daughter called him to task, reminding him that Mrs. Austen never swore,
he replied, 'Now, Betty, why do you pull me up for nothing? that's
neither here nor there; you know very well that's only _my way of telling
the story_.' Attention has lately been called by a celebrated writer to
the inferiority of the clergy to the laity of England two centuries ago.
The charge no doubt is true, if the rural clergy are to be compared with
that higher section of country gentlemen who went into parliament, and
mixed in London society, and took the lead in their several counties; but
it might be found less true if they were to be compared, as in all
fairness they ought to be, with that lower section with whom they usually
associated. The smaller landed proprietors, who seldom went farther from
home than their county town, from the squire with his thousand acres to
the yeoman who cultivated his hereditary property of one or two hundred,
then formed a numerous class--each the aristocrat of his own parish; and
there was probably a greater difference in manners and refinement between
this class and that immediately above them than could now be found
between any two persons who rank as gentlemen. For in the progress of
civilisation, though all orders may make some progress, yet it is most
perceptible in the lower. It is a process of 'levelling up;' the rear
rank 'dressing up,' as it were, close to the front rank. When Hamlet
mentions, as something which he had 'for _three years taken_ note of,'
that 'the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier,' it
was probably intended by Shakspeare as a satire on his own times; but it
expressed a principle which is working at all times in which society
makes any progress. I believe that a century ago the improvement in most
country parishes began with the clergy; and that in those days a rector
who chanced to be a gentleman and a scholar found himself superior to his
chief parishioners in information and manners, and became a sort of
centre of refinement and politeness.