60 On Parochial Histories. 
think of anybody but the Clergyman, as in any way meeting our 
requirements. Who else is there in very many of our rural parishes? 
Look at the progressive changes taking place in the residences of 
our population. It may be worth while marking for a moment the 
slow, sure, and silent course of the stream. ‘Tis sixty years since,” 
or more, that farms were small, and the occupiers were their own 
landlords, the chief occupier was the Squire, himself a farmer. 
But small farms have not been found profitable, many have been 
merged into one, economy has been enforced, there are fewer 
dwelling-houses to keep in repair, improved modes of cultivation 
have been introduced ; the former gentlemen yeomen have become 
either tenants or bailiffs, and their sons have gone into trade and 
taken to other occupations in life. The squires, small and great, 
are gone to watering places, to the neighbourhood of the railway 
termini, or to London, for pleasure, for business, for the education 
of families: the smaller have no country house whatever; the larger 
cannot keep up a// the country houses which belong, or did belong, 
to the several estates which compose their accumulated possessions, 
so they retain one which they may occupy for a few months in 
each year; the other baronial mansions are deserted or occupied by 
tenants, or in many cases by paupers. Within a mile of the parish 
in which I live there is the finest existing English specimen of 
domestic Gothic architecture, built in the middle of the 15th cen- 
tury, occupied as a farm house. The manor house of the adjoming 
parish is filled with paupers. There are, close to me, four houses, 
once of consideration, occupied by tenant farmers or by paupers. 
The second largest resident landed proprietor, if not the largest, 
and the owner of a large proportion of the houses, is a beer house 
keeper. What is true of my parish is true of those around me. 
The smaller manor houses are every where deserted. Such is the 
abandonment of the country, resulting in a great measure from 
railroads, that persons of intelligence, knowledge, and education, 
are not generally to be met with in the country. We must then, 
as a rule, have recourse to the Parish Priest, he, at least, is adstrictus 
glebe, the last sole remnant of feudalism; for him the law of settle- 
ment is in full force, and will be, long after our President and 
