The Trials OF 
 A Country Parson 
 
Qfotrnell Inioeraitg Cibrarg 
 
 Stiiata, Jfjw fork 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1891 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 4825.J55T8 
 
 The trials of a country parson, 
 
 3 1924 013 489 046 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013489046 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 Uniform Edition. 
 
 Crown Svo, limp cloth, silk sewn, $s. 6d. per volume. 
 
 THE COMING OF THE FRIARS, AND OTHER 
 MEDIEVAL SKETCHES. 
 
 ARCADY: FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE. 
 
 RANDOM ROAMING, AND OTHER PAPERS. 
 
 STUDIES BY A RECLUSE. 
 
 FRIVOLA, SIMON RYAN, AND OTHER PAPERS. 
 
 BEFORE THE GREAT PILLAGE, WITH 
 OTHER MISCELLANIES. 
 
 LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN. 
 
THE TRIALS OF A 
 COUNTRY PARSON 
 
 AUGUSTUS JESSOPP, D.D. 
 
 RECTOR OF SCARNING 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE COINING OF THE FRIARS," 
 
 "ONE GENERATION OF A NORFOLK HOUSE," 
 
 ETC., £TC. 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN 
 
 LONDON : ADELPHI TERRACE 
 
 LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20 
 
 1909 
 
First Edition . . 
 Second Impression . 
 Third „ 
 
 Fourth „ 
 
 Fifth „ 
 
 March, iSgo 
 March, i8go 
 December, iSgo 
 December, iSg^ 
 January, igog 
 
 [AH rights reserved.] 
 
 Printed in Great Jintwiti 
 
Preface, 
 
 In a volume which I published three years 
 ago ' / attempted to give a faithful picture 
 of the habits and ways of thinking, the 
 superstitions, prejudices and grounds for 
 discontent, tke grievances and the trials, 
 of the country folk among whom. m,y lot 
 was cast and among whom it was my duty 
 and my privilege to live as a country 
 clergyman. I was surprised, and not a 
 little pained, to hear from many who read 
 my book that the impression produced upon 
 them, was exactly the reverse of that which 
 I had desired to convey. On returning to 
 
 • " Arcady, for Better for Worse." 
 
yiii PREFACE. 
 
 been a country curate twenty years before. 
 But while I lamented the noticeable dete- 
 rioration and the fact that the rustics were 
 less cordial, less courteous, less generous, 
 less loving, and, therefore, less happy than 
 they had been, I gradually^ got to see that 
 the surface may be ruffled and yet the 
 inner nature, beneath that surf ace may have 
 some depths unaffected iy the turmoil. The 
 charity which hopeth all, things suggested 
 that it was the tim^_ to work and wait. 
 It was not long before I learnt to feel 
 something more than, mere interest in my 
 people. I learnt to love them, I learnt — 
 
 To see a good in evil, and a hope 
 In ill success ; to sympathize, be proitd 
 Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim 
 Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies. 
 Their prejudice, and fears, arid cares, and doubts. 
 Which all touch upon nobleness, despite 
 Their error, all tend upwardly though weak. 
 Like plants in mines which never see the sun. 
 But dream of him, and guess where he may be. 
 And do their best to climb and get at him. 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 / was shocked when friehdfy critics told 
 me I had drawn a melimcholy picture, .and 
 that to live in such a community,, and with 
 surroundings such as I had described, must 
 be depressing, almost, degrading, for any 
 man of culture and refinement.. . 
 
 The essays which follow in this volume 
 were written as a kind of protest, against 
 any suchview of the case. I think the two 
 volumes-^this and my former one — should 
 in fairness be read each as the complement 
 of the other. In ".Arcady" I have drawn, 
 as best I could, the picture of the life of the 
 rustics around me. In this volvme I have 
 sketched the life of a country parson trying 
 to cb his best to elevate those among whom 
 he has been called to exercise his ministry. 
 
 I hold that any clergyman in a country 
 parish who aims exclusively at being a 
 Religious Teacher will miss his aim. He 
 must be. more, or he will fail to be that. 
 He must be a social power in his parish, 
 
Missing Page 
 
Missing Page 
 
«i PREFACE. 
 
 new in the situation, and almost as sure 
 to make some mistakes at starting. I do 
 not believe that a man of average ability, 
 who is really in earnest in his desire to 
 do the best he can for his people, and who 
 throws himself heartily into his work, will 
 find one place worse than another. Let 
 him resolve to find his joy in the per- 
 formance of his duty according to his light, 
 and the joy will come. So far from 
 repining at my own lot, I have found it — 
 / do find it-^d very happy one ; and if I 
 have dwelt on the country parson's trials, 
 I have done so in no petty and querulous 
 spirit as if I had anything to complain of 
 which, others had not — this I should disdain 
 to do — but rather as protesting that they 
 press upon my brethren equally as upon 
 myself, and. that, such as they are, some 
 must be, some . need not be, some ought 
 not to be. 
 
