For thirty-two years Edward Stanley continued to minister to the wants--temporal as well as spiritual--of the population of his pleasant little rural parish, looked up to by the cottage as a father and a friend, and endeared to all by his earnestness, his simplicity, and his geniality; his faithful coadjutor during the whole of that long period being the Rev. Isaac Bell, his curate, the father of the present worthy rector of Alderley, the Rev. Edward John Bell. For a time (1824 to 1829) he enjoyed the friendly co-operation of the rector of the adjoining parish of Wilmslow--the Rev. J. Mathias Turner,[10] who afterwards became Bishop of Calcutta, and many were the schemes of parochial improvement then formed, and which, doubtless, afterwards influenced in no small degree the Church work in the dioceses to which the two rectors were respectively appointed. Stanley could never find happiness in repose; his intervals of leisure, as we have said, were mainly devoted to the study of ornithology, but he also found time for literary pursuits. In addition to the pamphlets which he issued from time to time in the form of addresses to his people--"A Few Words on behalf of our Roman Catholic Brethren," "A Few Observations on Religion and Education in Ireland," and "A Country Rector's Address to his Parishioners"--he contributed to the "British Magazine," to "Blackwood," and to other periodicals, the results of his studies and the records of his brief holiday excursions; one of these latter, an account of an adventure in the Alps, on the "Mauvais Pas," is believed to have suggested to Sir Walter Scott the opening scene in his novel of "Anne of Geierstein." Among the results of his scientific and antiquarian investigations is a history of the parish of Alderley, still preserved in MS., which it is hoped will at no distant day be given to the world. But the time came when the literary occupations and the scientific investigations with which he had so pleasantly beguiled his leisure hours at Alderley were to be laid aside--when he was to be wrenched out of his rural surroundings to undertake the episcopal supervision of an important diocese. When it was proposed to erect Manchester into a see the rector of Alderley declined the invitation to become its first bishop, but in 1837, at the instance of the then Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, he was, after much deliberation and a severe struggle which almost broke down his health, induced to accept the nomination to the bishopric of Norwich. To leave the quiet, peaceful parsonage where so many happy years had been passed, and where all his children had been born and reared--to part from those among whom he had so long laboured--was a sore trial, and the news of the preferment which was to sever the tie that had so long bound pastor and people was received by the parishioners amidst an uncontrollable outburst of grief.