to retrench, getting his work done for him in England. His son was a thorough Bohemian, and his daughter had married an Italian nobleman, who had left her. Bishop Proudie had compelled Dr. Stanhope to return to his duties at Barchester; and the family were thoroughly out of place in a cathedral city with their foreign ideals and lax views of propriety. You have to picture the decorous formality of Barchester society to realise the humour of Trollope’s description of Bertie Stanhope and his sister the Signora. Throughout Trollope’s novels there is the background of rural life; and especially that of the clergy. At times it is amusing, but often it is tragic; and, believe me, in those parsonage houses in the picturesque villages of England some veritable tragedies have been enacted. How many a clergyman and his wife have succumbed before the work of bringing up an enormous family on insufficient means! How many a man of high culture has found in the parish he entered with such high hopes the end of his career! How many have dreariness and isolation led to find relief in habits which have proved their ruin! The story of the rural clergy of England is the theme of many a novelist, from Fielding onwards; and there is generally a tone of sadness about it. And may I commend especially the writings of Charlotte Young for perhaps the best description of the subject? Side by side with the comfortable dignitaries, who lived around the cathedrals,--the Grantleys, the Proudies, the Stanhopes,--were the Quiverfuls, with the crushing load of children innumerable, and Mr. Crawley, a famous scholar in his day, who had sunk amid the poverty of a wretched parish and the weight of utterly uncongenial surroundings. One of the greatest changes in England that people of my age have seen is the complete shifting of influence from the country to the town. And this is peculiarly true of the clergy, who often belonged to the country families and shared in the ideas, tasks, and pursuits of their brothers. Now that our young clergy are recruited from a totally different class, they are perhaps more devoted to their profession but are unfortunately bred in towns rather than the country and often fail to understand the people in the way their predecessors had done.