https://www.dickenssearch.com/files/original/5/Sketches_of_London_No._IV_The_Parish/1835-02-28_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_No.4_The_Parish.pdf 81f01a6a7cbbf36d5ac8e383969da484 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Short Fiction Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context short-stories Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Lydia Craig Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. This collection (still in development) unites various short stories that Dickens wrote throughout his career for various publications, including newspapers and periodicals, and for inclusion in short story collections. Between 1833, when he tentatively submitted “A Dinner at Poplar Walk” for publication in The Monthly Magazine, and his death in 1870, Dickens as ‘BOZ,’ briefly, as ‘TIBBS,’ and as “Charles Dickens” wrote dozens of short stories and ‘sketches,’ which often moved easily between journalism and story. It was as Boz, the late Georgian literary persona, that he first endeared himself to the British reading public in the pages of such newspapers and periodicals as The Evening Chronicle, Bell’s Life in London, and Bentley's Miscellany with a unique blend of comedy and pathos. By turns scathing of observed social and personal injustices, and appreciative of London’s colourful, vibrant culture and the oddities of human nature, Boz followed in the literary footsteps of other recent metropolitan commentators like Charles Lamb (‘ELIA’), Leigh Hunt, Theodore Hook, Robert Surtees, Thomas Hood, and John Poole, and eighteenth-century Picaresque novelists, Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding. Soon, Dickens established his own unique voice. Prior to and following the ascension of the young Queen Victoria in 1837, Boz became a prescient spectator of both the rising empire’s rapidly developing culture in public spaces and of the domestic dramas enacted in British homes. Global fame arrived with the serial publication of The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (1837), marking Dickens’s shift to writing novels. In tone, this rambling comedic travelogue owed much to Boz’s voice and incidentally featured several tales unrelated to the main narrative. Dickens would sporadically publish the Mudfog stories in 1836 and 1837, enlarging on them in Sketches by Boz, a collection of many of the sketches and stories first published by John Macrone in two volumes in 1836 and 1837 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. According to Robert L. Patten, ‘When Dickens gathered up previously published writing, anonymous and pseudonymous, for republication, he identified authorship with a particular subset of his journalistic pieces, the ‘sketches’ rather than the tales or portraits of characters, and with his pseudonym. Hence, after mooting several other titles, Dickens settled on Sketches by Boz’ (44). Sketches of Young Gentlemen (1838), a joking response to Rev. Edward Caswell, or “QUIZ’s” recent effort Sketches of Young Ladies (1838), and Sketches of Couples (1840) were published by Chapman and Hall and illustrated by Hablot Knight Browne, better known as ‘PHIZ’. After this point, Dickens’s short stories were published in his periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, though after 1837 he never published them with any regularity, preferring instead to focus on writing and serialising novels. Occasionally, he contributed several chapters to a jointly authored short story, collection, or series; Christmas numbers of his periodicals provided the opportunity to feature multiple famous writers uniting to weave a Yule-tide yarn, such as The Haunted House (1859). Notably, his collaboration with Wilkie Collins resulted in such works as The Perils of Certain English Prisoners (1857) and No Thoroughfare (1867). Towards the end of his life, Dickens began to publish short stories again in American publications such as The New York Ledger, The Atlantic Monthly, and Our Young Folks. Until now, first printings of Dickens’s earliest short stories published between 1833 and 1836 have been difficult to find for those unable to visit the periodicals and newspaper holdings at eminent institutions such as The British Library. Similarly, the last ones written by Dickens have remained understudied due in part to their obscurity. Twentieth-century editions of the Sketches are generally based on the text of Chapman and Hall’s later 1839 single volume edition, which relies on the reissue serialised between 1837 and 1839, or the 1868 Charles Dickens Edition, which is based on the 1850 cheap (and further revised) edition. Other anthologies, for instance Selected Short Fiction (Penguin, 2005), edited by Deborah A. Thomas, choose excerpts from Dickens’s entire oeuvre in the short fiction genre. Several scholars have explored the drafting, publication, and impact of the early sketches and short stories, with notable studies including Dickens and the Short Story. (University of Philadelphia Press, 1982) by Deborah A. Thomas and Charles Dickens and ‘Boz’: The Birth of the Industrial-Age Author (Cambridge, 2012) by Patten.1 To