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It is very painful to observe the great degree of superstition which is still entertained in many parts of England. The following tale is really true in substance, though varied a little in detail, in order to render it acceptable to the general reader.

I once paid a visit of a few weeks to a country village, which I will call Barnel, in a sequestered part of Shropshire, where everything appears to move on in the same jog-trot way it did some centuries ago. There is the parson, a free good-natured man, who speaks familiarly to every one, makes frequent visits to the poor, preaches two sermons every Sunday, dines often with the squire, and sometimes with a few of the most substantial farmers in the neighbourhood; and the Doctor, looking very stout and very good humoured, who rides an unusually fat horse, appearing to be on very good terms with himself and every one else: he is a bachelor. There is a Butcher, with plenty of flesh on his back as well as in his shop, with a very lean wife and seventeen children; a Blacksmith also; a widower, with one son and a daughter.

The one thing which is of great importance, and which most villages boast of, the great emporium for news and scandal, namely—a Barber's shop—was wanting in Barnel, but there were several Beershops, which answered the pur-