flesh and fowl that spring from beneath his feet, as he walks where no eyes see him?—flesh and fowl which he regards as common property, because they are by nature wild? Be the labourer right or wrong in his notion, as long as his want and his notion co-exist, I will surrender to the weakness of his condition what I am not at all sure that I should deny to the strength of his arguments. No man shall in my time go to gaol for offences against the Fellbrow game. Maynard may teach Mrs.
Barton to set springes if he pleases; and Swallow may carry away his dozen hares in broad day, instead of at night. If George comes out no worse a boy than he went in, his pretty sisters shall hold him at his post in the office for me. We must think of some way of keeping Morse’s heart from breaking. That is the thing most to be dreaded. He cares more for the pheasants than for poor Alick, I believe.”
“Those game-duties must be given up, if every gentleman followed your example. But, to be sure, there are more important things involved in the question than the game-duties.”
“Taxes on luxury are excellent things, when that part which is paid in money is all. But when reputation, innocence, the comfort of some entire families, and the actual subsistence of others, are the tax paid for one factitious luxury enjoyed by those who revel in luxuries, the cost is too great. James says that one of our neighbours will be transported; that he has evidence of something worse than the mere poaching. For my part, I conclude that most of those concerned will be either transported or hanged, sooner or later. Such is the common issue of poaching.”
“One would think some man-hater had ingeniously planned this method by which to slide from mere carelessness or frolic into crime. Here is just the intermediate step between honesty and dishonesty, without which many an one would never have transgressed. Here is a property which is so peculiar as not to be considered a property by those who are tempted to take it. Punish them as for taking property, and they become wilful thieves, and all is over. But who is the one neighbour James means?”
“You will be surprised to learn; but it is a secret at present. Now, shall we walk?”
“As soon as Mrs. Barton is gone from before the door. I think she will never have done talking to Maynard.”
“Not till you go down. She is waiting to speak to you, and you may as well take it graciously.”
“O, but I bought some lavender water of her only yesterday.”
“Never mind! I dare say she has something new to say to you to-day about Church and King.”
CHAPTER VII.
LOUNGING AND LISTENING.
“I never said anything so decidedly to you before, James, but you must stay,” said Richard to his brother, the clergyman, who was lounging from window to window of the library.
“Such a place to keep one shut up in, in the midst of winter!” muttered James. “It is enough to make one melancholy to look at that black frozen water under the rocks, and all the trees within sight loaded with snow, and not a twig stirring to shake off so much as a flake. ’Tis so desolate when one compares it with London, I declare my spirits won’t stand it.”
“One week cannot make much difference. It was all your doing that any stir was made about these poachers at all, and you must stay a few days longer to carry the matter through. What difference can one week make?”
“All the difference in the world. The journey up to town with the Lees signifies more than any thing I shall meet with when I get there. The happiness of my whole life may depend on those three days of travelling— —” “How little you know of yourself, James,” said his sister, “if you think that anything that can happen in three days can make you happy!”
“You can make me preciously unhappy, I know, if you keep me three days longer in this miserable place. Why, ’tis a place only fit for a hermit to live in, in winter.”
And he glanced at a green stain which was still conspicuous on the ceiling. It was convenient to overlook the thick new carpet, the roaring fire, and the ample provision of books, whose arrangement had been just completed under his own eye. “It is very strange if you cannot transport a man without my help. I am sure I wish Taplin had gone on thumbing his Ready Reckoner for many a night to come before I had meddled with him.
It will end in my being full as much punished as he, or any of his gang.”
“Thumbing his what?” asked Fanny of Richard.
“The Ready Reckoner. Taplin has been the head of the poaching gang. It has been organized by him,—made into a kind of club, sworn to co-operate. Taplin administered the oath; and his excuse is, that the men were sworn, not on a Testament, but on the Ready Reckoner. We have evidence enough to transport Taplin. It was James that obtained it; (you had better ask him how;) and now he wants to be off to London, at the critical moment, (you had better ask him why,) and leave me to manage the matter in which I have never stirred, except in as far as I was forced by him.”