date, the most comprehensive overview of the sketches is provided by The Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens’s Sketches by Boz (2021) edited by Paul Schlicke with David Hewitt. Others include Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches as Originally Composed and Published 1833–1836 (2012), edited by Robert C. Hanna, and Sketches by Boz and Other Early Papers (1994), edited by Michael Slater. Because Dickens made many alterations, whether significant or incidental, between the first printing of a sketch and successive editions, these changes open up a window into his editorial process and developing intentions for the ‘Boz’ legacy. Now, with this Dickens Search collection, these emendations can be studied with greater ease than ever before. Our transcription field contains text Dickens is believed to have solely authored, though our pdfs of the short story collaborations will be provided in their entirety to facilitate easier engagement and comprehension of how his narrative might interact with those constructed by other writers. Ngram search and other text analysis tools will be applied to Dickens’s words only, to avoid skewing the results. While building this collection, we have consulted, and transcribed scans found on databases such as British Newspaper Archive (BNA), digital archives, and such open-access sites as Hathi Trust, Internet Archive, and Google Books; all items are linked to their original location on the internet. Please contact us with any errors, corrections, and suggestions, or to mention other short stories by Dickens that might have been overlooked. 1. See Dominic Rainsford. ‘“Luller-li-e-te”! Language, Personhood, and Sympathy in Sketches by Boz.’ In Some Keywords in Dickens. Edited by Michael Hollington, Francesca Orestano, and Nathalie Vanfasse. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021, pp. 117-130; William F. Long. ‘“Our Space is Limited”: Fitting Sketches by Boz into the Morning Chronicle”. Dickens Quarterly 4 (December 2020): pp. 325-348; William F. Long. 'Dickens before Sketches by Boz: Earliest Reactions to his Earliest Works'. Dickensian (2018), 114.505, pp.170-176; Christina Jen. '"Drop the Curtain": Astonishment and the Anxieties of Authorship in Charles Dickens's Sketches by Boz. Dickens Studies Annual 49.2 (2018): pp. 249-278; Dianne F. Sadoff. ‘Boz and Beyond: “Oliver Twist” and the Dickens Legacy’. Dickens Studies Annual 45 (2014): pp. 23-44; Dickens's Uncollected Magazine and Newspaper Sketches, as Originally Composed and Published, 1833–1836, No. 46. Ed. Robert C. Hanna (2012): New York, AMS Press; Danielle Coriale. ‘Sketches by Boz, “So Frail a Machine”. SEL: Studies in English Literature 48.4 (2008): pp. 801-812; Paul Schlicke. ‘“Risen Like a Rocket”: The Impact of Sketches by Boz’. Dickens Quarterly 22.1 (2005): pp. 3-18; Ellen Miller Casey. ‘“Boz has got the Town by the ear”: Dickens and the “Athenæum Critics”’. Dickens Studies Annual 33 (2003): pp. 159-190; Richard Maxwell. ‘Dickens, the Two “Chronicles”, and the Publication of “Sketches by Boz”’. Dickens Studies Annual 9 (1981): pp. 21–32; Angus Easson. “Who is Boz? Dickens and His Sketches”. The Dickensian 18.1.405 (Spring 1985): pp. 13-22; Julian W. Breslow. 'The Narrator in Sketches by Boz.' ELH 44.1 (1977): pp. 127–49. Short Story Pseudonym The name under which the item was published BOZ Ngram Date Hidden from users and search. All items in a collection need to have the same data in the same format in order to show up in Ngram (either YYYY, YYYYMMDD, or YYYYMMDD). No combinations will work. For journalism, letters and poetry, if there is no month or day, default to the first of the month or January. So a poem with a date of March 1843 would be 18430301. A poem published in 1856 with no month or date information would be 18560101. 18350228 Ngram Text Hidden from users and search. Copy and paste from the Scripto transcription. Then check and uncheck HTML to strip out all formatting. Finally, search and remove any   (which is the HTML for spaces). This will prevent the Ngram picking up on irrelevant HTML. How much is conveyed is those two short words—the parish; and with how many tales of distress and misery; of broken fortune and ruined hopes—too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery—are they associated! A poor man, with small earnings and a large family, just manages to live on from hand to mouth, and to procure food from day to day: he has barely enough for the present, and can take no heed of the future; his taxes are in arrear; quarter-day passes by; another quarter-day arrives—he can procure no more quarter for himself, and is summoned by—the parish. His goods are distrained; his very bed is taken from under him; his children are crying with cold and hunger, and his wife is both figurative and literally speaking in the straw. What can he do? To whom is he to apply for relief? To private charity? To benevolent individuals? Certainly not; hasn't he —the parish? There's the parish vestry, the parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish officers, the parish beadle. Excellent institutions, and gentle, kind-hearted