on his arm, than he spoke to my neighbours, and I took occasion to enter into conversation with him. I found him quiet, scholar-like, and gentlemanly; he alluded incidentally to his health, and said with a sigh, that while clergymen ought to have the strength of giants for their work, they were too often the least favoured in this respect. The last straggler of the congregation had some time disappeared when I wished him "good evening;" and as we left the churchyard, he in one direction and I in another, I could not help looking after him for some minutes together, as he walked slowly and thoughtfully towards his little cottage dwelling, doubtless to while away the long evening that yet remained, with his book and reflection.*

Butcombe has not been of late years very fortunate as a parish. Lonely and remote, it had few inducements for a resident Rector, who was not prepared to make sacrifices of personal comfort and good society for his solemn and sacred trust: its poor and uncultivated population have therefore been left pretty well, until within the last year, to themselves. It has, too, been a kind of family convenience, and has been chopped and changed about a good deal. The present incumbent is the Rev. Mr. Sayce, who, I believe, lives at Clifton, or some other equally agreeable retreat, in the neighbourhood of Bristol. I should like to go some day with a search warrant to the two Crescents, Caledonia Place, the Mall, &c., and find out all the reverend absentees and idlers who are there sheltered, in elegant (it may be) but inglorious ease, and pack them back, under a strong escort of elderly ladies, to their various flocks and parishes; having first told them that they were not ordained or inducted merely for their own pleasure and convenience, to receive tithes from the country, and make morning calls, and see company at Clifton. I should tell them too, in Sidney Smith's words, that their proper sphere lies less amongst the soups of Dives, than the sores of Lazarus."

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* A few months subsequently to the writing of this sketch, the poor young Curate was laid in the quiet little churchyard.

These, let me remark, are general observations: Mr. Sayce's place is, I have no doubt, now well and conscientiously filled by his Curate; but for a long time previous to the appointment of the latter, (which has only taken place, I think, within the last twelve months,) the parishioners of Butcombe, which perhaps required one as much as any other in Somersetshire, were without a resident pastor, as Mr. Sayce used to drive down on Sunday, do duty, drive back again, and leave his parishioners to Providence until the next Sabbath.

In my old and excellent friend Samuel Baker's time, the children of the parish had a most affectionate and attentive patron, who took the schools under his especial care and management.-I have not been at Butcombe since his death, but I recollect of old accompanying him more than once across from Aldwick: he used to assist in teaching the boys and girls himself, and once a year he gave them all round a new suit of clothes, and never had man or tailor a more primitive way of measuring for the same. His plan was to call them out one after the other, and take their dimensions with his walking-stick, which was quite as tall as the majority of the candidates: the altitude of each having been thus ascertained, he dotted him or her down on a piece of paper, and left the matter of fit altogether to the discretion of the fashioner. Boys and girls were all accommodated, according to what I used to call the argumentum ad bucculum. There was one poor blind boy, to whom Mr. Baker was particularly kind. Curious as it may seem, the lad used to go to school, and Mr. B. always took him home on Sundays with him to Aldwick to dinner.

I am sorry to say I forgot to inquire after the lad when I was last at Butcombe; but I shall drop a note to my friend Farmer Morgan on the subject.

Stoke Gifford.

I WISH people would not be so much given as they are to mislead men into a day's journey, by the off-hand, though deceptive, remark, "Oh, it is only a pleasant walk." By one of the grotesque edicts of the Emperor Heliogabalus, any one who invented a sauce, which was not approved of, was compelled to eat it, or rather live upon it for a given length of time; taking a lesson from the tyrant, I think I should be disposed to sentence some persons I know to just such another "pleasant walk," before breakfast, as their "easy idea of distances" subjected me to on Sunday, the

I had never been at Stoke Gifford Church, so I asked a friend where it was, "Just by Stapleton" was his reply, "only a pleasant walk." Trusting to this information, and as my medical man had told me to take a little more walking exercise, I thought I would leave John Bunyan at home to chew his corn and the cud of fancy, and depend upon my own legs for the nonce. Instead of a pleasant walk, however, I found I was misled into a toilsome journey.