“I know the how and the why,” observed Fanny, gravely. “The greatest wonder of all is to hear him talk of the happiness of his future life, with such a how and why lying on his conscience.”
“Now, you just show, at this moment, the folly of meddling in other people’s affairs, and preaching about other people’s consciences,” said James, turning round from the window. “I can tell you that Sarah Swallow is going to be married. I know it for fact; for her intended told me of it himself. Indeed, he asked me to marry them. What do you think of this, Fanny?”
“I think just as I did before. If Sarah proved herself as light-minded and fickle as yourself,—if she so injured and betrayed the interests of her sex,—how does that excuse your treachery to——” “Now, if you say another word about the sanctity of the church, and the dignity of the clerical character, and all that, I will never set foot in my living again to the end of my days.”
“I was not going to make any appeal to you which I know to be so useless. The clerical character has no dignity in your keeping; and you take care that the church shall have no sanctity in the eyes of your people.”
“That is not my fault.”
“I know it. You can no more be a clergyman than you can be a musician or a sculptor. Your misfortune and that of your people is that you are “Ah! I saw two old women dreadfully scandalized, the last time I came from the hunt. They thought I was over the ears in a pitcher of ale; but I heard them say, ‘There’s our parson, with not a thread of black on him but his neck-cloth.‘” “The sin of the case lies with the church that makes a point of a black coat while she tempts in——” “Black hearts?”
“Hearts that must needs come out black from being steeped in the hypocrisy of a professed sanctity.”
“I am sure I never professed any sanctity.”
“Therefore your heart is not of the deepest black of all. But what has been your only alternative? Leading your people to think that no sanctity exists.”
“That is the fault of the system,—not mine. The system made it a matter of course that I should be a clergyman. Here I am. I must either set my face at its full length, and play a damned deep part when I talk of righteousness, and temperance, and——and all that—-” “And judgment to come,” said Richard, gravely.
“Or, if the people see I am thinking of anything but what I am saying, they can hardly believe that such threats signify much. You should lay the blame on those that put me into the church.”
“They would plead that you were put there as a matter of course;—that you were born to it. They would refer the blame farther back; where, indeed, it ought to rest. The day must come when faithless parents must be arraigned by their injured children: and then will your people, among a countless multitude besides, rise up in judgment against mother-church for having made an elaborate provision for, not only desecrating the gospel, but generating infidelity towards both God and man.”
“That may be all very true; but I cannot help my share of it now.”
“You can stop the spread of the mischief which has sprung up through you. Come out of the church. You look more astonished than there is any occasion for. Remember——” “Remember, sister, how it is with other professions. A bad physician does not give up practice; nor does an ignorant lawyer, because of incapacity.”
“Remember that the physician and lawyer who are as well known to be as unfit for their business as you are for yours, are not employed. In the profession of the church alone are the incapable sure of their occupation and its recompense. But no one is more aware than you that the days are coming when, if the unqualified do not step out of the church, they will be plucked out; or, if time be promised them to die out, it will be a chance whether the impatience of the long-betrayed people will not unroof the sanctuary from over their heads. You well know this, James. Your duty to your church, then, requires that you vacate your place: that at least one——” “Knave? Hypocrite? Come. Out with it!”
“At least one unqualified person may give place to a true-hearted one who may help to restore what has been laid waste. If you owe no duty to your church, you do to your people; and both the one and the other require you to vacate.”
“And Mary Lee forbids. If you had said all this a month ago——” “Then Sarah Swallow would have forbidden. Your people must be betrayed in order to enable you to marry, while, at the same time, you cannot make up your mind whom to marry. You will persuade yourself, when you have been married a month, that you have made the wrong choice, after all. If you would give up your living, and work with your conscience in some other employment, instead of sporting with it in this, you might find at last that you had a heart, and that there was some one person who alone could satisfy it. You might be happy, James, after all.”