men. The woman dies—she is buried by the parish. The children have no protector—they are taken care of by the parish. The man first neglects, and afterwards cannot obtain, work—he is relieved by the parish; and when distress and drunkenness have done their work upon him, he is maintained, a harmless babbling idiot, in the parish asylum. The parish beadle is one of the most, perhaps the most, important member of the local administration. He is not so well off as the churchwardens, certainly, nor is he as learned as the vestry clerk, nor does he order things quite so much his own way as either of them. But his power is very great, notwithstanding; and the dignity of his office is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it. The beadle of our parish is a splendid fellow. Its quite delightful to hear him, as he explains the state of the existing poor laws to the deaf old women in the board-room passage on business nights; and to hear what he said to the senior churchwarden, and what the senior churchwarden said to him; and what "we" (the beadle and the other gentlemen) came to the determination of doing. A miserable looking woman is called into the board-room, and represents a case of extreme destitution, affecting herself—a widow, with six small children. "Where do you live?" inquires one of the overseers. "I rents a two-pair back, gentlemen, at Mrs. Brown's, Number 3, Little King William’s-alley, which has lived there this fifteen year, and knows me to be very hard-working and industrious, and when my poor husband was alive, gentlemen, as died in the hospital"—"Well, well," interrupts the overseer, taking a note of the address, "I’ll send Simmons, the beadle, to-morrow morning to ascertain whether your story is correct; and if so, I suppose you must have an order into the house—Simmons, go to this woman’s the first thing to-morrow morning, will you?" Simmons bows assent, and ushers the woman out. Her previous admiration of "the board" (who all sit behind great books, and with their hats on) fades into nothing before her respect for her lace-trimmed conductor; and her account of what has passed inside, increases—if that be possible—the marks of respect shown by the assembled crowd to that solemn functionary. As to taking out a summons, its quite a hopeless case if Simmons attends it on behalf of the parish. He knows all the titles of the Lord Mayor by heart; states the case without a single stammer, and it is even reported that on one occasion he ventured to make a joke, which the Lord Mayor’s head footman (who happened to be present) afterwards told an intimate friend confidentially was almost equal to one of Mr. Hobler’s! See him again on Sunday in his state-coat, and cocked-hat, with a large-headed staff for show in his left-hand, and a small cane for use in his right. How pompously he marshals the children into their places, and how demurely the little urchins look at him askance as he surveys them when they are all seated, with a glare of the eye peculiar to beadles. The churchwardens and overseers being duly installed in their curtain'd pews, he seats himself on a mahogany bracket, erected expressly for him at the top of the aisle, and divides his attention between his prayer-book and the boys. Suddenly, just at the commencement of the Communion Service, when the whole congregation is hushed into a profound silence, broken only by the voice of the officiating clergyman, a penny is heard to ring on the stone floor of the aisle with astounding clearness. Observe the generalship of the beadle. His involuntary look of horror is instantly changed into one of perfect indifference, as if he were the only person present who had not heard the noise. The artifice succeeds. After putting forth his right leg now and then, as a feeler, the victim who dropped the money ventures to make one or two distinct dives after it; and the beadle, gliding softly round, salutes his little round head, when it again appears above the seat, with divers double knocks, administered with the cane before noticed, to the intense delight of three young men in an adjacent pew, who cough violently at intervals until the conclusion of the sermon. Such are a few traits of the importance and gravity of a parish beadle—a gravity which has never been disturbed in any case that has come under our observation, except indeed where the services of that particularly useful machine, a parish fire-engine, are required: then indeed all is bustle. Two little boys run to the beadle as fast as their legs will carry them, and report from their own personal observation that some neighbouring chimney is on fire; the engine is hastily got out, and a plentiful supply of boys being obtained, and harnessed to it with ropes, away they rattle over the pavement, the beadle, running—we do not exaggerate—running at the side, until they arrive at some house smelling strongly of soot, at the door of which the beadle knocks with considerable gravity for half an hour. No attention being paid to these manual applications, and the turncock having turned on the water, the engine turns off amidst the shouts of the boys; it pulls up once more at the