Though mild benevolence our Priest possess'd, 'Twas but by wishes or by words expressed. Circles in water, as they wider flow, The less conspicuous in their progress grow, And when, at last, they touch upon the shore, Distinction ceases, and they're viewed no more. His love, like the last circle, all embraced, But with effect that never could be traced. Now rests our Vicar.--They who knew him best Proclaim his life t' have been entirely--rest. The rich approved,--of them in awe he stood; The poor admired,--they all believed him good; The old and serious of his habits spoke; The frank and youthful loved his pleasant joke; Mothers approved a safe contented guest, And daughters one who backed each small request; In him his flock found nothing to condemn; Him sectaries liked,--he never troubled them: No trifles fail'd his yielding mind to please, And all his passions sunk in early ease; Nor one so old has left this world of sin, More like the being that he entered in." Clever, true, and cutting. Crabbe knew the class, its excellences and its weaknesses. We are considering the excellences now; we will recur to the weaknesses later. Fielding does, in his _Joseph Andrews_, give us a study of another type of parson--Trulliber, "whom Adams found stript into his waistcoat, with an apron on, and a pail in his hands, just come from serving his hogs; for Mr. Trulliber was a parson on Sundays, but all the other six might be more properly called a farmer. He occupied a small piece of land of his own, besides which he rented a considerable deal more. His wife milked his cows, managed his dairy, and followed the market with butter and eggs. The hogs fell chiefly to his care, which he carefully waited on at home, and attended to fairs; on which occasion he was liable to many jokes, his own size being with much ale rendered little inferior to that of the beasts he sold.... His voice was loud and hoarse, and his accent extremely broad. To complete the whole, he had a stateliness in his gait when he walked, not unlike of a goose, only he stalked slower." But this parson was only a boor, he was not disorderly. I have an old coachman, near eighty, who has been in the family since he was a boy, and of whom I get many stories of how the world went at the beginning of this century. Said he to me one day, "My old uncle he lived in Maristowe; he was bedridden nigh on twenty years, and in all those years Parson Teasdale didn't miss coming to see and read and pray with him every day, Sunday and week-day alike." We make much fuss about parochial visiting now, but is there any visiting like that? In _The Velvet Cushion_, a dialogue between the Vicar and his wife is chronicled.