These rustic historians have a mode of reckoning very different from citizens. With prime ministers they have nought to do. Their government is nearer to them, and they have never wanted wit enough to know when that was good or evil. Over these rural communities the ruler has, from time immemorial, been the lord of the manor, or the chief franklin, or the parson of the parish. According as these personages were disposed to promote religion and happiness, or to look with indifference on vice and misery, the rustic population was contented and cheerful, (because industrious in their callings, and peaceable in their lives,) or they were sullen and profligate. Under the joint reign of Franklin Blount and Parson Noble the inhabitants of Cheddar had long dwelt together in comfort and harmony; but this is a world of change,--and many things in the aspect of public affairs, of which the villagers heard and heeded little, gave serious warning to the prescient mind of Noble, that trouble was near. He was so beloved and respected by his people, and so regarded and confided in by the worthy franklin, that he had hitherto been able to evade, counteract, or over-rule, for the good of his flock, those strange enactments which had been from time to time so inconsiderately imposed. That which enjoined him to _publish_ the Book of Sports on the Sabbath-day he totally disregarded. On this point he would have consented to deprivation rather than obey. Hence he became suspected, by some parsons of a very different stamp, for a puritan; and there were not wanting uncharitable surmises among these concerning the course which Master Noble would take in the hour of trial; not that those who really knew him well ever doubted of that course at all. But while these surmises were, as regarded himself, utterly devoid of foundation, it was asserted by some of his friends at Wells, the correctness of whose judgments and the charity of whose sentiments well accorded with his own, that his son Cuthbert had imbibed, from his late associates at Cambridge, a spirit of a very dangerous nature. Cuthbert had a large philanthropy, and a resolute courage to sustain and act out those promptings of benevolence which his love of freedom was continually urging upon his mind. Virtuous in his character, sanguine in his hopes, present evils he saw, and for present remedies he panted--but he looked not far on to consequences. A notion of his state of mind may be found in the letter which follows:-- “Most dear Father,