THE WORKER IN CHRIST'S VINEYARD. mediate vicinity of the Mendip Hills, Cheddar was equally celebrated for its stern and magnificent rocky scenery, and for its garden-like pasture-lands. Our benevolent poetess and moralist was shocked to find, in the course of her rambles with her sister Patty, that the peasants were living in an almost inconceivable state of barbarity, neglect, and de- moralization. " We found more than two thousand people in the parish almost all very poor," she wrote to Mr. Wilberforce, in describing the neighbourhood; " no gentry ; a dozen wealthy farmers, hard, brutal, and ignorant. We saw but one Bible in all the parish, and that was used to prop a flower -pot. No clergyman had r.sided.in it for forty years. One rode over, three miles fromWells, to preach once a Sunday, but no weekly duty was done, or sick persons visited, and children were often buried without any funeral service. Eight persons in the morning, and twenty in the afternoon, was a good congregation." No one paid the slightest heed to the poor creatures; the Vicar of Cheddar, receiving fifty pounds a year for duties he never performed, resided constantly at Oxford : the Rector of Axbridge was a slave to the disgusting vice of drinking ! " He was intoxicated about six times a-week ; and very frequently prevented from preaching by two black eyes, honestly acquired by fighting." Gifted with " the blessed faculty of labour," Hannah More lost no time in endeavouring to effect some reform, but she met with opposition and 32
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=