the youngest, all in decent mourning, to pay their last duty to a faithful wife and tender mother. They were earlier than I expected; I overtook him and his children (they were in a covered cart, with curtains behind), half a mile from the church, in a shady lane. The sun was flickering through the foliage of the high hedge, and playing upon the dark curtains, and the youngest child, with almost an infantine smile, was playing with them, and putting her finger on the changeful light. As she removed the curtains, within were seen the family group, the cast-down father at the head. The children, from sixteen years of age downward, were variously affected the elder weeping; a middle one, probably a pet, sobbing loudly; others below, with a fixed look, as if surprised at the strangeness of their situation. But the childish play of the youngest, who could not, perhaps, conceive what Death was, was such a vindication of the wisdom and goodness, of Providence and Nature that tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, I have often since had the scene before me. That poor child required unconsciousness of this world's miseries, that, fully and deeply felt, would have torn its weak frame, and nipped the life in the bud, and therefore permanent sensibility was denied, and is denied to all such. I never saw the awfulness of death and the newness and sportiveness of life so brought together. The occasion was death, and the child was at play with it, and unhurt;-and I thought of the passage- The weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice's den.' This incident of thus meeting the funeral affected me greatly. There was another incident attended it that distressed me at the time, and does so even now when I think of it. How often do the most solemn and the ridiculous unite, and how difficult is it for poor weak infirmity of human nature to say, to this I will positively incline, and resist the other. I trust I did resist; but, my dear Eusebius, what must have been the case with you? I received the funeral at the bottom of the churchyard, and there lives at the very gate the general tradesman of the village, who acts as undertaker. He stood at the head, directing the procession, and by his side, and fronting me, stood, as if waiting for the order to move, a

tame magpie, the property of an old dame who lived in a cottage facing the undertaker's. The creature, with his black coat and white breast, looked so like an undertaker with his scarf, and he stood so in order, and looked so up at me, that I would have given the world if any kind hand had wrung his neck. The procession began to move-and what should the creature do but hop on and join me as I was reading the service, and so continued hopping close at my side, even into the church, and to the very step of the reading-desk. I did not dare to suggest to any one to remove him, for I know there is a superstition about magpies, and I feared directing the attention of the mourners to the circumstance. He hopped out of church with me and peered into the grave, and then looked up at me; and yet I went through the service, and I trust seriously-but there was at times a great difficulty. My good Eusebius, I tremble when I think of you in such a situation; —why, you would have been so taken possession of by your sense of the ridiculous, that I know not what gambols you would have made-you might have capered over the coffin for aught I can tell-have been called an unfeeling wretch, and represented as such to the bishop of the diocese—all the while, that I will answer for you, your heart would have been aching for the poor distressed family, and you would have given your year's stipend-ay, much morethat this had not occurred, to add to their distress.

"We have had, as I think, a disgraceful burial. A poor youth, about nineteen years of age, has been buried in a ditch in the churchyard, at twelve o'clock at night, because a stupid coroner's inquest jury would bring in their verdict-felo de se. It was as clear a case of temporary insanity as could be. The case was this:-The poor boy had gone into the town of

on a market day, and had purchased a print with some little savings, intending, when he could save more, to buy another he saw. He returned home, ate a hearty supper, and was very cheerful-went into the stable to do up his horse, and there was found suspended and dead. I remonstrated with the foreman of the jury. We couldn't by no means do no other,' said he; for we couldn't

discover the least reason for his destroying himself!' Then,' said 1, he did it without reason, did he?'Without the least,' replied he. Then,' said I, if he had done it with reason, with intention to be released from a known trouble, and perfectly in his reason, you would have brought in a contrary verdict?' Insanity, without doubt,' he replied. Oh, it is lamentable that the stupidity of a foreman should infect a whole jury! To argue further would have been a waste of words. This reminds me to refer to another case, in which a boy hanged himself, but was cut down in time. It happened a year and more before the last case. I was called to see the boy (an apprentice to a poor and small farmer), he was a half stupid, half-cunning, and wholly wicked-looking boy, stunted in growth, apparently about sixteen years of age. The account given of him was, that he was desperately wicked-that, a little before, he had attempted to drive the plough over one of the farmer's children, and they were greatly afraid of him. I talked to the boy- Why did he do it?' The devil had told him to do it.'Where did he see him?''Very often.'-'What sort of a person was he?' Like a gentleman, with a bit of white hanging over his boots.' I then left the boy and went into the house to talk with his mother, who had arrived, and directed the doctor to be sent for. When I went out to the boy again, a man who had walked to the farm with me, was making him repeat, after him, the Lord's Prayer. They had just come to the words, Give us this day our daily bread.' Bread!' said the boy, with stupid astonishment, looking up in the gentleman's face; we don't ha' much bread-mostly taties.'— I knew the medical men would give him physic, and I, to keep him safe in the interim, gave him promise of a treat worth living for-that, Sunday-week, if he would come to the Parsonage, I would give him a good dinner of roast-beef, and a shilling in his pocket. He did not make another attempt, but he turned out very illwas near committing murder, and, through fear of it, induced a poor girl to marry him. I fear it was a sad affair, and perhaps will end in one of the deep tragedies of the lower walks of life, of which there are more than

