THE HAMLET.
The reduction of parsons is due to several causes. First, as I have said, the actual number available is insufficient. Secondly, the villages, with scarcely an exception, have dwindled into hamlets. Thirdly, the letting or sale of the Rectories and Vicarages has added some few most necessary pounds to the value of the livings. The village served by the remote and busy Rector was said in old days to be worth minus 120 a year. Yet it was inhabited a generation or more ago by a man of light and learning, and a saint to boot. Men who arc both savants and saints presumably exist to-day, but they are not in the class of people who retire to country villages to meditate, or write, or study natural history and archaeology. Their place is filled by casual residents who seldom stay more than a few years in the locality, and often care little for it or for its rural and social well-being.
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