IN MEMORIAM REV. O. PICKARD- CAMBRIDGE. xlv. 



that his death marks the passing of an epoch in village life. 

 The relations between him and his parishioners were in some 

 degree hereditary ; they were based on the feeling, natural in 

 the days of patriarchal government, of the poorer parishioners 

 towards " the family ; " and he himself belonged to the time 

 when government by the squire and parson was accepted by 

 all as natural. It was often a good government ; it was 

 founded on the recognition of class distinctions arising 

 from differences of birth and education, but also on the 

 full recognition by the better educated of their duties 

 towards their humbler neighbours. The differences in 

 education are no longer so sharp, and the element of patron- 

 age inherent in the old-fashioned benevolence has become 

 distasteful to those who used to accept it with honest 

 gratitude. The change is a wholesome one in its ultimate 

 tendency ; but it is impossible not to regret in some measure 

 the passing of the older relations between the different 

 elements in village-life relations which, so far as my father 

 and his parishioners were concerned, subsisted in spirit until 

 his death. 



My father conferred visible benefits upon his parish in the 

 rebuilding of the Chancel of his Church, the building of the 

 Village School, and (many years later) the reseating of the 

 Nave of the Church. At the Rectory he practised an old- 

 fashioned hospitality, and year by year welcomed his 

 parishioners to the celebration there of old Christmas customs 

 which have died out in so many other places, and the singing 

 of the old carols which were traditional in the village. In his 

 parish work he had the constant help of my mother, who for 

 over forty years, without a thought of self, gave herself up 

 to the good of those about her taught in the Sunday School, 

 played the organ in Church, ministered to everybody's needs, 

 and did all the manifold duties which in many parishes are 

 shared by a number of workers. From 1871 to 1889 my 

 father was a member of the Salisbury Diocesan Synod, at 

 which he occasionally spoke ; and for a few years he acted 

 as Diocesan Inspector of Schools. 



