“But do not these rash and furious young zealots of whom you have spoken burn their fingers sometimes, and does not the bishop sometimes come down upon them?” Yes! very often, _after the mischief has been done_. I knew one monster who upon his glebe had some seven of the noblest oak trees in the county of Norfolk. _Lucus ligna_ was his view of the case, and he sold them all. Down they came every tree of them. Some said he wanted to see how the landscape would look without them, some that he wanted to go to Norway, and there are plenty of trees there. The patron of the living called that man to account, and I am told made him disgorge the proceeds of his ill-gotten gains; and the bishop is generally believed to have sent him a mandate to put back those trees in their former position. But that clerical monster, though he plays the fiddle to put Amphion to shame, has never learnt Amphion’s tune or cared to charm back the giant vegetables that were once the pride and glory of the countryside. In the days when the wicked received their reward in this world a thousand evil-doers have been hanged for crimes incomparably less injurious to the community at large than that which lies to the charge of this reverend sinner; but he enjoys the income of his benefice to this day, and grows willows instead of oaks, not to turn to the use which Timon recommended to one of his visitors, but to turn into cash; for they grow fast, and the manufacturers of cricket bats are hard put to it to supply the demand for their wares. What we want is to make it at least a misdemeanour punishable by imprisonment for the parson to touch the fabric of the church under any circumstances whatever, except with the consent and under the license of some external authority. But that implies that the ownership of the church should no longer be vested in a _corporation sole_. It brings us again face to face with the whole question of the parson’s freehold, and how long is that mischievous legal fiction--which is, however, a very stubborn legal fact--to be endured? If I were to go on in this vein, and dwell upon all the parson has to suffer from his _predecessors_--the man who built the house two miles from the parish church; the man who added to it to find room for a score of pupils; the man who loved air, or the man who loved water, or the man who loved society, or the man who bred horses, or the man who turned the rectory into a very lucrative lunatic asylum--I should tire out my reader’s patience, and the more so that there are other trials about which it is advisable that I should utter my querulous wail.