d a great notion of the sacred privilege of a minister of the
gospel--to advise--to deter--to persuade--to reprove. And it was for the
evening service that he prepared those sermons, which may be called
"sermons that preach _at_ you." He preferred the evening for that
salutary discipline, not only because the congregation was more
numerous, but also because, being a shrewd man in his own innocent way,
he knew that people bear better to be preached at after dinner than
before; that you arrive more insinuatingly at the heart when the stomach
is at peace. There was a genial kindness in Parson Dale's way of
preaching at you. It was done in so imperceptible fatherly a manner,
that you never felt offended. He did it, too, with so much art, that
nobody but your own guilty self knew that you were the sinner he was
exhorting. Yet he did not spare rich nor poor: he preached at the
Squire, and that great fat farmer, Mr. Bullock the church-warden, as
boldly as at Hodge the ploughman, and Scrub the hedger. As for Mr.
Stirn, he had preached at _him_ more often than at any one in the
parish; but Stirn, though he had the sense to know it, never had the
grace to reform. There was, too, in Parson Dale's sermons, something of
that boldness of illustration which would have been scholarly if he had
not made it familiar, and which is found in the discourses of our elder
divines. Like them, he did not scruple, now and then, to introduce an
anecdote from history, or borrow an allusion from some non-scriptural
author, in order to enliven the attention of his audience, or render an
argument more plain. And the good man had an object in this, a little
distinct from, though wholly subordinate to the main purpose of his
discourse. He was a friend to knowledge--but to knowledge accompanied by
religion; and sometimes his references to sources not within the
ordinary reading of his congregation would spirit up some farmer's son,
with an evening's leisure on his hands, to ask the Parson for farther
explanation, and so he lured on to a little solid or graceful
instruction under a safe guide.

Now on the present occasion, the Parson, who had always his eye and
heart on his flock, and who had seen with great grief the realization of
his fears at the revival of the stocks; seen that a spirit of discontent
was already at work amongst the peasants, and that magisterial and
inquisitorial designs were darkening the natural benevolence of the
Squire; seen, in s