tures of family design, kitchen and parlour scrupulously clean, "dishes, plates, and coppers well scoured and all disposed in bright rows on the shelves." We see the family rising with the sun, the Vicar and his boys going forth to labour in the fields, while his wife and daughters prepare the breakfast at home. All worked alike till sunset, when one of the younger children read aloud the Lessons of the day, he who read best being awarded a halfpenny for the poor-box on Sunday. And yet the spirit of immorality that was abroad must needs disturb this happy home.
Different indeed were the life and duties of the eighteenth-century clergyman to those of our clergy to-day.
"Of Church preferment he had none;
Nay, all his hopes of that was gone;
He felt that he content must be
With drudging in a curacy.
Indeed on ev'ry Sabbath day
Through eight long miles he took his way
To preach, to grumble, and to pray,
To cheer the good, to warn the sinner,
And, if he got it—eat a dinner.
And all his gains, it did appear,
Were only thirty pound a year."
Outwardly there was no mistaking the parson.