“There is no use in that sort of thing now,” urged James. “Sarah is disposed of, and Mary Lee——” “Disposed of!” said Fanny, fixing her eyes upon him so that his were immediately turned away.
“Upon my honour, I had nothing to do with it. It was all their own doing. It was as much news to me as to anybody when Morse came to ask me to marry him.”
“I believe you. I acquit you of providing for the prostitution of one whose innocent heart you had just gained, and found it convenient to throw away.”
“But the winning and casting off led to the rest,” observed Richard.
“I tell you, she threw herself away. The old man sought her because his son loved her,—not because I did. But he is a good old fellow; and after all——” “Silence!” cried Fanny. “Go on, if you dare, to say that to be the slave of an ignorant old man,—the household drudge of a being she despises for marrying her almost as much as she despises herself for marrying him,— say, if you dare, that this is a good enough lot for one whom you yourself taught to feel that she had a mind and a heart, to be free in action, and devoted in affection——” Her eyes rained tears, and her voice trembled so that she could not go on to say that with which her heart was overfull. James began to ask himself whether he had not committed a great mistake in deserting one for whom Fanny seemed to feel so passionate an affection. In the midst of her agitation, Fanny saw his misapprehension.
“It is for my sex,—it is for our nature, that I feel it so much,” she struggled to say. “That no more should be understood of what love is by those who are acting in the very name of love! That any one should dare to open only to darken,—to expand only to crush! Anne says, ‘I did say a great deal, but Sarah is so much cleverer now than I am, that I dare not say all that was in my mind. She sees how foolish many things are that we never used to doubt of, and that I do not understand any better now.’
Nothing can be truer. The whole being of the one sister has been awakened, in order to be tortured; and the other can no longer console.”
To carry off some emotion which could not be helped, James began to jest. He thought it was only fair,—for the purpose of restoring the sympathy between the sisters,—that he should flirt a little with Anne.
“Try;” Fanny said; and she spoke no more.
James next made an attempt upon Richard.
“I am sure you ought to thank me, Richard. You wanted to have Morse’s heart kept from breaking, if you should give up preserving your game.
The thing is done, you see, thanks to me.”
Richard took no notice.
“I never saw such a brother and sister in my life,” cried James, with a heavy tread up and down the room. “I believe you do not care for anything that happens to me.”
“We do,” said Richard; “but we are bound to care for others too.”
“And for your future self,” added Fanny. “James, do promise that you will not seek Mary Lee. I do not know why you should look amazed. You must know that she would not think of you, if she knew all; and that you cannot make her life happy, if you could persuade her that you love her now. Do not crush another heart.”
James was, of course, quite sure that he loved Miss Lee, and pretty confident that he could attach her, and absolutely certain that they should make one another perfectly happy. He should go now, and learn whether her departure could by no stratagem be deferred till he could accompany her; if not, he should fly after her the very hour that sentence should be pronounced on Taplin.
He returned in two hours, very much out of humour. The Lees were going the next morning. He should hasten to Brighton, or somewhere, till the spring; any where (after Fellbrow) except London. He hated London at this time of year almost as much as in the autumn. He should speak to Riley about getting so much of the new house ready as should fit it for the residence of a curate. It might as well go on so far, now it was begun; but he could not think what had possessed him to begin building in such a place.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHARACTERISTICS.
Sarah seemed quite disposed to allow Morse’s plea that a long courtship was not so suitable to his years as it might have been to those of his poor boy. She left him the choice of the day, and called on her sister to assist her in speeding the necessary preparations. Anne humbly obeyed all directions. She might wonder,—she was indeed lost in wonder, at all she heard and saw; but Anne was by this time persuaded that she was very stupid in comparison with Sarah, and that she had been very wicked in envying Sarah a happiness which Sarah had parted with so much more easily,—with so much a better grace than Anne herself could have done.
