The parson of the parish in England, a few years since, was almost necessarily a man who had been educated at Oxford or Cambridge. An English parish might indeed have an Irishman from Trinity College, Dublin; and, now and again, an outsider was admitted into the fold as a shepherd. There was a small college in the north to fit northern candidates for northern congregations, and the rule was not absolutely absolute; but it prevailed so far that it was felt to be a rule. And thence came an assurance, in which trust was put more or less by all classes, that the parson of the parish was at least a gentleman. He was a man who had lived on equal terms with the highest of the land in point of birth, and hence arose a feeling that was very general in rural parishes, and as salutary as it was general, that the occupant of the parsonage was as good a man as the occupant of the squire’s house. It would be interesting to us to trace when this feeling first became common, knowing as we do know that for many years after the Reformation, and down even to a comparatively late date, the rural clergyman was anything but highly esteemed. We are told constantly that the parson left the dining-room when the pudding came in, and that he by no means did badly for himself in marrying the lady’s maid. We most of us know the character of that eminent divine Dr. Tusher, who lived in the reign of Queen Anne. Then came the halcyon days of British clergymen,--the happy days of George III. and George IV., and the parson in his parsonage was as good a gentleman as any squire in his mansion or nobleman in his castle. There is, alas! a new order of things coming on us which threatens us with some changes, not for the better, in this respect. There are theological colleges here and there, and men and women talk of “literates.” Who shall dare to say that it may not all be for the best? Who will venture to prophesy that there shall be less energetic teaching of God’s word under the new order of things than under the old? But, as to the special man of whom we speak now, the English parish parson, with whom we all love to be on familiar terms,--that he will be an altered man, and as a man less attractive, less urbane, less genial,--in one significant word, less of a gentleman,--that such will be the result of theological colleges and the institution of “literates,” no one who has thought of the subject will have any doubt.