work-house, and the beadle "pulls up" the unfortunate householder next day, for the amount of his legal reward. We never saw a parish engine at a regular fire but once. It came up in gallant style—three miles and a half an hour, at least; there was a capital supply of water, and it was first on the spot. Bang went the pumps—the people cheered—the beadle perspired profusely; but it was unfortunately discovered, just as they were going to put the fire out, that nobody understood the process by which the engine was filled with water; and that eighteen boys and a man had exhausted themselves in pumping for twenty minutes, without producing the slightest effect. The personages next in importance to the beadle, are the master of the workhouse and the parish schoolmaster. The vestry-clerk, as everybody knows, is a short, pudgy little man in black, with a thick gold watch-chain, of considerable length, terminating in two large seals and a key. He is an attorney, and generally in a bustle; at no time more so than when he is hurrying to some parochial meeting, with his gloves crumpled up in one hand, and a large red book under the other arm. As to the churchwardens and overseers we exclude them altogether, because all we know of them is that they are usually respectable tradesmen who wear hats with brims inclined to flatness, and who occasionally testify in gilt letters on a blue ground in some conspicuous part of the church, to the important fact of a gallery having being enlarged and beautified, or an organ rebuilt. The master of the workhouse is not, in our parish-nor is he usually in any other - one of that class of men the better part of whose existence has passed away, and who drag out the remainder in some inferior situation, with just enough thought of the past, to feel degraded by, and discontented with, the present. We are unable to guess precisely to our own satisfaction what station the man can have occupied before; we should think he had been an inferior sort of attorney’s clerk, or else the master of a national school—whatever he was, it is clear his present position is a change for the better. His income is small certainly, as the rusty black coat and threadbare velvet collar demonstrate; but then he lives free of house-rent, has a limited allowance of coals and candles, and an almost unlimited allowance of authority in his petty kingdom. He is a tall, thin, bony man; always wears shoes and black cotton stockings with his surtout; and eyes you, as you pass his parlour-window, as if he wished you were a pauper, just to give you a specimen of his power. He is a sort of Emperor Nicholas on a small scale, with this difference—that he never seeks to extend his power beyond the limits of his own workhouse. He is an admirable specimen of a small tyrant; morose, brutish, and ill-tempered; bullying to his inferiors, cringing to his superiors, and jealous of the influence and authority of the beadle. Our schoolmaster is just the very reverse of this amiable official. He has been one of those men one occasionally hears of, on whom misfortune seems to have set her mark; nothing he ever did, or was concerned in, appears to have prospered. A rich old relation who had brought him up, and openly announced his intention of providing for him, left him 10,000l. in his will—and reversed it in his codicil. Thus unexpectedly reduced to the necessity of providing for himself he procured a situation in a public office. The young clerks below him, died off as if there were a plague among them; but the old fellows over his head, for the reversion of whose places he was anxiously waiting, lived on and on as if they were immortal. He speculated and lost. He speculated again and won—but never got his money. His talents were great; his disposition, easy, generous and liberal. His friends profited by the one, and abused the other. Loss succeeded loss; misfortune crowded on misfortune; each successive day brought him nearer the verge of hopeless penury, and the quondam friends who had been warmest in their professions, grew strangely cold and indifferent. He had children whom he loved, and a wife on whom he doted; The former turned their backs on him; the latter died broken-hearted. He went with the stream—it had ever been his failing, and he had not courage sufficient to bear up against so many shocks—he had never cared for himself, and the only being who had cared for him, in his poverty and distress, was spared to him no longer. It was at this period that he applied for parochial relief. Some kind-hearted man who had known him in happier times, chanced to be churchwarden that year, and through his interest he was appointed to his present situation. He is an old man now. Of the many who once crowded round him in all the hollow friendship of boon-companionship, some have died, some have fallen like himself, some have prospered—all have forgotten him. Time and misfortune have mercifully been permitted to impair his memory, and use has habituated him to his present condition. Meek, uncomplaining, and zealous in the discharge of his duties, he has been allowed to hold his situation long beyond the usual period; and