200 



Alfred Charles Smith — In Memoriam. 



all through his life — gaining more and more the mastery over him 

 and obliging him for years before his death to lead the life of an 

 invalid. Thus for the last ten years or more he was very much 

 withdrawn from public view, and to understand what the position 

 was which he occupied in the county during a great part of his 

 life it is necessary to go back twenty years. At that time few men 

 were better known in North Wilts than he was. Yatesbury was 

 always a small parish — though the population when he became 

 Bector was almost double what it is now, since the laying down 

 of very much of the arable land to pasture has caused an even 

 larger proportional diminution of the population here than it 

 has in the neighbouring parishes — and it was in those days a good 

 deal more remote from railways and centres of population than it 

 is now. Indeed few places, even on the downs, could be in a more 

 remote position — but the Eector was not one to be buried alive. 

 He loved the place, he loved the open stretches of the downs, and 

 he found there the leisure to carry on the work which made him 

 for so many years no inconsiderable factor in the intellectual life 

 of the county. A consistent High Churchman all his life through, 

 he never neglected the duties of his office or the interests of his 

 parish. Neither in dress, in manners, or in habits of thought was 

 he in any way " a secular parson." His first care on coming to 

 Yatesbury was to replace the miserable erection of the last century 

 which served as a chancel with a new building in accordance 

 with the architecture of the rest of the Church— the restoration of 

 which he also carried out in 1854. That this restoration was not 

 in all points directed as it would have been at the present day was 

 no fault of his — all work done at that time shared in the same 

 mistakes. He himself in after years often expressed this opinion. 

 On the completion of this restoration he undertook a work which 

 occupied him for a long while — the painting of the walls of the 

 new chancel with his own hands. 



But, though he did good work in his parish, and was known and 

 loved by his parishioners for his kindness and his goodness, it was 

 not as the Eector of Yatesbury, but as the Secretary of the Wilts 

 Archaeological Society, and as the Editor of its Magazine, that he 