 As for the worries ana annoyances, the 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 " trials " which are inseparable from our 
 position, it is the part of a wise man to 
 make the best of them, and to put as good 
 a face upon them as he can. But with 
 regard to such matters as ought not to be 
 and need not be, it behoves us all to look 
 about us to discover if possible some remedy^ 
 for the remediable, to find out the root and 
 source of any evil which is a real evil, to 
 lift up our voices against an abuse which 
 has grown or is growing to be intolerable, 
 and by no means to acquiesce in the con- 
 tinuance of that which is obviously working 
 to the. serious prejudice of the community i 
 While every other class is crying out for 
 Reform and getting it by simply raising the 
 cry, it is a reproach upon us clergy-^dnd I 
 fear we deserve the reproach — thai we are 
 a great deal too ready to submit to the 
 continuance of scandals and abuses rather 
 than face the risks which ^ny change is 
 likely to bring tcpon our ordef. - In no 
 
xiir PREFACE. 
 
 other profession is a man more certain to 
 be regarded as a dangerous character, 
 wanting in loyalty and wanting in humi- 
 lity, who is even suspected of a desire to 
 improve upon the arrangements which 
 have existed since time was young, or of 
 advocating measures which would inter- 
 fere with the order of procedure that was 
 good enough for our grandfathers, and 
 therefore must be good enough for our- 
 selves. It really seems to be the belief of 
 some among us that our Constitution in 
 Church or State never grew at all, but 
 chrystalized into its present form, and 
 dropped from heaven in perfect panoply 
 like Minerva from the head of fove. To 
 point a finger at the texture of the awful 
 pepIos> and to hint that it was woven in 
 the loontis of this world, is to bring upon 
 oneself the charge of impiety. And yet 
 these m£n are wrong. Organic bodies 
 grow because they are alive ; when they 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 cease to grow and are no longer capable 
 of adapting themselves to the changes that 
 are going on around them, they die. 
 Nothing can prolong their life. If you 
 cramp and fetter a living thing ' by 
 swathing it round about with iron bands 
 that may force it to keep exactly the form 
 it presented a thousand years ago-^then 
 you will kill it. It is only a question of 
 time when your slaying process will prove 
 successful. As for the other method of 
 " letting things slide" that is, if possible, 
 more foolish than the other, andcerta^ly 
 more cowardly. What can be baser than 
 the craven whine, " It will last our time " ? 
 An institution which has lasted through a 
 long line of centuries, and which will only 
 last our time, may be approaching disso- 
 lution from lack of inherent mtaliiy, but 
 it may also be in peril because of the 
 despairing supineness of its ifledged de- 
 fenders. 
 
Jcvi PREFACE. 
 
 I have lifted up my voice against one 
 relic of the past • which is most certainly-, 
 doomed because it has been allowed to exist 
 a great deal too long already ; it is a 
 survival which I am deeply convinced is 
 answerable for much of the corruption 
 that hurts us, much of the offence taken 
 and given, much of the laxity and very 
 much of the deplorable want of discipline 
 existing among us. 
 
 The legal status of the beneficed clergy, in 
 virtue of which they, are freeholders for life' 
 in their several benefices, does not quite stand 
 alone. The Parish Clerk, too, has a freehold 
 in his benefice, and, aftir formal admission 
 to it, he may retain it without fear of ieing 
 turned out of it as long as the breath 
 remains in his body. These freeholds in 
 an office have been swept away in every 
 other department of the public service,, 
 though they died hard and tost a good 
 deal to abolish. The buying and selling 
 
PREFACE. xvii 
 
 of "places " and reversions or next pre- 
 sentations to them was as common in the 
 State as in the Church not so very long 
 ago. The odious system was swept away 
 for ever by the simple expedient of making 
 every public servant removable at pleasure 
 for negligence, misconduct, inefficiency, or 
 even less. It is only among the holders 
 of ecclesiastical preferment that the old 
 abomination survives. Because it survives, 
 other things survive too which ought not 
 to be tolerated. The first and foremost of 
 these is the open sale of the right to present 
 a clerk in orders to a cure of souls. But 
 that is the least mischievous consequence of 
 the present system being retained. There 
 are other consequences which are far more 
 serious. Among them is the almost entire 
 want of movement and change, in the lives 
 of the country clergy ; the absence of fresh 
 interests and of the invigorating stimulus of 
 a new career, however humble, with new asso- 
 xa 
 
iviii PREFACE. 
 
