ged that
very well, and deserve a little present. I will give you the same
next time."

[Illustration: THE SLEEPING CONGREGATION BY HOGARTH]

At Eccleshall, near Sheffield, the clerk, named Thompson, had been, in
the days of his youth, a good cricketer, and always acted as umpire for
the village team. One hot Sunday morning, the sermon being very long,
old Thompson fell asleep. His dream was of his favourite game; for when
the parson finished his discourse and waited for the clerk's "Amen," old
Thompson awoke, and, to the amazement of the congregation, shouted out
"Over!" After all, he was no worse than the cricketing curate who, after
reading the first lesson, announced: "Here endeth the first innings."

Every one has heard of that Irish clerk who used to snore so loudly
during the sermon that he drowned the parson's voice. The old vicar,
being of a good-natured as well as a somewhat humorous turn of mind,
devised a plan for arousing his lethargic clerk. He provided himself
with a box of hard peas, and when the well-known snore echoed through
the church, he quietly dropped one of the peas on the head of the
offender, who was at once aroused to the sense of his duties, and
uttered a loud "Amen."

This plan acted admirably for a time, but unfortunately the parson was
one day carried away by his eloquence, gesticulated wildly, and dropped
the whole box of peas on the head of the unfortunate clerk. The result
was such a strenuous chorus of "Amens," that the laughter of the
congregation could not be restrained, and the peas were abolished and
consigned to the limbo of impractical inventions. Possibly the story may
be an invention too.

One of the causes which tended to the unpopularity of the Church was the
accession of George IV to the throne of England. "Church and King" were
so closely connected in the mind of the people that the sins of the
monarch were visited on the former, and deemed to have brought some
discredit on it. Moreover, the King by his first act placed the loyal
members of the Church in some difficulty, and that was the order to
expunge the name of the ill-used, if erring, Queen Caroline from the
Prayers for the Royal Family in the Book of Common Prayer.

One good clergyman, Dr. Parr, vicar of Hatton, placed an interesting
record in his Prayer Book after the required erasure: "It is my duty as
a subject and as an ecclesiastic to read what is prescribed by my
Sovereign as head of the Church, but it i