languages, and few could beat the parson at that. There was one clergyman in particular of whom the oldest people speak frequently. He was a novice at preaching, especially in Welsh, but he had excelled in football ever since he was a boy at Eton, and that was his forte when in the University. The clerk at the time to which they specially refer was too old for the sports; he did his part in drinking the health of the parson and the success of the game, and that we are told he did right well. In those days the church was well attended, especially as the hour for football drew near. There were a few who, notwithstanding they sometimes failed to come to the church service, never failed to be in time for the other engagement, and thus made up for lost opportunities.

Since then things have greatly changed. Some of the reformers of the last century visited this parish on their journeys through Wales. They spoke to men in their own tongue, and the words they uttered were struck off at white heat. They denounced the evils of Sunday sports with irresistible eloquence, and in less than half a century after the first revival the Welsh people had turned their backs upon the Established Church and the games associated with its services. The church in this parish, in common with almost every other parish in Wales, is not in any sense the church of the people. There is still a pew reserved in it for "the squire," and two or three for neighbouring farmers, who are supposed to attend the services, but the whole country has deserted the old church, and the honest peasantry on Sundays and other stated times stream to their little Bethels or Bethanys on hill and dale, forgetful of the hoary sanctuary, whose associations, though ancient, have no sacredness for them save that they link them to the sepulchres of their fathers.

The last clergyman, or rather the one who until within a few years ago officiated at this ancient church, had been there for fifty years, and thus, from long residence on his living had, like his pulpit, become a kind of sacred fixture. He was a jovial, good-natured man, without his equal in the neighbourhood on the hunting field, and was generally acknowledged to be the best judge of a good bottle of port in the whole county. As a preacher, however, he dealt largely in what the people significantly called "cawl dw'r,"* or water broth, a concoction to which the poorest of the peasantry are forced to resort in exceptionally hard times, and which has not even the most distant savour of meat about it, but consists of water, a little of the hereditary leek cut up, a sprig of parsley minced, a pinch of oatmeal, and salt to taste. Hence they apply the words "cawl dw'r" to a species of spiritual food which is not too rich, but which is rather profitable for banting, and in that sense they used the phrase in referring to this clergyman's sermons. His voice, possessing as it did a marvellous compass, had enough of thunder in it, but unfortunately it lacked the lightning. It contrasted strangely, too, if not comically, with that of the clerk, a little tailor, whose voice always produced the impression that he gave the responses through a pipe-stem-so celestially thin was it. Some of the unsympathizing people, struck by this strange contrast in the responses at the very occasional funeral services which they attended at church, irreverently designated it "bubble and squeak," the name by which it was henceforth known, a phrase, too, strangely enough applied to a savoury preparation of bacon and cabbage fried together, the words "bubble and squeak" being expressive

*Pronounced “căōl dōōr."

of the conflicting noises in the frying-pan as the cooking went on. Whether or not the one exercise was in any way associated with the other in the mind of the wag who first applied the phrase to parson and clerk it is impossible to divine, and how far the comparison held good none but those who witnessed both performances and heard their discordant sounds could judge. Would that these had been the only failings of the two who thus ministered in holy things in this ancient sanctuary. Would that their natural unfitness had not been supplemented and aggravated by far more serious defects in character and life; but enough, their part is played, the curtain is dropped for ever, and the good old villagers have long since commended them and their irregularities to those uncovenanted mercies" which are far more tender than our covenanted ones. The story of the sporting parson and his clerk happily belongs to a state of things which is fast becoming obsolete even in the Established Church in Wales, a consummation as devoutly wished by the hundreds of thousands who are without its pale as by the smaller number who still cling to it and mourn sadly over its sullied history and its dishonoured name.

The present clergyman is of a very different type from any of his predecessors. Had they resembled him more the Established Church in Wales would have had another aspect now. Fervent speech and a holy life on the part of those who were the recognised religious guides of others would have then won a highly sensitive and enthusiastic people into that Church's embrace, but the opportunity has gone by, and gone, it would seem, for ever.

Thus the ecclesiastical policy of appointing English clergymen to Welsh livings, who, for various reasons into which it were better not to inquire, were unfit for similar

spheres in England, men who neither knew the Welsh language nor sympathized with the people, and who in the majority of instances were never qualified by gifts or grace for the ministry of love to which they were nominally devoted a state of things which continued for centurieshas emptied the churches of the Establishment throughout Wales, and there seems to be no prospect of their being ever filled again. The deep conviction of one of the noblest sons of the Church in Wales, who died without its fold because in the dark times in which he lived he dared to preach beyond his own parish, a conviction which on his lips assumed the solemnity if not the authority of an inspired prophecy, that "the bees would return again. to the old hive" ("Fe ddychwel y gwenyn ir hên gwch etto") seems to be as far from realization to-day as when first uttered by his dying lips. The old hive, we are glad to know and grateful to testify, has been cleansed from most of its former impurities, but since that "son of thunder" uttered his solemn prediction the bees have found other hives, and are no longer shelterless seeking a home. The church of which we speak-like most others from Holyhead to Cardiff-is a deserted hive; but who will blame the bees? And if they never return, what wonder?

CHAPTER III.

The Village School.

OUT half a mile distant from the village the old school-house still stands, although in a dilapidated condition and no longer fit for use. It is a building of a very primitive type, and has a chequered history reaching far the past.

into

Even fifty years

ago various por

tions of the walls threatened to dis

solve partnership, but the friendly ivy came to the rescue, bound in its loving embrace the disunited parts, and, like charity, covered many a glaring defect and gaping cranny in the frail structure. The building consisted of four plain walls sadly out of square, with openings in them. which passed for windows, but which were quite as