[To THE EDITOR OF THE "STEDTATOR.1 SIR, — Fathered on Frederick Temple
is the following chestnut. A parson made request to ride ()aside of his parish. " How far from your church is the house situate you propose to take!' " "Well, Bishop, as the crow flies ---." "But you're not a crow and you can't fly," closed the proposal. This is the point your correspondent Mr. Raton (Spectator, March 20th) desires to press hottme,—narnely, that there are thinly populated parishes which are so remote from other equally sparsely peopled parishes that a parson could not, unless he were provided with an airship, physically tackle both spheres of labour, especially in the winter months ; whilst only too sadly true, as the Bishop of Carlisle remarks, is another and far worse aspect of the matter than even positive peum7,—namely, the deadly dullness of these sequestered parishes, with the appalling temptation to spiritual, mental, moral, and even physical slackness; yet whilst theoretically it would be an all-round good to amalgamate many " starviugs," still those who have a working experience in lonely places know only too sorrowfully that the smaller- inhabited and the remoter-placed the parish, oftentimes the greater the jealousy of the iderveral parochial pumps, one of which pumps up oil and the other water; and a parson essaying to serve two masters would find himself between the devil and the deep sea with a vengeance.—I am, Sir, &c., THEODORE P. BROCKLEHHEST. Giggleewicle-in.Craven.
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