that on one occasion "the
Rev. Mr. Palmer, Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, dined with us. He
expressed a wish that a better provision were made for parish clerks.
Johnson: 'Yes, sir, a parish clerk should be a man who is able to make a
will or write a letter for anybody in the parish.'" I am afraid that a
vast number of our good clerks would have been sore puzzled to perform
the first task, and the caligraphy of the letter would in many cases
have been curious.

That careful delineator of rural manners as they existed at the end of
the eighteenth century, George Crabbe, devotes a whole poem to the
parish clerk in his nineteenth letter of _The Borough_. He tells of the
fortunes of Jachin, the clerk, a grave and austere man, fully orthodox,
a Pharisee of the Pharisees, and detecter and opposer of the wiles of
Satan. Here is his picture:

"With our late vicar, and his age the same,
His clerk, bright Jachin, to his office came;
The like slow speech was his, the like tall slender frame:
But Jachin was the gravest man on ground,
And heard his master's jokes with look profound;
For worldly wealth this man of letters sigh'd,
And had a sprinkling of the spirit's pride:
But he was sober, chaste, devout, and just,
One whom his neighbours could believe and trust:
Of none suspected, neither man nor maid
By him were wronged, or were of him afraid.
There was indeed a frown, a trick of state
In Jachin: formal was his air and gait:
But if he seemed more solemn and less kind
Than some light man to light affairs confined,
Still 'twas allow'd that he should so behave
As in high seat, and be severely grave."

The arch-tempter tries in vain to seduce him from the right path. "The
house where swings the tempting sign," the smiles of damsels, have no
power over him. He "shuns a flowing bowl and rosy lip," but he is not
invulnerable after all. Want and avarice take possession of his soul. He
begins to take by stealth the money collected in church, putting bran in
his pockets so that the coin shall not jingle. He offends with terror,
repeats his offence, grows familiar with crime, and is at last detected
by a "stern stout churl, an angry overseer." Disgrace, ruin, death soon
follow; shunned and despised by all, he "turns to the wall and silently
expired." A woeful story truly, the results of spiritual pride and greed
of gain! It is to be hoped tha