 ciations to give a zest to the performance, it 
 may be, of the old duties, but discharged now 
 among those who do not know all that you 
 have to say, and are not yet tired of the sound 
 of your voice, or at any rate thinking they 
 would like to hear another.- The rule in our 
 country parishes is that where a man is set 
 down at first, there he dies at last. Exchange 
 of benefices is, I admit, more common than it 
 used to be, partly because the benefices them- 
 selves are less valuable 'and less jealously 
 kept in the patrons' hcCnds than they were ; 
 but even now exchanges are not often made 
 and are not " negotiated " without some 
 difficulty. To begin with, before two 
 clergymen can change their cures, however 
 much they may themselves be agreed, it is 
 necessary that the consent of two patrons 
 and two bishops should be obtained as a 
 preliminary ; and this is not always to be 
 got for the asking. If a patron has 
 bestowed preferment upon a clergyman 
 
PREFACE. xix 
 
 with whose ministrations he is contented 
 and something more, he is not too willing 
 to part with him. If he has been so 
 unfortunate as to have given the living to 
 the wrong man, there may be very good 
 reasons why he should not choose to be 
 a party to such a transaction as would 
 result in passing on a clerical scamp 
 or incompetent from, one cure to another. 
 But in any case it by no means follows 
 that, because I have presented a parson to 
 a cure of souls, I should therefore give 
 him the next presentation too, if he happens 
 to be ttred of his cure and anxious to go 
 elsewhere. The result is that, as a rule, 
 a beneficed clergyman, when once he finds 
 himself, irremovable, in his cure, gives up 
 all thought of leaving it. It is "a 
 certainty" and gradually he gets to look 
 for nothing better ; he goes through his 
 duties as best he can, however mournfully 
 conscious that he has lost the old fire and 
 
XX PREFACE. 
 
 force and efficiency ; he takes comfort in 
 the thought that he has worked his parish 
 while he could, and that he is entitled to 
 take it easily now ; and, indeed, in the 
 eyes of those about him, he grows more 
 ana more picturesque and venerable, just 
 as the old church tower does — but it is not 
 safe to ring the bells up there when so muck 
 restoration is wanted. 
 
 I have dealt with this subject in some de- 
 ail in the Fourth Paper in this volume. At 
 the time it appeared, the public mind was 
 much occupied with and disturbed by certain 
 political questions then in the ascendant, 
 and the essay fell dead, attracted little or 
 no attention and, tn fact, was read by few. 
 It often happens that a book proves an utter 
 failure by being published at the wrong 
 time — a month too soon or a month too 
 late. The favour of the reading public is 
 very capricious, not always awarded to the 
 most deserving, sometimes given imith a kind 
 
PREFACE. xxi 
 
 of fury of acclamation to a lucky literary 
 adventurer whose reputation " rushes up 
 like the rocket and comes down like the 
 stick" Moreover the essay laboured under 
 one rather serious defect, which I have not 
 yet set myself to remedy by appending an 
 almost necessary supplement. For it may 
 be asked, and it has indeed been objected, > 
 " If every beneficed clergyman were to 
 hold his appointment subject to removal, 
 ought not some provision to be made for his 
 retirement in old age or when physically 
 or mentally unfit for the discharge of his 
 sacred functions f " Yes I By all means. 
 But why only the beneficed clergy f Why 
 not all who are admitted to the sacred 
 office ? Surely it would not be difficult to 
 elaborate a scheme whereby every officiating 
 clergyman should be compelled to make 
 provision for his family, or for his own 
 retirement, by the simple expedient of 
 stopping a certain percentage of his income 
 
Jotii PREFACE. 
 
 and investing it in his name — much in the 
 same way that the Military fund is managed 
 in India, or as the compulsory insurance of 
 railway servants is enforced by some of the 
 great companies. Until something of this 
 sort is carried out, we shall continue to 
 be pained by those distressing appeals for 
 clergymen's families reduced to beggary by 
 the death of the bread-winner, which come 
 to us all with increasing frequency, and 
 which, as matters now look, are not likely 
 to be fewer in the near future. 
 
 This however, is only a part, and I 
 venture to think not quite a vital part, of 
 the other question, which as a great national 
 question appears to me of much greater 
 importance. That question may be put in 
 very few words. Is it for the advantage of 
 the Church or the nation that the incomes 
 of the clergy should continue to be assured 
 to them by a different tenure from that 
 which Prevails in the case of all other 
 
PREFACE. xxiii 
 
 public servants — a tenure which in the 
 latter case was proved to be working 
 prejudicially to the interests of the 
 community at large, and which tt was 
 found absolutely necessary to abolish ? 
 
 It is easy to raise a cry against any 
 one who dares to ask such a question as 
 this by denouncing him as an Erastian. 
 But our clerical incomes are one thing, our 
 sacred functions and office are another. All 
 the Parliaments in the world can never 
 admit me or any one else to Holy Orders : 
 but there is nothing to prevent a rich man 
 from endowing any church or chapel with 
 an income to be enjoyed by the parson of that 
 church only under certain conditions or for 
 a certain limited tim^. People seem to think 
 that it is of the very essence of an endow- 
 ment that the income derived from it should 
 belong to the man who is once admitted to 
 enjoy it as long as he lives and chooses to 
 draw the pay. If by anything I have 
 
xxiv PREFACE. 
 
 written, or could write, I could exercise any 
 influence in the direction of leading thought- 
 ful men to give their serious attention to 
 this subject and to discuss it earnestly, I 
 should have very little doubt about the 
 result, and I should feel that I had not 
 lived in vain. 
 
