l's joy, each Burial's tears;
Within the walls, by Saxons reared of old,
By the stone sculptured font of antique mould,
Under the massive arches in the glow,
Tinged by dyed sun-beams passing to and fro,
A sentient portion of the sacred place,
A worthy presence with a well-worn face.
The lich-gate's shadow, o'er his pall at last
Bids kind adieu as poor old John goes past.
Unseen the path, the trees, the old oak door,
No more his foot-falls touch the tomb-paved floor,
His silvery head is hid, his service done
Of all these Sabbaths absent only one.
And now amidst the graves he delved around,
He rests and sleeps, beneath the hallowed ground.

Keep Innocency, and take heed unto the thing that is right,
For that shall bring a man peace at the last. Psalm XXXVII.
38.

There is an interesting memorial of an aged parish clerk in Cropthorne
Church, Worcestershire, an edifice of considerable note. It consists of
a small painted-glass window in the tower, containing a full-length
portrait of the deceased official, duly apparelled in a cassock.

There is in the King's Norton parish churchyard an old gravestone the
existence of which I dare say a good many people had forgotten until
recently, owing to the inscription having become almost illegible.
Within the past few weeks it has been renovated, and thus a record has
been prevented from dropping out of public memory. The stone sets forth
that it was erected to the memory of Isaac Ford, a shoemaker, who was
for sixty-two years parish clerk of King's Norton, and who died on 10
July, 1755, aged eighty-five years. Beneath is another interesting
inscription to the effect that Henry Ford, son of Isaac, who died on 11
July, 1795, aged eighty-one, was also parish clerk for forty years. The
two men thus held continuous office for one hundred and two years. This
is a famous record of long service, though it has been surpassed by a
few others, our parish clerks being a long-lived race.

At Stoulton Church a clerk died in 1812, and it is recorded on his
epitaph that "He was clerk of this parish more 30 years and much
envied." It was not his office or his salary which was envied, but "a
worn't much liked by the t'others," and yet followed the verse:

A loving' husband, father dear,
A faithful friend lies buried here.

An ep