She was angry with herself, too, for not respecting and liking good Mr.
Morse as she had done. The more love-letters Sarah threw into her lap to be read, the more presents Mr. Morse brought for Sarah, and the more carefully he spread them out to be admired, the less did she like him; and she could not sit quiet, like Sarah, under his jokes and pretty speeches, while she remembered things that Mr. Cranston had said. She wished Sarah would not laugh when people said it would be Anne’s turn next, and when they talked about the new tax-collector,—of his honesty and civility, and his wish to be comfortably settled;—as if that was any business of hers. She had seen enough of love and marriage. She was not very fond of the bustle there always was about the Paddock, and she should find living there very forlorn when Sarah would be half a mile off; but she would be content with her lot; and she now knew how to deal with any Mr. Cranstons that might come in her way.
When the wedding-party had encountered a good many acquaintances who had accidentally happened to take their walk, on the bridal morning, past the gamekeeper’s cottage and towards the church—when they had slipped past Mrs. Barton at the moment when she was relieving Maynard from the charge of the spaniel, and had received Mr. Pritchard’s smiling bow, and heard his promise to drink their healths after dinner, they fell in, at a cross path, with James himself, who was riding to the church in company with his curate, to whom he introduced the bridal party.
“I should have said,” observed James, walking his horse by Anne’s side,“that—You remember that you were the first I became acquainted with,—when your sister rode down the lane, and left you with me;—you remember?”
“Well, I should have said then that you were likely to be the first to be seen at the altar. I am sure it must be your own fault that you are not. I cannot think what you are to do without your sister.”
Anne was vexed that tears would spring.
“Ah! It will be sadly lonely. I am quite sorry for you. You shall have a dog to keep you company. No better company than a dog, when one is melancholy! You shall have a spaniel as pretty as my sister’s; and I dare say you will take better care of it than your sister did of hers. I will bring it myself in a day or two.”
Anne said she should be busier than ever after her sister’s departure, and should have no time for dogs or visiters. She showed no regret when he talked of going away; no pleasure at his doubt whether he might not be induced to stay. She looked up, as for an explanation, when he sighed about misunderstanding and precipitation, and the blindness of some people to their own attractions. How Anne wished, at that moment, that Sarah had ever happened to look full in the face of her late admirer, and seen how he could be confused by such silent questioning!
James put as little sanctity into the service as could be desired by the strongest foe to hypocrisy, or lamented by his astonished curate. Why Morse should be so proud as he was of being married by anybody who could marry him in such a manner as this, was more than a stranger could comprehend. In the midst, the cry of hounds was heard. The clergyman stopped a moment, and went on uneasily. Another cry followed, and he halted again. Morse made bold to step forward and whisper.
“If there had been no other clergyman here, I don’t know that I should have offered such a thing as to put our affair off till to-morrow; but perhaps that gentleman——I think it is a pity, sir, you should lose the hunt, sir, on our account; that’s all. But you are the best judge, sir.”
In another minute, James had leaped upon his horse at the church-door, and his curate had taken his place at the altar,—so discomposed as to find it difficult to proceed as if nothing had happened. When all was done, Sarah was still pale with the sense of insult, while her husband was congratulating himself on his own good-breeding in not standing in the way of his young master’s pleasure.
This was the last marriage service attempted by James, except in the instances of gay friends, who liked to be helped through the ceremony by one resembling themselves. He was better known, as a clergyman, in the newspapers than in any other way. Mrs. Barton now and then read a paragraph to Miss Biggs which showed that “our young clergyman” was still in existence, and still a clergyman; and Mr. Pritchard’s guests were on such occasions enlightened as to James’s connexions, and the family estate, and the tenure of the living in the vicinity. But thus alone was James heard and spoken of among the neighbours of those who would have been happy to forget that they had ever seen him. He never gave his curate any trouble about the living, or cared about Fellbrow when better sporting was to be had elsewhere.