 Very closely allied with this question is 
 another which is forcing itself upon us all 
 with increasing urgency every month. When 
 we begin to ask ourselves and one another 
 to whom do our Village Churches belong ? 
 Who is bound to keep them from falling 
 into ruin ? Who has the right to sell the 
 lead off the roof, or the books in the ancient 
 Parish Library, or the bells in the steeple, 
 or the very brasses in the pavement ? — and 
 all these things have been done and nobody 
 been called to account — when, I say, we begin 
 to ask these things and pyress for an answer, 
 we may well be dismayed by the suspicion 
 of how anomalous our position is. The 
 
PREFACE. XXV 
 
 Society for the Preset vation of Ancient 
 Buildings has been doing good work for us; 
 it deserves more support than it has received, 
 and needs many more subscribers before its 
 influence can be brought to bear upon the 
 ignorance and Vandalism, and right down 
 rascality too, with which it so often finds 
 itself in conflict. But the work of this 
 society, as things are, can never be anything 
 but palliative at the utmost. A local Phil- 
 istine with a long purse and no more con- 
 science or sentiment than a gorilla, may do 
 almost what he pleases. It is dreadful to 
 think what might be perpetrated in our 
 country churches with impunity, and what 
 would be perpetrated too, if only the true 
 state of the case were known. Here, too, 
 there is need for the reform of the law. 
 Who do the churches belong to ? Who are 
 responsible for their protection from outrage 
 and destruction ? There are some country 
 parishes where with a very little manipu- 
 
xjcvi PREFACE. 
 
 lation the inhabitants in Vestry assem- 
 bled might be induced to vote anything ; 
 even to the using superfluous seats for 
 boarding up all the windows on the north 
 side to make themselves snug withal. What 
 is to prevent their doing it ? Who is to 
 bell the cat ? 
 
 The Fifth Paper in this volume may not 
 at first sight appear to have anything to do 
 with a Country Parsons " trials " ; and yet 
 it has. There are some people who^ are 
 never tired of declaiming against the use- 
 lessness of our Cathedral buildings. More 
 than once I have been put upon the defensive 
 when railers have lifted up their voices 
 especially against the waste of space which 
 might be turned to good account in our own 
 glorious East Anglian Cathedral. When 
 they whose chief amusement in life it is to 
 find fault are on the look out for something 
 to rail at, they will never be without an 
 excuse for indulging in their amiable 
 
PREFACE. xxvii 
 
 pastime. That there are many spaces 
 which might, with great advantage, be 
 made available for worthy purposes in. most 
 of our cathedrals, must be apparent to any 
 one who thinks about the matter. The 
 question is, what are worthy purposes, and 
 how may those vacant spaces be best turned 
 to account without sacrificing the dignity of 
 those majestic buildings and their surround- 
 ings, and without vulgarising them by 
 introducing associations out of harmony 
 with the traditions that belong to them and 
 the sentiment of reverence that ihey arouse ? 
 Who that has seen the Cathedral Library 
 at Ely, could doubt whether it is in the 
 right place or no f Or who that knows 
 anything of what has been doing of late 
 among the Archives of Canterbury or 
 Lincoln, can help jtii^hing that such work 
 were doing elsewhere f But why should 
 not our cathedrals become the great store- 
 houses for all our ancient muniments, in 
 
xxviii PREFACE. 
 
 which they might find the protection they 
 deserve and the intelligent supervision which 
 might render them accessible to students of 
 our history ? 
 
 Little need be said to justify the appear- 
 ance of the Sixth Paper in a volume which 
 professes to treat of a Country Parsons 
 ''trials" I hope I have made it appear 
 that even such a trial as this is bearable — 
 nay ! that it is one of those which may even 
 became a very delightful trial indeed to 
 those who have some resources in themselves, 
 and whose occupations and tastes are such 
 as to make them habitually regret that the 
 winter days are so short, and sometimes 
 even half complain because the summer 
 sunshine brings such irresistible temptations 
 to be idle. 
 
