And _did_ the trial ever come to an end? and _was_ Clerk William Middleton, the son of Clerk Gervase, really excommunicated? "By no manner of means, sir," as the pompous fellow says in the play: the grand suit, after causing so tremendous a quassation, and all that, of a considerable quarter of Lindsey, was--given up! Yes, it was: and more than that, the true "parish clerk," Clerk William, was reinstated, fully and entirely, in his rightful office. Ay to this day,--unless our information misleads us,--he exercises the same without losing an inch of his height, or a fragment of his independent spirit; for it is but a few months bygone since he showed it. The grand Perpetual Curate, according to his wont, took upon him to reprehend, at the very grave-side, a Wesleyan, whose child, then being interred, had been baptized by a Wesleyan preacher: Clerk William, right bluntly, told the priest that the Wesleyan had a right to please himself! "Why, as for you, you will say or do any thing," retorted the priest, "if they'll pay you for it!"--"And would you be standing there in that gown, with that book in your hand, unless _you_ were paid for it?" asked and answered Clerk William. The grand Perpetual Curate bit his lip, and walked away! Reader, we have been relating _facts_: perhaps, in adopting the style of half-rhodomontade, we have not displayed very good taste; but the narrative itself contains uncontradictable _facts_. And these did not occur in a district disturbed by chartism, nor revolutionised by radicalism, or anti-corn-law agitation; but in the old-fashioned, rural centre of Lindsey: it is even there where the "spiritual court" shrinks from employing the foolery of its own worn-out terrors; and where the peasant adventures to beard the priest! Are not these "Signs of the Times?" DAME DEBORAH THRUMPKINSON, AND HER ORPHAN APPRENTICE, JOE.