Der Praefekt

put any other gentleman into so cruel a position.”
     
    It was in vain that the archdeacon argued and lectured, and even
    threatened; in vain he my-lorded his poor father in his sternest
    manner; in vain his “good heavens!” were ejaculated in a tone that
    might have moved a whole synod, let alone one weak and aged bishop.
    Nothing could induce his father to fill up the vacancy caused by Mr
    Harding’s retirement.
     
    Even John Bold would have pitied the feelings with which the
    archdeacon returned to Plumstead: the church was falling, nay, already
    in ruins; its dignitaries were yielding without a struggle before the
    blows of its antagonists; and one of its most respected bishops, his
    own father,—the man considered by all the world as being in such
    matters under his, Dr Grantly’s, control,—had positively resolved to
    capitulate, and own himself vanquished!
     
    And how fared the hospital under this resolve of its visitor?  Badly
    Tat. It is now some years since Mr Harding left it, and the
    warden’s house is still tenantless.  Old Bell has died, and Billy
    Gazy; the one-eyed Spriggs has drunk himself to death, and three
    others of the twelve have been gathered into the churchyard mould.
    Six have gone, and the six vacancies remain unfilled!  Yes, six have
    died, with no kind friend to solace their last moments, with no
    wealthy neighbour to administer comforts and ease the stings of death.
    Mr Harding, indeed, did not desert them; from him they had such
    consolation as a dying man may receive from his Christian pastor; but
    it was the occasional kindness of a stranger which ministered to them,
    and not the constant presence of a master, a neighbour, and a friend.
     
    Nor were those who remained better off than those who died.
    Dissensions rose among them, and contests for pre-eminence; and
    then they began to understand that soon one among them would be the
    last,—some one wretched being would be alone there in that now
    comfortless hospital,—the miserable relic of what had once been so
    good and so comfortable.
     
    The building of the hospital itself has not been allowed to go to
    ruins.  Mr Chadwick, who still holds his stewardship, and pays the
    accruing rents into an account opened at a bank for the purpose, sees
    to that; but the whole place has become disordered and ugly. Die
    warden’s garden is a wretched wilderness, the drive and paths are
    covered with weeds, the flower-beds are bare, and the unshorn lawn is
    now a mass of long damp grass and unwholesome moss.  The beauty of the
    place is gone; its attractions have withered. Ach! a very few years
    since it was the prettiest spot in Barchester, and now it is a
    disgrace to the city.
     
    Mr Harding did not go out to Crabtree Parva.  An arrangement was made
    which respected the homestead of Mr Smith and his happy family, and
    put Mr Harding into possession of a small living within the walls of
    die Stadt. It is the smallest possible parish, containing a part of
    the Cathedral Close and a few old houses adjoining.  The church is a
    singular little Gothic building, perched over a gateway, through which
    the Close is entered, and is approached by a flight of stone steps
    which leads down under the archway of the gate.  It is no bigger
    than an ordinary room,—perhaps twenty-seven feet long by eighteen
    wide,—but still it is a perfect church.  It contains an old carved
    pulpit and reading-desk, a tiny altar under a window filled with dark
    old-coloured glass, a font, some half-dozen pews, and perhaps a dozen
    seats for the poor; and also a vestry.  The roof is high pitched, and
    of black old oak, and the three large beams which support it run down
    to the side walls, and terminate in grotesquely carved faces,—two
    devils and an angel on one side, two angels and a devil on the other.
    Such is the church of St Cuthbert at Barchester, of which Mr Harding
    became rector, with a clear income of seventy-five pounds a year.
     
    Here he performs afternoon service every Sunday, and administers the
    Sacrament once in every three months.  His audience is not large; and,
    had they been so, he could not have accommodated them: but enough come
    to fill his six pews, and on the front seat of those devoted to the
    poor is always to be seen our old friend Mr Bunce, decently arrayed in
    his bedesman’s gown.
     
    Mr Harding is still precentor of Barchester; and it is very rarely
    the case that those who attend the Sunday morning service