e quietly
entered the vestry, and signed to the clerk to come to him. The Duke
gave the man a hare, and told him to put it into the parson's trap, and
give a complimentary message about it at the end of the service. But the
clerk, knowing his master would be pleased at the little attention,
could not refrain from delivering both hare and message at once before
the whole congregation. At the close of the hymn before the sermon he
marched into a prominent position holding up the gift, and shouted out,
"His Grace's compliments, and, please sir, he's sent ye a hare."

In giving out the hymns or Psalms many difficulties of pronunciation
would often arise. One clerk had many struggles over the line, "Awed by
Thy gracious word." He could not manage that tiresome first word, and
always called it "a wed." The old metrical version of the Psalm, "Like
as the hart desireth the water-brooks," etc. is still with us, and a
beautiful hymn it is:

"As pants the hart for cooling streams
When heated in the chase."

A Northumbrian clerk used to give out the words thus:

"As pants the 'art for coolin' streams
When 'eated in the chaise,"

which seems to foreshadow the triumph of modern civilisation, the carted
deer, a mode of stag-hunting that was scarcely contemplated by Tate
and Brady.

CHAPTER XIV

SLEEPY CHURCH AND SLEEPY CLERKS

There was a time when the Church of England seemed to be asleep. Perhaps
it may have been that "tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep," was
only preparing her exhausted energies for the unwonted activities of the
last half-century; or was it the sleep that presaged death? Her enemies
told her so in plain and unvarnished language. Her friends, too, said
that she was folding her robes to die with what dignity she could.
Lethargy, sloth, sleep--a dead, dull, dreary sleep--fell like a leaden
pall upon her spiritual life, darkening the light that shone but vaguely
through the storied panes of her mediaeval windows, while a paralysing
numbness crippled her limbs and quenched her activity.

Such scenes as Archbishop Benson describes as his early recollection of
Upton, near Droitwich, were not uncommon. The church was aisleless, and
the middle passage, with high pews on each side, led up to the
chancel-arch, in which was a "three-decker," fifteen feet high. The
clerk wore a wig and immense horn spectacles. He was a shoemaker,
dressed in black, with a white tie. In the gallery