 Is it true that we poor country parsons 
 have our trials ? Then do not grudge us 
 such comfort as we can find in being snowed 
 up in Arcady, 
 
PREFACE. xxix 
 
 The last Essay in the volume may be 
 taken as a hint that among other trials 
 which a Country Parson has to bear is the 
 necessity of acquiescing in certain unsatisfied 
 yearnings. That sounds so very heroic now 
 that I have written it, that I am inclined 
 to be rather proud of my own resignation. 
 All my life I have had a hankering to pay 
 a visit to the United States of America. 
 There was a time when I could have 
 q,fforded the expense of such a trip, but I 
 could not then afford to give the time. Now 
 with an annually decreasing income the 
 way is open, but the means are not 
 forthcoming. But as I think of too many 
 of my brethren who every day of their lives 
 are sadly put to it to keep the wolf from the 
 door and find it difficult to provide even 
 the bare necessaries of life, not to speak of 
 those comforts and simple indulgences which 
 it is so hard to miss when old age and its in- 
 firmities have set in—th4 contrast between 
 
XXX PREFACE. 
 
 their lot and my own comes home to me 
 almost with a sense of self-reproach. Let 
 them, whose sterner trials are so much more 
 hard to bear than mine, forgive the irony of 
 one who grumbles that he is too poor to 
 cross the Atlantic on a new voyage of 
 discovery — as though that were a serious 
 deprivation and a proof of his being only 
 one step from indigence. Let them do him 
 the justice to believe that he himself is not 
 insensible to the pathos that lurks in the 
 background of his own lament. 
 
NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 If this book were of the nature of a technical or 
 scientific treatise, it might have been necessary to 
 modify some statements and re-write some sentences 
 in this new edition — to bring it up to date ; but as it 
 claims to be no more than a literary production — 
 and as such is a work of art — I hold it enough that 
 it should present a faithful picture of a condition of 
 affairs which existed at the time when it was written. 
 If, as years go by, the outlook changes, it is for 
 others to note the change. 
 
 I have corrected some few oversights which 
 escaped my eye in passing the first edition of the 
 volume through the press, but I have not attempted 
 nor pretended to do mor»- 
 
 A. J. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 OAIk PAGB 
 
 L THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON ... I 
 
 11. THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON {continued) 49 
 
 III. THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES 97 
 
 nr. Quis cusTODiET .- ... 143 
 
 Note 176 
 
 T. CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR NEGLECTED RECORDS 180 
 
 VI. SNOWED UP IN ARCADY 223 
 
 Note ... ... ... ... ... 264 
 
 VII. WHY I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA 270 
 
 \The first six essays have, in the main, appeared in the "Nine- 
 teenth Century : " the seventh first saw the light in the " North 
 Atnerican Review. "\ 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 I. 
 
 My friends from Babylon the great are very good to 
 me in the summer-time. They come in a delightful 
 stream from their thousand luxuries, their great 
 social gatherings, their brilliant talk, and their 
 cheering and stimulating surroundings; they come 
 from all the excitement and the whirl of London or 
 some other huge city where men live, and they make 
 their friendly sojourn with us here in the wilderness 
 even for a week at a time. They come in a generous 
 and self-denying spirit to console and condole with 
 the man whom they pity so gracefully — the poor 
 country parson "relegated," as Bishop Stubbs is 
 pleased to express it, "to the comparative uselessness 
 of literary (and clerical) retirement." I observe that 
 the first question my good friends ask is invariably 
 this : " What shall we do and where shall we go — 
 to-morrow?" It would be absurd to suppose that 
 any man in his senses comes to the wilderness to 
 
 2 
 
2 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 stay there, or that there could be anything to do 
 there. A man goes to a place to see, not the place 
 itself, but some other place. When you find your- 
 self in the wilderness you may use any spot in it as 
 a point of departure, but as a dwelling-place, a 
 resting-place, never ! 
 
 Moreover, I observe that, by the help of such 
 means of locomotion as we have at command, the 
 days pass merrily enough with my visitors in fine 
 weather. But as sure as ever the rain comes, so 
 surely do my friends receive important letters calling 
 them back, much to their distress and disappoint- 
 ment. If the weather be very bad — obstinately bad 
 —or if a horse falls lame and cannot be replaced, or 
 some equally crushing disaster keeps us all confined to 
 the house and garden, my visitors invariably receive 
 a telegram which summons them home instantly 
 eyen at the cost of having to send for a fly to the 
 nearest market town. Sometimes, by a rare coin- 
 cidence, a kindly being drops in upon us even in the 
 wipter. He is always genial, cordial, and a great 
 refreshment, but he never stays a second night. We 
 keep him warm, we allow a liberal use of " the 
 shameful," we give him meat and drink of the best, 
 we flatter him, we coddle him, we talk and draw 
 him out, we " show him things," but he never stays 
 over that single night j and when he goes, as he 
 
7HE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 3 
 
 shakes our hands and wraps himself up in his rugs 
 and furs, I notice that he has a sort of conflate ex- 
 pression upon his countenance; his face is as a 
 hybrid flower where two beauties blend. One eye 
 says plainly, " I am a lucky dog, for I am going 
 away at last," and the other eye, beaming with 
 kindliness, sometimes with affection, says just as 
 plainly, " Poor old boy, how I do pity you ! " 
 
 Well 1 this is a pitiful age ; that is, it is an age 
 very full of pity. The ingenuity shown by some 
 good people in finding out new objects of com- 
 miseration is truly admirable. It is hardly to be 
 expected that the country parson should escape the 
 general appetite for shedding tears over real or sup- 
 posed sufferers. 
 
