n so
good and so comfortable.

The building of the hospital itself has not been allowed to go to
ruins. Mr Chadwick, who still holds his stewardship, and pays the
accruing rents into an account opened at a bank for the purpose, sees
to that; but the whole place has become disordered and ugly. The
warden's garden is a wretched wilderness, the drive and paths are
covered with weeds, the flower-beds are bare, and the unshorn lawn is
now a mass of long damp grass and unwholesome moss. The beauty of the
place is gone; its attractions have withered. Alas! a very few years
since it was the prettiest spot in Barchester, and now it is a
disgrace to the city.

Mr Harding did not go out to Crabtree Parva. An arrangement was made
which respected the homestead of Mr Smith and his happy family, and
put Mr Harding into possession of a small living within the walls of
the city. It is the smallest possible parish, containing a part of
the Cathedral Close and a few old houses adjoining. The church is a
singular little Gothic building, perched over a gateway, through which
the Close is entered, and is approached by a flight of stone steps
which leads down under the archway of the gate. It is no bigger
than an ordinary room,--perhaps twenty-seven feet long by eighteen
wide,--but still it is a perfect church. It contains an old carved
pulpit and reading-desk, a tiny altar under a window filled with dark
old-coloured glass, a font, some half-dozen pews, and perhaps a dozen
seats for the poor; and also a vestry. The roof is high pitched, and
of black old oak, and the three large beams which support it run down
to the side walls, and terminate in grotesquely carved faces,--two
devils and an angel on one side, two angels and a devil on the other.
Such is the church of St Cuthbert at Barchester, of which Mr Harding
became rector, with a clear income of seventy-five pounds a year.

Here he performs afternoon service every Sunday, and administers the
Sacrament once in every three months. His audience is not large; and,
had they been so, he could not have accommodated them: but enough come
to fill his six pews, and on the front seat of those devoted to the
poor is always to be seen our old friend Mr Bunce, decently arrayed in
his bedesman's gown.

Mr Harding is still precentor of Barchester; and it is very rarely
the case that those who attend the Sunday morning service miss the
gratification of hearing him chant the Litany, as no o