the clerk, that instead of encumbering himself with the arduous and double duty of knocking the boys on the head and repeating the responses, he should transfer the long stick with which he is ever and anon appealing to youthful sinciputs, to some assistant, and apply himself entirely to the reading department.

The Vicar preached. The Rev. Martin Whish, who as well as being incumbent of Redcliff and Thomas, prebend of Sarum, and rector of Bedminster, is also Vicar of Leigh, has been for so long a time connected with Bristol, and must be so well known as a preacher, that it is almost a work of superogation on my part to describe him. His style is somewhat singular and eccentric; you have hardly had time to admire some beautiful and remarkable bit of divinity when you are struck with some odd incidental, colloquial remark, delivered, it may be in a rapid parenthesis, or slowly propounded in a solemn period. I have heard him, after involving himself for some time in abstruse reasoning, which I confess was not very clear to me, suddenly cut it short by telling his congregation that "that was a knock-me-down argument," but the only thing it seemed to knock down was a young lady's gravity who sat opposite me, and who, by way of preserving her propriety, was obliged to turn to the Thirty-nine Articles at the end of her Prayer Book. As I said before, however, in almost every sermon which I have heard him preach, there have been some scattered passages of much originality and beauty, but which, unless to an attentive listener, are often lost in the irregularity of the rest. The great curiosity, however, is the sermon itself, so far as paper and ink go. I should think that he has not used a complete, clean quire of post since his entrance upon the ministry, the greater part of his discourses being written on fly leaves of letters, backs of circulars, and Christmas bills, of unequal size and all shades, so as to remind one of a similar practice of Pope's, to which Swift slyly alluded in his " Advice to Grub-street Verse writers :"

"Send them to paper-sparing Pope,
And when he sits to write,
No letter with an envelope,

Could give him more delight."*

Nor is this the only singularity of the Vicar of Leigh's sermons: the pages do not appear to be written consecutively, for he will turn over half a dozen leaves at a time to one where the corner is turned down in a huge equilataral triangle, and from this he will read back, like a Hebrew book, and then make another skip and dive midway into the discourse, recalling to mind one's youthful researches in the Sortes Virgiliana.†

The Vicar of Abbott's Leigh is a very kind-hearted man, but although the Bishop and, I believe, the Clergy of the Diocese, have been working at him for years, they cannot either coax or bully him into keeping a sufficient number of curates; and Abbott's Leigh, which is nearly four miles from Bristol, is without a resident minister, or even a regular clerical attendant, there being in two hundred and eight successive Sundays no less than one hundred and eighty strange clergymen : the parishioners having in fact on no given Sabbath morning any more definitive idea of who's going to occupy their pulpit that day, than of who's to preach at St. Paul's Cathedral-they have no notion from which cardinal point of the compass the minister is to come who is to preach to them, or what stranger the neighbouring city will send forth. Now, I wish I

The original MS. of his Homer (preserved in the British Museum) is almost entirely written on the covers of letters, and sometimes between the lines of the letters themselves -Nichols.

+ Perhaps the reader may be disposed to enquire how I became acquainted with the peculiar appearance of Mr. W.'s sermons. I will tell him some years ago (full half a dozen), after the death of the Rev. Mr. Glover, of St. Paul's, Bedminster, I went one winter's morning to that church, when the Vicar preached: there were two pulpits then, one at either side, almost close to the galleries; from that at the south side the sermon was preached, and, as I sat immediately over him, I could see the composition, which was principally written on the backs of old letters and tradesman's bills, Dr. Doddridge, of whom the Vicar is very fond, endorsing more than one of the latter. I think it only fair to add that the annual accounts, as far as I could see, were all receipted.

