deal given to religion; and the Primitive Methodists have
a very strong holding there, although in all Wiltshire there is
not a clergyman more popular in his own parish than the Rev. Frank
Fenwick. He himself, in his inner heart, rather likes his rival,
Mr. Puddleham, the dissenting minister; because Mr. Puddleham is an
earnest man, who, in spite of the intensity of his ignorance, is
efficacious among the poor. But Mr. Fenwick is bound to keep up the
fight; and Mr. Puddleham considers it to be his duty to put down Mr.
Fenwick and the Church Establishment altogether.

The men of Bullhampton, and the women also, are aware that the glory
has departed from them, in that Bullhampton was once a borough, and
returned two members to Parliament. No borough more close, or shall
we say more rotten, ever existed. It was not that the Marquis of
Trowbridge had, what has often delicately been called, an interest in
it; but he held it absolutely in his breeches pocket, to do with it
as he liked; and it had been the liking of the late Marquis to sell
one of the seats at every election to the highest bidder on his side
in politics. Nevertheless, the people of Bullhampton had gloried
in being a borough, and the shame, or at least the regret of their
downfall, had not yet altogether passed away when the tidings of
a new Reform Bill came upon them. The people of Bullhampton are
notoriously slow to learn, and slow to forget. It was told of a
farmer of Bullhampton, in old days, that he asked what had become of
Charles I., when told that Charles II. had been restored. Cromwell
had come and gone, and had not disturbed him at Bullhampton.

At Bullhampton there is no public building, except the church, which
indeed is a very handsome edifice with a magnificent tower, a thing
to go to see, and almost as worthy of a visit as its neighbour the
cathedral at Salisbury. The body of the church is somewhat low, but
its yellow-gray colour is perfect, and there is, moreover, a Norman
door, and there are Early English windows in the aisle, and a
perfection of perpendicular architecture in the chancel, all of which
should bring many visitors to Bullhampton; and there are brasses in
the nave, very curious, and one or two tombs of the Gilmore family,
very rare in their construction, and the churchyard is large and
green, and bowery, with the Avon flowing close under it, and nooks in
it which would make a man wish to die that he might be buried there.
The ch