THE END.
London: Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Duke-street, Lambeth.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF _TAXATION._ No. II.
THE TENTH HAYCOCK.
=A Tale.= BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.
LONDON: CHARLES FOX, 67, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
--- 834.
LONDON: Printed by WILLIAM CLOWES, Duke-street, Lambeth.
THE TENTH HAYCOCK.
=A Tale.= BY HARRIET MARTINEAU.
LONDON: CHARLES FOX, 67, PATERNOSTER-ROW.
--- 834.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE 1. Perambulation 1 2. Interlocutory Decrees 14 3. Intrusion 31 4. Heresy 55 5. Extortion 68 6. Commutation 88 7. Dimission 112 8. Benefit of Clergy 136 THE TENTH HAYCOCK.
CHAPTER I.
PERAMBULATION.
Widow Lambert liked to be told, a very few years ago, that the Abbey Farm was as great an ornament to her native district as the abbey itself could ever have been in the days of its splendour. She recalled the tales with which she had been struck in her childhood, before her sober father forbade her climbing old apple-trees, and her strict mother ordained the adoption of the quaker cap, and the handkerchief she had worn ever since;—tales of the former grandeur of this religious house, with its eighty monks and its hundred and ten servants: and it gratified her maternal pride to be assured that her two comely sons and their labourers kept the estate in as flourishing a condition as their predecessors,—the ecclesiastics and their lay brethren who were subordinate to them.
This abbey was believed to have held a distinguished rank among the religious houses which existed before there was any division of land into parishes, or when a parish meant the same as a diocese does now: when every man paid his ecclesiastical dues to any church he thought fit, provided he paid them to some; and when these dues were delivered into the hands of the bishop, to be divided among the four objects to which they must be appropriated,—the ease of the bishop, the aid of the church, the relief of the poor, and the support of the administering clergyman. Nor was it afterwards in less repute, when the dignitaries of the church were otherwise amply provided for, and the tithes were appropriated to three objects instead of four. The monks were of opinion that a very small sum was sufficient for the maintenance of the officiating priest; and they were active in gathering in their dues on the plea of the wants of the poor, while their train of servants was lengthened, the beauty of their abbey improved, and their fields and gardens were made to abound in the means of luxurious living. By a liberal expenditure of their peculiar purchase-money, masses and obits, and sometimes by a sacrifice of solid gold, they obtained all the advowsons within their reach, and became patrons of a great many benefices. It was made worth while to royalty to grant its license for such appropriation; and the consent of the bishop was regularly granted in return for the promise that the service of the church should be duly cared for. The brethren, therefore, were enriched from year to year with tithe and glebe; while, instead of presenting any clerk, they themselves contributed as much as they chose to the spiritual aid of the flocks they had thus gathered into their own ample fold. This process of appropriation went on very smoothly, (to the brethren, however it might be to the people under their charge) till this spiritual corporation was dissolved by Henry VIII; his bluff majesty constituting himself parson in their stead. There was little wonder that he busied himself about the Faith when he became at once parson of more than one-third of the parishes of England. However zealous he might be in his office, it was too burdensome for any man. The work of appointing vicars to so many benefices was more than the king could undertake. He sold the appropriations,—not always to holy men, (for he had himself deprived the holy of the power of bidding high for the property he had to sell,) but to laymen who transmitted them to their children, or disposed of them to other laymen, without any scruple as to thus alienating the pious contributions of believers to the church. This alienation was made the more extensive by a statute of the same monarch which ordained that the church lands purchased by laymen should remain exempt from tithes, as if they still belonged to the ecclesiastics. In this respect alone did the Abbey Farm of Mrs. Lambert’s time resemble the abbey domain of the day of Henry VIII. Instead of the cowled company whose members issued in state from the splendid building, to mount their sleek steeds to go forth and counsel the punctual payment of their dues, there was now Sir William Hood, the impropriator of the parish, marking with quick eye, from the rectory window, the luxuriance of the abbey fields, and calculating the loss to himself from their being tithe-free. Instead of the shaven priest who went down when required to perform some spiritual service, there was the gowned student muttering Hebrew in the little vicarage garden, or allowing himself to be talked to by his daughter Alice, when she tempted him abroad among his people. Instead of travellers of high and low degree craving hospitality at the portal of the monastery, there was the staid widow Lambert moving quietly between the poultry yard and the dairy, while her sons were training their fruit-trees against the grey unroofed walls which had once echoed back the prayers of the devout and the jests of the convivial. All these things were changed; but the neighbouring soil still yielded its produce, as formerly, unquestioned as to the amount of its tenths.
