A great event has recently occurred in our parish. A contest of
paramount interest has just terminated; a parochial convulsion has
taken place. It has been succeeded by a glorious triumph, which
the country--or at least the parish--it is all the same--will long
remember. We have had an election; an election for beadle. The
supporters of the old beadle system have been defeated in their
stronghold, and the advocates of the great new beadle principles
have achieved a proud victory.

Our parish, which, like all other parishes, is a little world of
its own, has long been divided into two parties, whose contentions,
slumbering for a while, have never failed to burst forth with
unabated vigour, on any occasion on which they could by possibility
be renewed. Watching-rates, lighting-rates, paving-rates, sewer's-
rates, church-rates, poor's-rates--all sorts of rates, have been in
their turns the subjects of a grand struggle; and as to questions
of patronage, the asperity and determination with which they have
been contested is scarcely credible.

The leader of the official party--the steady advocate of the
churchwardens, and the unflinching supporter of the overseers--is
an old gentleman who lives in our row. He owns some half a dozen
houses in it, and always walks on the opposite side of the way, so
that he may be able to take in a view of the whole of his property
at once. He is a tall, thin, bony man, with an interrogative nose,
and little restless perking eyes, which appear to have been given
him for the sole purpose of peeping into other people's affairs
with. He is deeply impressed with the importance of our parish