the higher wot of. I had recollected this youth being once a scholar in our Sunday school, but he staid a very short time, and then showed either his wickedness or his ignorance, for, to a question in the Catechism, he returned thanks for this state of starvation.' I took no notice of it; and he was, in truth, ragged and starved enough. There is a quaintness in these half-cunning, wicked, stupid persons, sometimes that is very like wit. I remember an instance. A half-witted boy, maintained by the parish, was in the habit of tearing off all his clothes, till they found a method of buttoning his jacket behind. Doubtless he was not fed like a fat friar. Meeting one day a greyhound (there is always a fellowship between such and these dumb creatures), he looked earnestly at him, and felt with his hand down his back-bone, and spanned him round his body. Ah, my poor fellow,' said he, 'it is bad times for you and I since buttoning-in in the back is come into fashion. It is very questionable if education would add any thing to the intellects or habits of these poor creatures. We never could establish more than a Sunday school. There is no class of persons so indifferent to education as farmers; they do not give any encouragement to it. There is good and evil in most things. I have seen so much loss of filial and parental affection from the parish becoming the general supporter (for it frequently happens that old people in a poor-house know nothing whatever of their families, if they be dead or living, though perhaps not separated many miles), that I doubt much if the little hearts of children, or the bigger of their mothers, are bettered by the removal of the one from the other, as in infant schools; and the removal of the solicitude, the hourly care, is, it is to be feared, at the same time a removal of affection. Why should they at these infant schools teach the children such antics? They learn the numeration-table by thumping or slapping, rather indecorously occasionally, the different parts of their persons, and cannot count wan, too, dree, fower, vive,' without it. There is by far too much rote learning, parroting in children's schools. A sensible friend told me he was called in to hear the children, when, disgusted with the parrotorder of the thing, he said to one of

the children, when quite another question should have been asked, Come, my good little boy, tell me what's your duty to your father and mother?' It's all sin and misery,' squeaked out the urchin. Perhaps, in the modern system of separation, the answer may become appropriate. I remember a circumstance narrated by a friend that at the time much amused me. A very good lady had taken great pains to establish, I believe at Bath, an infant or children's school upon a large scale, and had sent into the country a person who happened to be one of the Society of Friends, to collect money and apple-trees for the school garden. He called upon the narrator, and told his double purpose. Ah!' said my friend, apple-trees! a very proper thing, and the poor little children will have nice apples to eat.'-' Not, friend,' quoth Starch, not to eat.' -Oh! for puddings, then! better still:-a very good plan.' No, 'tisn't for puddings neither, nor pies.' -No?' said my friend; what then? It is to teach them to resist temptation.'-Oh! that is it, is it? To resist temptation! That is very strange. Mayhap, then, you are not acquainted with a book that, in my younger days, was thought much of indeed we were made to read it daily, and learn it; and I recollect a passage in it well, for I always repeated it twice a-day, rising in the morning and going to bed at night. Perhaps you never read that book, for it was taught me by my mother before infant schools were thought of. The passage was this: Lead us not into temptation.' This was too much for the district missionary for the planting of appletrees; he broke away with some warmth, saying, Ah, friend, I see thee dost know nothing about it.'There is something pleasant in the conceit that the little urchins of our present day, by a little routine of slapping all their sides to the numeration-table, and singing all that they should say to the canticle of This is the way to London town,' should be so very superior to our full-grown first parents. I have very little experience in these matters, but it does appear to me that it would be much better to whip th' offending Adam out of them' before they are put in the way of temptation; and certainly they will have some tunes and slap

ping practices of perpetual motion to unlearn before they will be of use in any known trade or employment.