S

could dispense with this lecture, for I have no desire, and I greatly dislike to be thought to wish, to press heavily on any clergyman, but this is really a case in which one-and I, like the rest of the world, fancy I have a duty to perform-cannot keep silent, though I confess I despair, when his Diocesan can do nothing, that my words can have any effect. But it is really melancholy to think, that a considerable parish like Abbott's Leigh should be left to a mere casual visit and a Sunday call. I have heard a clergyman speak about "working" two churches himself; now Abbott's Leigh is completely a "worked" church, and worked by strangers too, many of them excellent and devout men, I believe, but calling there neither in the capacity of incumbents nor curates. I can see no objection that Mr. Whish can have to the employment of a curate but the expense, and that is the last excuse which a man with four parishes and a prebendal stall ought to make, for leaving a place out of which he derives some hundreds a year, in a state of spiritual destitution. As I said before, I have no feeling but one of respect for the Rev. Martin Whish, with whom I have been acquainted for a quarter of a century; but I cannot abstain from reminding him of the awful responsibility (I say it with solemnity) which a man incurs in leaving a large parish with none to look after it. I need but glance at the possibility of one immortal soul being lost through the neglect attendant on saving the salary of a curate, to place the consequences of such economy in the most appalling light. I will say no more, but leave the matter now to the consideration of the Vicar, satisfied that matters have remained so long as they have, only because he omitted to give them that serious consideration which they deserved.

Lympsham.

WHERE on earth is Lympsham ? is possibly, curious reader, your first enquiry, and I pardon the question, though in these times of travelling enterprise and railroads, one ought hardly to be excused for being ignorant of any or every turn on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho-when tourists tell us they meet children with London nursery maids playing bo-peep round the corners of the principal Pyramid

"Or, flying to the eastward, see

Some Mrs. Hopkins taking tea

And toast upon the wall of China."

Lympsham, however, is one of those places you would hardly find if you did not look for it: I mean, it is thrust down so far into the westward out of the way, that unless, like me, you had a special invitation, 'twould never suggest itself to you. A railroad runs through the parish, but there is no terminus nearer than Weston; and as for stage coaches or guard's horn, I don't know when or if ever there were such things heard there.

I have no doubt that the printer has placed me on horseback as usual at the top of this paper, but the truth is I found my way from Weston to Lympsham in the interior of a fly. It was one of those occasions when John Bunyan is allowed to remain idle in his stall, and eat his hay and corn without doing anything for it. The morning was cold and squally, with occasional sleety showers, and the snow was still lying about unthawed in the ditches, so that it was not until I reached the top of Uphill, when the sun breaking

out from the chilly grey clouds for a few moments seemed to call my attention to the scene, that I could muster courage enough to let down the glass and look out; and certainly it is a sight almost worth catching cold for the Channel seemed as broad and bright as if it were not three parts mud; and Bream-hill, and many a bold headland, ran out like great bullies into the sea, as if to meet and repel it. But every one must know the ground as well as I do. I cannot fancy there is one who takes up this paper, who has not at some time or another been for a month or so in summer to inhale the fine sand and sea breezes in this locality, and ride donkeys to every eminence in the neighbourhood, for the benefit-of those who hire them out. On the right of the road, then, I need not say, are Uphill new church, and Uphill old--the former built by Mr. Wilson, of Bath, the latter by the Devil. I only state the general account in the country; and as half the history, especially of heroic ages, is founded on tradition, I am not the man to impugn such authority; I may add, however, that Mr. Wilson's design seems to have greatly the advantage of that of his Satanic majesty, who, judging from the specimen here given, certainly does not seem to shine in architecture, though Southey, in his Painter of Florence, represents him as possessed of taste. The new structure is a very handsome one, and does credit to the author: it was built principally by private subscription and from the sale of pincushions, the proceeds of more than one bazaar having gone towards its erection. The Father of Lies does not seem to have had any extraneous or friendly aid of this kind in his undertaking; but if the story be true he accomplished the work himself, by his own individual exertions, and in opposition both to the patrons and the parish, who wished, and for a long time persisted, in building the church at the base of the hill, but the work they did by day was regularly removed at night, by their obstinate and indefatigable foe, further up; until at length, tired of so unequal a