 But it strikes some of us poor forlorn ones as not 
 a little curious that our grand town friends never by 
 any chance seem to see what there is in our lot 
 that is really pathetic or trying. " How often do 
 you give it meat ? " said a blushing, mild-eyed, lank- 
 haired young worthy in my hearing the other day. 
 "Lawk! sir, that don't have no meat," answered 
 the laughing mother, as she hugged her tiny baby 
 closer to her bosom. "Never have meat? How 
 dreadful ! " Just so 1 But it is not only ludicrous, 
 it is annoying, to be pitied for the wrong thing ; and 
 though I am not inclined to maintain the thesis that 
 
4 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 we, the soldiers of God's army of occupation, who 
 are doing outpost duty, pass our lives in a whirl 
 of tumultuous and delicious joy, yet, if I am to be 
 pitied, do let me be pitied intelligently. I cannot 
 expect to be envied, but surely it is not such a very 
 heavy calamity for a man never to catch a sight of 
 Truth or The World, or to find that there is not such 
 a thing as an oyster-knife in his parish. 
 
 Moreover, side by side with pity, there is a large 
 amount of much more irritating and ignorant ex- 
 aggeration of the good things we are supposed to 
 enjoy. We do not, I admit, hear quite so often as 
 formerly about " fat livings " and " valuable prefer- 
 ment," nor about the " rectorial mansion with a 
 thousand a year " ; but we hear a great deal more 
 about such fabulous lands of Goshen than we ought 
 to hear. There is always a disposition to represent 
 our neighbours as better off than ourselves, and 
 whereas the salaried townsman knows that his 
 income,' whatever it may be, is his net income 
 which he may count upon as his spending fund to 
 use as he pleases, when he hears of others as re- 
 ceiving or entitled to receive so many pounds a 
 year, he assumes that they do receive it and that 
 they may spend it as they please. The townsman, 
 again, who moves among the multitude and every 
 hour is reminded of that multitude pressing, as all 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 5 
 
 fluids do, " equally in all directions," hears, and 
 sometimes he knows, that the clergy in the towns 
 have immense claims upon their time and are 
 always on the move in the streets and courts. 
 They are always about, always en evidence. If a 
 man has only to minister to a paltry seven hun- 
 dred, what can he have to do? He must be a 
 drone. 
 
 Moreover, the aforesaid townsman has read all 
 about those country parsons. You can hardly take 
 up a novel without finding a sleek rector figuring in 
 the volumes. These idealized rural clerics always 
 remind me of Mr. Whistler's Nocturnes. The 
 figures roll at you through the mists that are 
 gathering round them. The good people who try 
 to introduce us to these reverend characters very 
 rarely venture upon a firm and distinct outline. 
 The truth is, that for the most part the novelists 
 never slept in a country parsonage in their lives, 
 never knew a country parson out of a book. 
 
 A year or two ago my friend X. was dining in a 
 London mansion. " Who's that ? " said a lady 
 opposite, as she ducked her head in his direction 
 and looked at her partner. X. turned to speak to 
 Ms partner, but could not help hearing the scarcely 
 whispered dialogue : " A country parson, did you 
 say? Why, he's tall 1 " 
 
6 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 And their voices low with fashion, not with feeling, softly 
 
 freighted 
 All the air about the windows with elastic laughter sweet. 
 
 It was quite a surprise to that lady novelist that 
 a country parson could be tall ! Many men are tall 
 — policemen, for instance. But only short men 
 ought to be country parsons. Why ! we shall hear 
 of one of them being good-looking next ! 
 
 When any class of men feel themselves to be the 
 butt of others, they are apt to be a little cowed. 
 They hold their peace and fret, and if they resent 
 their hard treatment and speak out, they rarely do 
 themselves justice. Very few men can come well 
 out of a snub, and the countryman who is not used 
 to it never knows what to reply to offensive 
 language. Yet worms have been known to turn, 
 not that I ever heard they got any good by it ; 
 they can't bite, and they can't sting, but I suppose 
 it comforts them to deliver their own souls. Poor 
 worms ! Yes ! you may pity them. 
 
 • • • * « 
 
 But if the country parson has his trials, how may 
 he hope to be listened to when he desires to make 
 it clear what they are ? Where shall he begin ? 
 Where shall he begin if not by pointing to that 
 delicate nerve-centre of draped humanity, exquisite 
 in its sensitiveness, knowing no rest in its perpetual 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY. PARSON. 7 
 
 giving out of force, for ever hungering for renewral of 
 its exhausted resources, feeling no pain in its plethora 
 and dreading no death save from inanition — to wit, 
 the Pocket ? Touch a man's pocket, and a shudder 
 thrills through every fibre. 
 
