108 DANGERS OF SECLUSION. 



I do not see how deterioration, under such 

 circumstances, is to be avoided ; or how, gene- 

 rally speaking, better influences can be ex- 

 pected to be exercised on the minds of the 

 people. I have heard it remarked, and that 

 by a worthy successor of Eobert Walker, not 

 his immediate successor, it was in expressing 

 disappointment of the people, that, provided 

 he, the clergyman, drank gin and water with 

 them, they would be satisfied, and require 

 no more from him. I should add, he had been 

 but a short time with them, yet long enough 

 to make him despair of the grown-up gene- 

 ration. Sometimes I have thought that a 

 change of system might be useful, and correct 

 the evil, the adoption of one somewhat like 

 that followed by the Methodists, that of 

 relieving the ministers periodically, and se- 

 lecting men best fitted for the work before 

 them; you know the adage, if I may intro- 

 duce so humble a one, when speaking on so 

 high a subject, of the new broom and its effi- 

 cacy ; and there are, are there not ? other 

 adages as telling and in point. Even as re- 

 gards the ordinary race of men, being con- 

 fined long to one spot, to the same routine of 



