old and young, the idle and industrious, the sturdy vagabond, and the helpless and dying!--they deem it a virtue to deny them all, till a higher power forces the reluctant doit from their gripe. They are surly, yet proud churls, living wrapped in a sense of their own importance; for they see nobody above them, except there be a squire or a lord in the parish; and they see little of him, and then only to make their passing obsequious bow; for they are at once Tyrants to the weak, and cowards to the strong. Any education, any change, would be a blessing to these men, that would bring them into collision with those of their own supposed standing, but with better education and more liberal views and habits. The excess to which these causes operate in some of these out-of-the-world places, is scarcely to be credited: they produce the strangest scenes and the strangest characters. Let us take a specimen or two from one parish, that would be easily paralleled in many others. In one part of this secluded neighbourhood, you approach extensive woods, and behold amongst them a house of corresponding air and dimensions--a mansion befitting a large landed proprietor. If you choose to explore the outbuildings belonging to it, you will find there a regularly educated and authorized physician, living in a dovecot, and writing prescriptions for any that choose to employ him, for a crown, or even half-a-crown, which he spends in drink. Paternal example and inculcations made him what he is; unfitted him for success in his profession, and left him dependent on his elder brother, who affords him the asylum of his dovecot, yet so grudgingly that he has even attempted to dislodge him by pulling off the roof; and the poor doctor owes his retreat, not to his brother’s good-will, but to his own possession of a brace of formidable bull-dogs, that menace the destruction of any assailant. The dogs lie in his chamber when you enter, with their noses on the ground, and their dark glittering eyes fixed steadily upon you, and are ready, at a signal, to spring on you, and tear you to pieces. The doctor’s free potations have now deprived him of the power of locomotion; he cannot quit his pigeon-house; but one of his bull-dogs he has trained to act as his emissary, and with a note suspended to his neck by a tape, he goes to certain houses in the neighbouring village, and so communicates his wishes to certain cronies of his, who are in the habit of attending to them. The dog would tear any one to pieces that attempted to stop him while on his master’s errands, being a very strong and fierce creature; but, if he is not molested, he goes very civilly along to his place of destination, and, when the note is taken off his neck by the proper hands, returns with great punctuality and decorum.