=— a 
By the Rev. John Witkinson. 59 
the artisans. Then the means of communication, the roads, canals, 
railways; the religious and ecclesiastical condition, the church and 
those who frequent it, the Parsons, past but not present; the means 
of education and of moral improvement, the schools, the libraries, 
the mechanics’ institutes; the charitable societies, the poor and 
other parochial funds. A Parochial History should not be a piece 
of antiquarian research merely; not a sketch of what a parish was, 
so much as of what it is. Let us aim at presenting a faithful 
picture of the present age, remembering that what is present to us, 
and from its very familiarity but little noticed by us, will soon be 
matter of past history and of much inquiry to those who will follow 
us, and who will require from us what we are now requiring from 
our predecessors, and what we blame them for not handing down 
to us—a plain statement of what was every day before their eyes. 
Antiquarian detail may be interesting to a few, but we want some- 
thing useful to all. 
The accounts of some parishes will be more full than those of 
others, but all these sub-divisions of the county must be more or 
less described, before the county historian, the man of the future, 
ean enter on his task. Parochial Histories then I imagine to be 
the materials which we are called on to provide, and which were 
contemplated by the Society at its foundation. 
Who is to do the work before us? No one man can. No number 
of persons simply visiting the different localities will do it. Such 
peripatetic investigators may look round a place, but have not 
time or opportunity to look into it; they will certainly overlook 
much most worthy of attention, and their published reports will 
be, as often before, meagre, superficial, inaccurate, and generally 
unsatisfactory. Our parochial historians must be residents in, or 
near, the places they describe. But who is there resident in each 
parish, interested in and acquainted with its affairs, past and present, 
of sufficient zeal, intelligence, and knowledge, to undertake the 
work? This is not a very easy question to answer, but, unless it 
be answered, we are stopt at the very threshold. Perhaps I may 
be prejudiced in favour of my cloth, as the cobbler of the besieged 
town was in favour of his leather; but for the life of me I cannot 
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