The first couple of miles were agreeable enough, for at Baptist Mills I met a little fellow who was going as far as Stapleton, and who made a very innocent and prattling companion as long as our roads lay together. I fell in with him in a very simple way; finding myself involved in the mazes of some bye-roads, I inquired of him if he could inform me the way to Stapleton; he said he was going there himself, and that if I had no objection there was a short and pleasant path through the fields, across which he would be my conductor. I readily accepted an offer made with all a boy's frankness, and in another moment we were gossiping away with as much freedom as if we had been friends since the flood. Unquestioned

he told me his little history in one breath; he was serving his time in Bristol to a draper, his relatives lived at Stapleton, and he was on his way to spend the Sunday with them; he spent most of his Sundays in the country, going out in the morning, and returning again at night.

In contemplating the great and general blessings of the Sabbath, as a divine institution, we do not stop, we have not time perhaps, to consider the thousand minute ways in which it is welcomed to each individual heart. The Spring comes on, and we feel the pleasant influence of reviving nature, but we do not stop to consider how every opening little bud, the primrose by the hedge, and the wild flower in the field, rejoices each in its separate and distinct indentity, as it evolves its little petals to drink in the beneficent influence of the blessed season. So it is with myriads of simple and humble hearts when Sunday arrives; they expand with the first ray of the Sabbath sun; and though all unconscious of their own silent devotion, they still insensibly send up to the God of the Sabbath the grateful incense, I might say the natural worship, of thankful and happy feelings for the holy gift. Here was a youth pent up in a close shop six days in the week; just fancy (as we may) the secret pleasure with which when he awakes on the seventh, he recollects it is Sunday, and that there is that morning a release from the captivity of the counter, that he has not to creep down from his bed to a dusty shop, and pin up, with cold fingers, an infinity of small articles and tempting finery in the windows, polish the brass plate in front, and all that. In winter a run across the fields to raise the ruddy glow on his cheeks, and a day's restoration to his own family, where instead of being with strangers, he feels he has an interest in each heart, make a happy change enough to the emancipated apprentice; but in the sultry summer season, how positively delicious to escape from a great crowded city, which is heated like an oven, and the flags beneath one's feet feel like a hot dresser; then every hawthorn tree with its clustered white head, every pleasant hedge-row with its crown of honeysuckles, seem to welcome the draper's lad to green fields and fresh air,

and you might think he was flying from a doomed city from the fact of his never looking back to the dense mass of bricks and mortar which he is fast leaving behind him for one day at least.

I was compelled once or twice to admonish my little companion to walk slower, for he skipped along as if my legs were as young and my heart as light as his. I asked him how he liked the early hours of closing, and he said his master did not observe them; they still kept open until about eight, they went to bed about ten.

"Then what do yo do with yourself in the mean time," said I, "do you go out ?"

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No, the lads were not allowed to go out; they had a room where they sat, and sometimes read, and sometimes romped."

I inquired where he got books. He said he had a few of his own, that was all; a fact from which, I think, the religious and philanthropic, who are ever puzzling their brains for new methods of spending money and doing good, might take a hint. I would suggest "A Drapers' Lads' Lending Library," a title as beautifully alliterative as it is benevolently comprehensive.

"Then, as you are not allowed to go out in the evenings, my little friend, do you never taste fresh air but on Sundays ?"

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Oh, yes, Sir, when we go out to match patterns," was his reply. "I like to be sent out to match patterns, especially if it is far off," continued the lad with much earnestness.

I had now got all my tiny fellow traveller's history, there was but one curiosity left to gratify. I confess he was such a hearty, frank, little fellow, I hoped he was a Churchman, so I asked him if he knew the Rev. Ricketts Bailey; he said yes, he heard him preach nearly every Sunday. "Then do you go to Stapleton Church," said I. Yes, and the Bishop goes there too."

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For the sake of saying something, I inquired whether he would sooner be a bishop or a draper.

"I'd sooner be a draper," was his sincere but somewhat singular reply.