You will be sorry to hear that Mrs. H—— is very ill. Her attack is so full of peril, and demands such incessant medical succour, that Capt. H—— resolved on removing her while she could be moved to London, to the charge of her accustomed doctor; and thither they went last Monday. Our loss is deep. It was indeed a gift from God to have a thorough lady and gentleman in the parish to appreciate the utterance of truth, and the effects of duty: it was indeed a happiness, and it is now gone. Mrs. H—— had taken great trouble with our choir. Every Thursday evening she has allowed them to come to learn the musical scale, and they were fast learning to read and sing the notes. We have been visited of late by the new kind of hurricane, the κύκλων, or whirl. It is just as fierce and strong as the old storm; but the scene of its onslaught is rigidly local: indeed, we might almost call them parochial. They had theirs at Kilkhampton two days before Mr. T——’s christening. The Poughill rush was the week after the vicar brought home his wife. A pinnacle was snapped off there, and the wall of the church rent. At Kilkhampton the damage done was in the immediate vicinity of the church. We had ours last night, but the church did not suffer harm, although two-thirds of the roof are rotten, and the pinnacles overhang. Lent is always the demon’s time, and the strength of evil. A woman who is just come in tells me that the new chimney in the kitchen at Tidnacombe was blown down last night, and is now lying on the roof in fragments. Yours faithfully, R. S. HAWKER. The energy with which he upheld the cause of the labourer was one cause of some unreasonable resentment against him being felt by the farmers; and this explains his expression “the victim of the parish,” in reference to himself in his appeal. The same intense sympathy with the poor and the down-trodden breaks out in his ballad, “The Poor Man and his Parish Church,” of which I insert a few verses:— The poor have hands and feet and eyes, Flesh, and a feeling mind: They breathe the breath of mortal sighs, They are of human kind; They weep such tears as others shed, And now and then they smile; For sweet to them is that poor bread They win with honest toil. The poor men have their wedding-day, And children climb their knee: They have not many friends, for they Are in such misery. They sell their youth, their skill, their pains, For hire in hill and glen: The very blood within their veins, It flows for other men.