"I do not see that there was any occasion for my attending the funeral of Farmer M., to ride in procession five miles from the house to the church. My unlucky clumsiness has put me quite out of humour with myself and the silly people. I was invited at halfpast ten, and thought it was to breakfast, but it turned out to be a dinner at twelve.

It was a wet day, the whole house smelt of damp and black cloth. I never saw mourning look so ill and inauspicious as upon the company of farmers in top-boots. I felt quite out of place and uncomfortable. But let me give some account of the dinner. I suppose it was according to some rule. There was a piece of beef at the top, next to that a fillet of veal, then a leg of mutton-then a leg of mutton, a fillet of veal, and a piece of beef; the sides had baked plumpuddings opposite to each other. Every thing was by duplicate, so that, from the centre, the top and bottom were exactly alike. Before setting off, the nurse that had attended the sick man brought round cake and wine, with a peculiar cake folded in paper for each to put in our pockets. It was certainly very stupid of me and I thought the old hag, when she entered the room, looked like an Alecto--but so it happened, as I put out my hand to take the glass, and at the same time turning somewhat round, the sleeve of my gown knocked down the wineglass, spilt the wine, and broke the glass. The old nurse croaked out in a tone that arrested every one's attention, There will be another death in the family! the parson has spilt the wine and broken the glass!' I thought she spat vipers out of her ugly mouth. All looked first at each other and then at me. If I had been guilty of murder they could not have looked, as it then appeared to me, with more scowling aspects. I may now add to this, that, in fact, it little signified. The signi ficant looks at each other on the occa siop were not on my account. sister of the dead man, whose husband was present, was then actually dying of a consumption; and in the course of a very few months the widower and the widow made the omen lucky by sanctifying it in church in holy matrimony. I will, however,

The

take great care not to spill wine again at a funeral, for it is not to be expect ed that on all occasions the parties concerned in the omen will so help me out of the predicament. There are a great many silly people very wise in their own conceit, that for ever tell you philosophy has driven superstition from the land, which only proves these foolish people know very little of the land, and are themselves superstitious enough to believe that the whole world is rolled up in their own persons. I will venture to say, there never was more superstition-political and religious. Reasonable things are rejected in both, and absurdities and impossibilities believed in both. Many of our large cities are divided between these two infatuations. The one half is a hot-bed, where the newest religions are raised as occasions may require, and the other half rears political mushrooms, poisonous and credulous. But there is still pretty much of the old superstitions remaining in country places; and I am not sure that it can be replaced by a better-it is generally harmless. How many town-thousands take tens of thousands of Morrison's pills, and why should not the country have its cunning man? I have known three old women notorious witches, one believed herself to be one at last; I saw her die, when she had a very large pair of scissars laid on her bed, and she moved her fingers as she would clip with them. She could not then speak. The people about her said, all the boxes and drawers in the room must be opened, or the soul couldn't escape, and that was the reason she was so long dying. When they think a person is dying you will always find them facilitate the passage by opening the boxes. By the by, two old nurses were overheard complimenting each other on their many beautiful corpses,' and their various methods of making people die easy, when one whipped a bit of tape out of her pocket, and said she always found when they struggled, that just gently pressing this against the throat was an invaluable remedy for hard dying-they went off like infants in a sleep. But to the matter of witches-of the two other, one is now living, and was shot at by a young farmer, who thought himself bewitched, with a crooked sixpence; it went through her petticoat. This not suc

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ceeding, he caught her and drew blood from her arm. Her witchcraft, I believe, consisted in her having more sense than her neighbours, and being able to read and write. But there is a much worse superstition creeping in very fast. The Initiated are religionists. They get a poor weak creature in among them in a heated close room, and roar and throw themselves into wonderful tantrums, calling upon the Lord, and ordering him very audaciously to come down and convert the sinner. I have often heard them, and on one occasion a person came out, I asked him what was doing. He said that John Hodge was under a strong conviction,' and would soon give in. And so in fact he did, for I heard a tremendous noise, which I found to be, that the poor fellow had tumbled down in a fit, and they all fell down upon him, shouting, laughing, and giving thanks. I cannot possibly describe the uproar and blasphemous tumult I heard with my own ears. There was a young girl, about seventeen years of age, had been, as they said, put into a trance by the spirit for three days. On her awaking she told the Initiated, and they to all the neighbourhood, that she had been to the wicked place,' and had there seen Mrs B. (a very respectable lady of the next parish) trying to escape from the fire, and the devil tossing her back with a pitchfork. She, with a deputation, went a few days after to Mrs B. to warn her of her danger. am I to say it, the visions of this young girl were scarcely disbelieved by any, at most doubted, but very many of the poor believed all she said. The girl turned inspired preacher, as might have been expected, and would have been the founder of a new sect in the parish had she staid long; but she went off with a male preacher, and we never heard more of her, and there was an end of it. I dare say when she is somewhat older, and has learnt a few more tricks, she will start up in full blaze in London, and be the possessor of Joanna Southcotts' silver pap-dish and cradle.