he will no doubt continue to hold it, until infirmity renders him incapable, or death releases him. As the grey-headed old man feebly paces up and down the sunny side of the little court-yard between school hours, it would be difficult, indeed, for the most intimate of his former friends to recognise their once gay and happy associate, in the person of the Pauper Schoolmaster. It was our original intention to have sketched, in a few words more, such fragments of the little history of some other of our parishioners as have happened to come under our observation. Our space, however, is limited; and, as an editor's mandate is a wholesome check upon an author's garrulity, we have no wish to occupy more than the space usually assigned to us. It is generally allowed that parochial affairs possess little beyond local interest. But, should we be induced to imagine that the favour of our readers disposes them to make an exception of the present case, we shall vary our future numbers, by seeking materials for another sketch in "our parish." Publication Type E.g. newspaper/serial Newspaper Publication The title of the newspaper/serial (if applicable) The Evening Chronicle TEI File Link to TEI file <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/teibp/dist/content/1835-02-28_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIV_The_Parish.xml" target="_blank" rel="noopener">'Sketches of London, No. IV, The Parish.' The Evening Chronicle (28 February 1835).</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sketches of London, No. IV, The Parish' Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dickens, Charles Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived The British Newspaper Archive, <a href="https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350228/029/0004" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001315/18350228/029/0004</a>. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1835-02-28 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource The British Newspaper Archive. Some rights reserved. This work permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Type The nature or genre of the resource Short Story Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1835-02-28_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIV_The_Parish Bibliographic Citation A bibliographic reference for the resource. Recommended practice is to include sufficient bibliographic detail to identify the resource as unambiguously as possible. Dickens, Charles. 'Sketches of London, No. IV, The Parish' (28 February 1835). Dickens Search. Eds. Emily Middleton and Lydia Craig. Accessed [date]. <a href="https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-02-28_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIV_The_Parish">https://dickenssearch.com/short-stories/1835-02-28_The_Evening_Chronicle_Sketches_of_London_NoIV_The_Parish</a>. Description An account of the resource Published in The Evening Chronicle (28 February 1835). Scripto Transcription A written representation of a document. How much is conveyed is those two short words—the parish; and with how many tales of distress and misery; of broken fortune and ruined hopes—too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery—are they associated! A poor man, with small earnings and a large family, just manages to live on from hand to mouth, and to procure food from day to day: he has barely enough for the present, and can take no heed of the future; his taxes are in arrear; quarter-day passes by; another quarter-day arrives—he can procure no more quarter for himself, and is summoned by—the parish. His goods are distrained; his very bed is taken from under him; his children are crying with cold and hunger, and his wife is both figurative and literally speaking in the straw. What can he do? To whom is he to apply for relief? To private charity? To benevolent individuals? Certainly not; hasn't he —the parish?  There's the parish vestry, the parish infirmary, the parish surgeon, the parish officers, the parish beadle. Excellent institutions, and gentle, kind-hearted men. The woman dies—she is buried by the parish. The children have no protector—they are taken care of by the parish. The man first neglects, and afterwards cannot obtain, work—he is relieved by the parish; and when distress and drunkenness have done their work upon him, he is maintained, a harmless babbling idiot, in the parish asylum. The parish beadle is one of the most, perhaps the most, important member of the local administration. He is not so well off as the churchwardens, certainly, nor is he as learned as the vestry clerk, nor does he order things quite so much his own way as either of them. But his power is very great, notwithstanding; and the dignity of his office is never impaired by the absence of efforts on his part to maintain it. The beadle of our parish is a splendid fellow. Its quite delightful to hear him, as he explains the state of the existing poor laws to the deaf old women in the board-room passage on business nights; and to hear what he said to the senior churchwarden, and what the senior churchwarden said to him; and what "we" (the beadle and the other gentlemen) came to the determination of doing. A miserable looking woman is called into the board-room, and represents a case of extreme destitution, affecting herself—a widow, with six small children. "Where do you live?" inquires one of the overseers. "I rents a two-pair back, gentlemen, at Mrs. Brown's, Number 3, Little King William’s-alley, which has lived there this fifteen year, and knows me to be very hard-working and industrious, and when my poor husband was alive, gentlemen, as died in the hospital"—"Well, well," interrupts the overseer, taking a note of the address, "I’ll send Simmons, the beadle, to-morrow morning to ascertain whether your story is correct; and if so, I suppose you must have an order into the house—Simmons, go to this woman’s the first thing to-morrow morning, will you?" Simmons bows assent, and ushers the woman out. Her previous admiration of "the board" (who all sit behind great books, and with their hats on) fades into nothing before her respect for her lace-trimmed conductor; and her account of what has passed inside, increases—if that be possible—the marks of respect shown by the assembled crowd to that solemn functionary. As to taking out a summons, its quite a hopeless case if Simmons attends it on behalf of the parish. He knows all the titles of the Lord Mayor by heart; states the case without a single stammer, and it is even reported that on one occasion he ventured to make a joke, which the Lord Mayor’s head footman (who happened to be present) afterwards told an intimate friend confidentially was almost equal to one of Mr. Hobler’s! See him again on Sunday in his state-coat, and cocked-hat, with a large-headed staff for show in his left-hand, and a small cane for use in his right. How pompously he marshals the children into their places, and how demurely the little urchins look at him askance as he surveys them when they are all seated, with a glare of the eye peculiar to beadles. The churchwardens and overseers being duly installed in their curtain'd pews, he seats himself on a mahogany bracket, erected expressly for him at the top of the aisle, and divides his attention between his prayer-book and the boys.  Suddenly, just at the commencement of the Communion Service, when the whole congregation is hushed into a profound silence, broken only by the voice of the officiating clergyman, a penny is heard to ring on the stone floor of the aisle with astounding clearness. Observe the generalship of the beadle.  His involuntary look of horror is instantly changed into one of perfect indifference, as if he were the only person present who had not heard the noise.  The artifice succeeds. After putting forth his right leg now and then, as a feeler, the victim who dropped the money ventures to make one or two distinct dives after it; and the beadle, gliding softly round, salutes his little round head, when it again appears above the seat, with divers double knocks, administered with the cane before noticed, to the intense delight of three young men in an adjacent pew, who cough violently at intervals until the conclusion of the sermon. Such are a few traits of the importance and gravity of a parish beadle—a gravity which has never been disturbed in any case that has come under our observation, except indeed where the services of that particularly useful machine, a parish fire-engine, are required: then indeed all is bustle.  Two little boys run to the beadle as fast as their legs will carry them, and report from their own personal observation that some neighbouring chimney is on fire; the engine is hastily got out, and a plentiful supply of boys being obtained, and harnessed to it with ropes, away they rattle over the pavement, the beadle, running—we do not exaggerate—running at the side, until they arrive at some house smelling strongly of soot, at the door of which the beadle knocks with considerable gravity for half an hour. No attention being paid to these manual applications, and the turncock having turned on the water, the engine turns off amidst the shouts of the boys; it pulls up once more at the work-house, and the beadle "pulls up" the unfortunate householder next day, for the amount of his legal reward. We never saw a parish engine at a regular fire but once.  It came up in gallant style—three miles and a half an hour, at least; there was a capital supply of water, and it was first on the spot. Bang went the pumps—the people cheered—the beadle perspired profusely; but it was unfortunately discovered, just as they were going to put the fire out, that nobody understood the process by which the engine was filled with water; and that eighteen boys and a man had exhausted themselves in pumping for twenty minutes, without producing the slightest effect. The personages next in importance to the beadle, are the master of the workhouse and the parish schoolmaster. The vestry-clerk, as everybody knows, is a short, pudgy little man in black, with a thick gold watch-chain, of considerable length, terminating in two large seals and a key. He is an attorney, and generally in a bustle; at no time more so than when he is hurrying to