Upon this subject and upon the character of the services in many village Churches of the time, I am indebted to a very good authority--MS. reminiscences by the late Mr. Henry Thurnall--for the following: "Neither Whittlesford, Sawston, Great Shelford, Newton, Hauxton, Barrington, or Chishill, had a resident minister." As to the character of the Psalmody practised in the Churches, the same authority says:--At Duxford, John and Thomas H---- performed on two bassoons anything but heavenly music; at Shelford old John M----, the clerk, used to climb up a ladder into a high gallery and there seating himself, often quite alone, and saying "let us sing to the praise and glory of God by singin' the fust four vusses of the 100th psalm, old vusshun';" and he put on his spectacles and read and sung each verse, frequently as a solo accompanying himself on a bass-viol, said to have been made by himself! At W---- old V---- set the tune with a cracked flute, and on one occasion, when reading the 26th verse of the grand 104th Psalm, he said:--"There goes the Ships, and there is that Lufftenant [Leviathan] whom thou hast made to take his pastime therein." In an extremely interesting book of reminiscences, which may be cordially recommended to the notice of the reader,--"What I Remember," by Adolphus Trollope, brother of the famous novelist, Anthony Trollope--there are some interesting glimpses of a Parish Church and its services in one of the villages in this district at the beginning of this century. The Trollopes were related to the Meetkerkes, of Julians, Rushden, and the entertaining author of "What I remember," was, at the time of Waterloo, the expected heir to Julians, and of Adolphus Meetkerke, Esq., the then head of the family. Young Trollope visited Rushden as a boy and gives us a graphic picture of family life, Church services, and the squire of the village {123} playing the part of Sir Roger de Coverley. The house-keeping at Julians, we are told, was in the hands of "Mrs. Anne," an old maiden sister of the squire, who, though a prim, precise little woman, sometimes came down to breakfast a little late, "to find her brother standing on the hearth-rug, with his prayer-book open in his hand, waiting for her arrival to begin prayers to the assembled household. He had a wonderfully strong rasping voice, the tones of which were rarely modulated under any circumstances. I can hear now his reverberating, 'Five minutes too late again, Mrs. Anne' 'Dearly beloved brethren,' etc.; the change of person addressed, and of subject having been marked by no pause or break whatever, save the sudden kneeling at the head of the breakfast table; while at the conclusion of the short, but never missed prayers, the transition from 'Amen,' to 'William, bring round the brown mare after breakfast,' was equally unmarked by pause for change of voice or manner."