were eligible for civil and military posts. True, Sunday continued to be kept as it had been from the days of the Commonwealth, cards, opera, bands of music, and games being forbidden. A wave of unbelief was sweeping through the land; drunkenness, immorality, and coarse conversation were fashionable in all ranks of society. Fidelity to marriage vows was "sneered out of fashion." "We saw but one Bible in the parish of Cheddar," said Hannah More long years after this, "and that was used to prop a flowerpot." But perhaps Butler, introducing his famous "Analogy," goes the furthest of all. "It is come," he says sadly, "I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject for inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious." Be this as it may, it is pleasant to realise that there were still some of the country clergy who remained true to their trusts.
Was there ever a more attractive figure than the Vicar of Wakefield, the clergyman farmer? Familiar enough is his humble home at the foot of a sloping hill in the midst of his twenty acres of land, his one-storied house covered with thatch, the newly whitewashed walls adorned with pic-