some parochial meeting, with his gloves crumpled up in one hand, and a large red book under the other arm. As to the churchwardens and overseers we exclude them altogether, because all we know of them is that they are usually respectable tradesmen who wear hats with brims inclined to flatness, and who occasionally testify in gilt letters on a blue ground in some conspicuous part of the church, to the important fact of a gallery having being enlarged and beautified, or an organ rebuilt. The master of the workhouse is not, in our parish-nor is he usually in any other - one of that class of men the better part of whose existence has passed away, and who drag out the remainder in some inferior situation, with just enough thought of the past, to feel degraded by, and discontented with, the present. We are unable to guess precisely to our own satisfaction what station the man can have occupied before; we should think he had been an inferior sort of attorney’s clerk, or else the master of a national school—whatever he was, it is clear his present position is a change for the better. His income is small certainly, as the rusty black coat and threadbare velvet collar demonstrate; but then he lives free of house-rent, has a limited allowance of coals and candles, and an almost unlimited allowance of authority in his petty kingdom. He is a tall, thin, bony man; always wears shoes and black cotton stockings with his surtout; and eyes you, as you pass his parlour-window, as if he wished you were a pauper, just to give you a specimen of his power.  He is a sort of Emperor Nicholas on a small scale, with this difference—that he never seeks to extend his power beyond the limits of his own workhouse. He is an admirable specimen of a small tyrant; morose, brutish, and ill-tempered; bullying to his inferiors, cringing to his superiors, and jealous of the influence and authority of the beadle. Our schoolmaster is just the very reverse of this amiable official. He has been one of those men one occasionally hears of, on whom misfortune seems to have set her mark; nothing he ever did, or was concerned in, appears to have prospered. A rich old relation who had brought him up, and openly announced his intention of providing for him, left him 10,000l. in his will—and reversed it in his codicil. Thus unexpectedly reduced to the necessity of providing for himself he procured a situation in a public office. The young clerks below him, died off as if there were a plague among them; but the old fellows over his head, for the reversion of whose places he was anxiously waiting, lived on and on as if they were immortal. He speculated and lost. He speculated again and won—but never got his money. His talents were great; his disposition, easy, generous and liberal. His friends profited by the one, and abused the other. Loss succeeded loss; misfortune crowded on misfortune; each successive day brought him nearer the verge of hopeless penury, and the quondam friends who had been warmest in their professions, grew strangely cold and indifferent. He had children whom he loved, and a wife on whom he doted; The former turned their backs on him; the latter died broken-hearted. He went with the stream—it had ever been his failing, and he had not courage sufficient to bear up against so many shocks—he had never cared for himself, and the only being who had cared for him, in his poverty and distress, was spared to him no longer. It was at this period that he applied for parochial relief. Some kind-hearted man who had known him in happier times, chanced to be churchwarden that year, and through his interest he was appointed to his present situation. He is an old man now. Of the many who once crowded round him in all the hollow friendship of boon-companionship, some have died, some have fallen like himself, some have prospered—all have forgotten him. Time and misfortune have mercifully been permitted to impair his memory, and use has habituated him to his present condition. Meek, uncomplaining, and zealous in the discharge of his duties, he has been allowed to hold his situation long beyond the usual period; and he will no doubt continue to hold it, until infirmity renders him incapable, or death releases him. As the grey-headed old man feebly paces up and down the sunny side of the little court-yard between school hours, it would be difficult, indeed, for the most intimate of his former friends to recognise their once gay and happy associate, in the person of the Pauper Schoolmaster. It was our original intention to have sketched, in a few words more, such fragments of the little history of some other of our parishioners as have happened to come under our observation. Our space, however, is limited; and, as an editor's mandate is a wholesome check upon an author's garrulity, we have no wish to occupy more than the space usually assigned to us. It is generally allowed that parochial affairs possess little beyond local interest. But, should we be induced to imagine that the favour of our readers disposes them to make an exception of the present case, we shall vary our future numbers, by seeking materials for another sketch in "our parish."