who, over the signature, "One who has whistled at the plough," reports his tour through the agricultural districts, relates, among other things, the following conversation with some labourers after service: "I asked one of these people whether the preacher of the day was their own clergyman. "Yes, blast him! He is our own parson, and begs the whole time. He's been always a-begging as long as I've known him." (The sermon had been upon a mission to the heathen.) "And as long as I've known him too," added another; "and I never knew a parson but what was begging for this or the other." "Yes," said a woman, who had just come out of the church, "and look how wages are going down, and see the rich vagabonds with whom the parsons eat and drink and hunt. So help me God, we are more fit to starve in the workhouse than pay the parsons as go among the heathen." "And why," said another, "don't they send the parsons as drones every day in Salisbury Cathedral, for nobody but the bare stones? Why don't _they_ go among the heathen?" "They don't go," said the old man whom I had first asked, "because they are rich, they have all the land they need, they want the money in order to get rid of the poor parsons. I know what they want. I know them too long for that." "But, good friends," I asked, "you surely do not always come out of the church with such bitter feelings towards the preacher? Why do you go at all?" "What for do we go?" said the woman. "We must, if we do not want to lose everything, work and all, we must." I learned later that they had certain little privileges of fire-wood and potato land (which they paid for!) on condition of going to church." After describing their poverty and ignorance, the correspondent closes by saying: "And now I boldly assert that the condition of these people, their poverty, their hatred of the church, their external submission and inward bitterness against the ecclesiastical dignitaries, is the rule among the country parishes of England, and its opposite is the exception."