 The country parson has a great deal to complain 
 of at the hands of those who will persist in talking 
 of him as an exceptionally thriving stipendiary. It 
 is one thing to say that in all cases he gets more 
 than he deserves; it is quite anothei* to put forth 
 unblUshingly that his income is half as much again 
 as in fact it is, and his outgoings only what the 
 outgoings of other men are. Logicians class the 
 suppressto vert among sophisms ; but would it not 
 be better to call that artful proceeding a fraud ? 
 " Drink fair, Betsy, whatever you do 1 " said Mr^. 
 Gamp on a memorable occasion. Yes, if it is only 
 out of the teapot. 
 
 i. With regard to the income of the country 
 parson, it may be laid down as a fact not to be 
 disputed, that hardly one per cent, of the country 
 clergy ever touch the full amount which theoretically 
 they are entitled to receive. In the case of parishes 
 where the land is much subdivided, and where there 
 are a number of small tithepayers, it would be 
 almost impossible for the clergyman personally to 
 collect his dues; he almost invariably employs an 
 
8 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 agent, who is not a likely man to do his work for 
 love. Even the agent can rarely get in all the small 
 sums that the small folk ought to pay. Even he 
 has to submit to occasional defalcations, and to 
 consider whether it is worth while to press the legal 
 rights of his employer too far. Moreover, the small 
 folk from time immemorial have expected something 
 in the shape of a tithe dinner or a tithe tea, for 
 which the diners or the tea-drinkers do not pay, you 
 may be sure ; this constitutes a not inconsiderable 
 abatement on the sum total of receipts which ought 
 to come to hand at the tithe audit. 
 
 Taking one year with another, it may be accepted 
 as a moderate estimate that the cost of collecting 
 his tithe, plus bad debts in some shape or other, 
 amounts to six per cent., and he who gets within 
 seven per cent, of his clerical income gets more 
 than most of us do. But the law allows of no 
 abatement in respect of this initial charge; and 
 because the law takes up this ground, the world at 
 large assumes that the nominal gross income of the 
 benefice does come into the pockets of the in- 
 cumbent. The world at large is quite certain that 
 nobody in his senses makes a return of a larger 
 income than he enjoys, and if the parson pays on 
 3^500, people assume that he does not get less from 
 his living than that. The world at large does not 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 9 
 
 know that the parson is not asked to make a return. 
 The surveyor makes up his books on the tithe 
 commutation table for the parish, and on that the 
 .parson is assessed, whatever he may say. 
 
 ii. For be it known it is with the surveyor or 
 rate-collector that the parson's first and most im- 
 portant concern lies. Whatever he may receive 
 from his cure, however numerous may be the de- 
 faulters among the tithe-payers, however large the 
 expense of collecting his dues, the parson has to ^ay 
 votes on his gross income. The barrister and the 
 physician, the artist or the head of a government 
 department, knows or need know nothing about 
 rates. He may live in a garret if he likes ; he may 
 live in a boarding-house at so much a week ; he 
 may live in a flat at a rent which covers all ex- 
 traneous charges. I suppose we most of us have 
 known men of considerable fortune, men who live 
 in chambers, men who live in lodgings, men who 
 live in college rooms, who never directly paid a rate 
 in their lives. Our lamented H., who dropped out 
 recently, leaving ^^97,000 behind Iiim, invested in 
 first-class securities, was one of these languidly 
 prosperous men. " I do detetht violent language on 
 any thubject whatever," he lisped out to me once. 
 " I hope I thall never thee that man again who 
 thtormed at rate collectorth tho. What ith a rate 
 collector ? Doth he wear a uniform ? " 
 
12 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 how about the Income-tax ? As I have said above, 
 in the case of all other professions except the 
 clerical, a man makes his return of income upon 
 the available income which comes to him after 
 deducting all fa,ir and reasonable office expenses. But 
 for the crime of clericalism, the country parson is 
 debarred from making any such deductions as are 
 permitted to other human beings. Many of the 
 " good livings " in East Anglia have two churches, 
 each of which must be sei"ved. A man cannot be 
 in two places at once ; and the laws of nature and 
 of the Church being in conflict, the laws of the 
 Church carry it over the laws of nature, and the 
 rector has to put in an appearance at his second 
 church by deputy — in other words, the poor man 
 has to keep a curate. If he were a country solicitor 
 who was compelled to keep a clerk, he would deduct 
 the salary of the clerk from the profits of his 
 business ; but being only a country parson, he can 
 do nothing of the sort : he has to pay Income-tax 
 all the same on his gross returns, A curate is a 
 luxury, as a riding horse is a luxury ; and the only 
 wonder is that curates have not long ago been in- 
 cluded among those superfluous animals chargeable 
 to the assessed taxes. 
 
