We talked with open heart, and tongue
    Affectionate and true,
    A pair of friends, though I was young,
    And Matthew seventy-two.

    *     *      *     *     *

    And, ere we came to Leonard’s rock,
    He sang those witty rhymes
    About the crazy Old Church Clock,
    And the bewildered chimes.

    Wordsworth.

“I gradually established an acquaintance with this old Clock.  It had already proved itself a faithful friend—indeed the only one that I had yet found in Manchester; for my mother’s distant relation was too much involved in the all-absorbing pursuit of making money, to have any room in his thoughts for the wishes and feelings of a poor country cousin like myself.  The Clock, however, had grown to be so intimate an acquaintance, that I one day took advantage of a leisure hour to pay it a nearer visit; and was very attentively looking up into its face from the foot of the tower, in the space between it and the houses—which space was then exceedingly narrow, (the houses are now happily taken down,) when my shoulders were suddenly assailed by a very smart blow with a stick, from some person from behind!  I turned sharply round, as might be expected, and saw a little active old man, dressed in a suit of rusty black, with a hat somewhat of a clerical shape, and a pair of sharp grey eyes twinkling under very long and very shaggy eye-brows, in the very act of raising his cane for the purpose of repeating the salute.  I immediately twisted the offensive weapon out of his grasp, and seeing the reverend character of the assailant, exclaimed, ‘Nemo me impune’—flourishing, at the same time, the cane over his head, as if about to p. 96return the blow.  Nothing daunted with my threat, the little man stood his ground bravely; and said, with a look of mingled fun and fury, ‘Who beat that bit of Latin into your foolish head?’

“‘One,’ said I, ‘whose hand was quite as heavy as yours, though he did not lay on half so hard as you do!’

“‘All the worse—all the worse.  Had he struck harder then, you would have needed it less now!  But why do you stop up the way to church, and stand gazing up to that tower, as if you were planning to rob the belfry?’

“‘I was thinking,’ said I, for I began to be more amused than angry with the old man, ‘I was thinking, when your cane interrupted my meditations, why it was that men placed clocks in the towers of churches!’

“‘That is easily answered, man; to teach you that time is a sacred thing.’

“‘That is indeed an answer,’ I replied; ‘and one worthy of my old friend Mr. Walker of Seathwaite!’

“‘Mr. Walker!’ exclaimed the old gentleman, in great surprise, ‘what knowest thou of Mr. Walker? a very good man he is, and a very good scholar—not of the University, though—but a good scholar, and an old friend of mine; what knowest thou of him, man?’

“‘Know him!  Why he is my old pastor and master—the best friend I have in all the world!  Oh, sir!  If you know him, you must be a good man too!’

“‘Dont be too sure of that!’ said the old gentleman, somewhat pettishly; ‘there are two opinions on that subject, I promise you.  Which of them I may entertain, is no concern of yours!’

“‘Well, sir, but I am sure if you are a friend of Mr. Walker’s, you will do me one service for his sake—the greatest you ever did to a poor lad in your life—you will tell me where I may go to church on Sundays.’

“‘His cane, which I had restored to him, dropped to the ground, and he held up his hands in mute astonishment.  ‘The lad’s lost his wits,’ he said, as if to himself—‘clean gyte, as his old friend Robert Walker would p. 97say!  There he is, standing before a church door wide open to receive him, and high enough for even his long legs to stride under, and he coolly asks me where he may go to church on Sundays!  Why, man, there you may go to church, not only on Sundays, but every day in the week—and the oftener the better.’

“It was odd that this had never struck me before; but I had fancied, I suppose from its size and beauty, that this was a church intended, like those I had already tried, only for the accommodation of the rich; and I said so to him whom I was addressing.

“The old gentleman smiled at my simplicity, but there was more expression of kindness in his countenance than I had hitherto observed.  ‘The rich,’—said he, with a tone of contempt, ‘why, man, that is the Parish Church, free to all alike, rich and poor, good and bad.  The poor are by far the greater number, and, between ourselves, rather the better behaved and more attentive class, of the two.  The rich take liberties with me sometimes, which the poor dare not—if they did, I would break eve............