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How sorry

operation of the beating and pounding in this instance took place in the night, by a solitary mason-a seemingly simple fellow, but a great knave. The poor-house window looks into the church-yard, below the level of which is the floor. This house nearly joined mine, and the noise awoke us, and it was thought thieves were breaking in. A young man in the house jumped out of bed and slipped on my surplice, determined to ascertain from whence the noise came. He looked in at the window from the churchyard, and saw the mason hard at it: of course at such work he could hear no step; so that, when the young man suddenly appeared before him in his surplice, he took him for a ghost or an angel, dropt his rammers, and was upon his knees in a moment, crying-Ö Lord, O Lord, don't come nigh me; go back again, go back again; which of them things (meaning the ancient tombs) did ye come out of?' He fell sick from fright, and put himself on his club for a fortnight. I have often tried to make out the exact ideas the poor people have of angels-for they talk a great deal about them. The best that I can make of it is, that they are children, or children's heads and shoulders winged, as represented in church paintings, and in plaster-ofParis on ceilings; we have a goodly row of them all the length of our ceiling, and it cost the parish, or rather the then minister I believe, who indulged them, no trifle to have the eyes blacked, and nostrils, and a touch of light-red in the cheeks. It is notorious and scriptural they think, that the body dies, but nothing being said about the head and shoulders, they have a sort of belief that they are preserved to angels-which are no other than dead young children. A medical man told me, that he was called upon to visit a woman who had been confined, and all whose children had died. As he came to the door, a neighbour came out to him, lifting up her hands and eyes, and saying, O she's a blessed 'oman-a blessed 'oman.' A blessed woman,' said

he; what do you mean?-she isn't dead, is she? Oh no-but this un's an angel too-she's a blessed 'oman, for she breeds angels for the Lord.' There is something very shocking in this; it will be so to read as it is to write-but being true, it

must be written, or we cannot give true and faithful accounts of things as they are.

I called but a short time since at a farm-house, where was an old woman, a servant, in trouble, I believe, about one of her family; and there was a middle-aged, solemn-looking woman trying to comfort her; and in a dialect I cannot pretend to spell, which made it the more odd, told her she ought to go to church, and look up at the little angels she was sitting under, and see their precious eyes, and take comfort from them.

"I had for some time observed the parish-clerk hurried in his manner, and flushed in his face; and one morning I saw him running wildly, apparently without an object-but I said nothing. All his relatives and connexions were Methodists, and I knew he frequented their chapel; but little did I think that any one of the sect would boast of driving him out of his senses. But so it was ; on Sunday night one of the principal persons in the village of that persuasion came to me with a very solemn and mysterious and mystical face, and told me that my clerk was out of his mind; that he had been at chapel, and heard a most powerful-a most working discourse from the Rev. Mr A.; that he was then raving, and it was wished that I should go and see him. My good friend,' said I, do not either yourself or your reverend minister take any burden upon your consciences that you have driven the poor fellow mad. I assure you it is no such thing-I saw it coming on this week past.'

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That which should have comforted, however, made my informant chop-fallen. But will it be credited at headquarters? his friends of the connexion went to the cunning man— that, by the bye. I went to see the poor fellow. Melancholy as was the circumstance, the scene was ludicrous in the extreme. He was sitting up in bed, surrounded by his friends; some were praying, some crying. When I arrived there was a pause; but what made the scene so ludicrous was the position, the employment, and expression of features of the carpenter of the village, a sot, and unshaved. He was behind the clerk on the bolster ; he looked for all the world like a great baboon; and he was shaving the head of the unfortunate man, and pretty.