Very unlike indeed was any thing that passed in these grounds in monkish times to the preparation now made by the Lamberts for the reception of the minister, the churchwardens and the parishioners on occasion of their annual perambulation of the parish. The widow, more neat, if possible, than usual, in her plaited cap, silk mittens and muslin handkerchief, consulted with her son Charles as to the sufficiency of the beer and buns provided for the host of visiters they were expecting: while Joseph gave another brush to his broad brim before he went to station himself at the gate by which the crowd must enter. The intercourse between the vicar and this family was not very frequent, and of a somewhat strange character. He could not help admiring Mrs.
Lambert’s kindliness of spirit as much as he marvelled at her thrift; while she, distinguished above all things for good sense, was no less astonished at the manner in which he passed his time, and the mode in which he brought up his little daughter. She was at the same time drawn towards him by the simplicity of his manners and the evidence which his whole demeanour bore to his piety. On Sundays, he woke out of a reverie on his way to the church, when Mrs. Lambert passed him and bowed her head with a cheerful “Good morning to thee;” and on week days, the young men, however busy, were always ready to listen to the vicar’s suggestions in any affair which concerned the interests of their neighbours. Charles was his favourite of the two, when he had once learned to distinguish them; for Charles listened without distraction to what was said. Joseph wished to do the same; but he could not conquer his confusion when Alice looked likely to laugh at his calling her father Mark Hellyer. He was apt to twist his sentences, and be thinking how he should avoid Quaker peculiarities of speech, when Mr. Hellyer wanted his whole attention; and Charles was therefore pronounced by the vicar the more promising young man, and the most like his mother.
Joseph, however, was the first at his post this morning. When, standing at the gate, he heard the shouts from a distance, and could distinguish the tips of the white wands carried by the churchwardens, he took one more survey of his well-brushed suit, smoothed once more his sleek beaver, and was ready with a broad smile to welcome the crowd. The vicar was in the midst, smiling as broadly as any one, and as heartily amused as he had ever been by the choicest Greek epigram. The men and boys about him were equally diverted by the fulfilment of their prophecy that the vicar would not know the bounds of the parish any better this year than any preceding year. All possible pains had been taken, from his first entrance upon the vicarage, to instruct him in the localities which he had a direct interest in understanding; but he looked as much astonished as ever when informed that he must not go along this path, or through that gate, but must lead the way in traversing this fallow, and climbing the gap in that hedge. Mr. Peterson, a neighbour, who took a kind interest in his affairs, was now on one side of him, and Byrne, a labourer of the Lamberts, on the other; and all the little boys in the parish were at their heels, watching for his reverence’s mistakes, and daring each other to offer him cowslips from every field they passed.
While in full progress towards Joseph, Mr. Hellyer was carried off to the right, to make an unwilling circuit before he could reach his young friend; and while he was performing this task, Joseph learned something of the events of the morning;—how there was no difficulty to-day about their crossing the rectory garden, Sir William Hood not being there to murmur at the ground lying half in one parish and half in another, and his lessee not having arrived: how Miss Alice had earnestly wished to be one of the perambulating party, and had been pacified under the impossibility only by being permitted to view the ceremony from the