66. This, as to church and poor, was the state of these villages, in the "_dark ages_" of "_Romish superstition_." What! No poor-laws? No poor-rates? What horribly _unenlightened_ times! No _select vestries_? Dark ages indeed! But, how stands these matters now? Why, the two parishes are moulded into _one church living_. Then the GREAT TITHES (amounting to two or three thousand a year) belong to some part of the _Chapter_ (as they call it) of Salisbury. The Chapter leases them out, as they would a house or a farm, and they are now rented by JOHN KING, who is one of this happy nation's greatest and oldest _pensioners_. So that, _away go_ the great tithes, not leaving a single wheat-ear to be spent in the parish. The SMALL TITHES belong to a VICAR, who is one FISHER, a _nephew of the late bishop of Salisbury_, who has not resided here for a long while; and who has a curate, named JOHN GALE, who being the son of a little farmer and shop-keeper at BURBAGE in Wiltshire, was, by a parson of the name of BAILEY (very _well known and remembered_ in these parts), put to school; and, in the fulness of time, became a _curate_. So that, _away go_ also the small tithes (amounting to about 500_l._ or 600_l._ a year); and, out of the large church revenues; or, rather, large church-_and-poor_ revenues, of these two parishes; out of the whole of them, there remains only the amount of the curate, Mr. JOHN GALE'S, salary, which does not, perhaps, exceed seventy or a hundred pounds, and a part of which, at any rate, I dare say, he does not expend in these parishes: _away goes_, I say, all the rest of the small tithes, leaving not so much as a mess of milk or a dozen of eggs, much less a tithe-pig, to be consumed in the parish.