 iv. Perhaps the most irritating of all imposts that 
 press upon the country parson is that to which he 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 13 
 
 has to submit because the churchyard is technically 
 part of his freehold. In many parts of the country 
 a fee is charged for burying the dead. In the 
 diocese of Norwich there are no burial fees. The 
 right of burying his dead in the churchyard is a 
 right which may be claimed by any inhabitant of 
 the parish ; the soil of the churchyard is said to 
 belong to the parishioners ; the surface of the soil 
 belongs to the parson. This being so, the parson is 
 assessed in the books of the parish for the assunied 
 value of the herbage growing upon the soil, and on 
 this assumed value he is accordingly compelled to 
 pay rates, Income-tax, and Land-tax. Of course 
 the parson could legally turn cattle or donkeys into 
 the churchyard to disport themselves among the 
 graves ; but happily that man who should venture 
 to do this nowadays would be thought guilty of an 
 outrage upon all decency. Who of us is there who 
 does not rejoice that this state of feeling has grown 
 up among us ? But the result is that the church- 
 yard, so far from being a source of income to the 
 parson, has become a source of expense to him in 
 almost all cases. Somebody has to keep the grass 
 mown, and see that God's acre is not desecrated. 
 Few of us grumble at that ; and some who have 
 large resources pride themselves on keeping their 
 churchyards as a lawn is kept or a garden. But it 
 
Missing Page 
 
Missing Page 
 
i6 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 out his washing ? " ^ Will his house be a small 
 local market for poultry and butter and eggs ? 
 Will he farm the glebe or let it ? How many 
 servants will he keep, and will the lady want a girl 
 to train in the kitchen or the nursery from time to 
 time ? Such questions as these are sometimes very 
 anxious ones in a remote country village where 
 every pound spent among the inhabitants serves 
 to build up a margin outside the ordinary income 
 of the wage-earners, and which helps the small 
 occupiers to tide over many a temporary embarrass- 
 ment when money is scarce, and small payments 
 have to be met and cannot any longer be deferred. 
 
 Let me, before going any further, deal with a 
 question which I have had suggested to me again 
 and again by certain peculiar people with dearly 
 beloved theories of their own. It is often asked, 
 Ought clergymen ever to be rich men ? Is not a 
 rich clergyman out of place in a country parsonage ? 
 Does not his wealth raise him too far above the 
 level of his people ? Does it not make him sit 
 loosely to his duties? Does not the fact of a 
 country parson being known to be a rich man tend 
 to demoralize a parish ? 
 
 ' This is a matter of very great ipiportance in hundreds of 
 country parishes, where the washing of the rectory frequently 
 suffices to maintain a whole family. 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 17 
 
 Lest it should be supposed that the present writer 
 is one of the fortunate ones rolling in riches, and 
 therefore in a manner bound to stand up for his own 
 class — let it be at once understood that he is little 
 better than a man of straw, one of those men to whom 
 the month of January is a month of deep anxiety, 
 perplexity, and depression of soul. Yet he would 
 disdain to join the band of whining grumblers only 
 because one year after another he finds that he must 
 content himself with the corned beef and carrots, 
 and cannot by hook or by crook afford to indulge in 
 some very desirable recreation or expense which the 
 majority of his acquaintance habitually regard as 
 absolutely necessary if existence is to be endured at 
 all. No 1 I am very far indeed from being a rich 
 man; but this I am bound to testify in common 
 fairness to my wealthier brethren in the ministry 
 of the Church of England, that if any impartial 
 person, with adequate knowledge of the facts, were 
 asked to point out the most devoted, zealous, un- 
 worldly, and practically eificient country parsons 
 in the diocese of Norwich — for let me speak as I do 
 know — he would without hesitation name first and 
 foremost some of the richest of the clergy in the 
 eastern counties. 
 
 Do you desire that your son should begin his 
 ministerial life under a man of great ability, sound 
 
 3 
 
i8 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 sense, courage, and religious earnestness, a man 
 who never spares himself and will not suffer his 
 subordinates to sink into slovenly frivolity and idle- 
 ness; then make your approaches to Lucullus^ and 
 you will have cause to thank God if the young 
 fellow serves his apprenticeship under a guide and 
 teacher such as this. He will learn no nonsense 
 there, and see no masquerading, only an undemon- 
 strative but unflinching adherence to the path 
 believed to be the path of duty, and a manliness of 
 self-surrender such as can only arouse an enthusiasm 
 of respect and esteem. 
 
 Does "our own correspondent " wish to see how 
 a score of infamous hovels can be changed into a 
 score of model cottages which pay interest on the 
 cost of their erection, and which in half a dozen 
 years have helped perceptibly to raise the tone and 
 tastes and habits of the population till it really looks 
 as if some barbarians could be civilized by a coup de 
 mainl — ^^let him pay a visit to the parish of our 
 Reverend Hercules, only one of whose many labours 
 it has been to cleanse an Augean stable. It will 
 do him good to see the mighty shoulders of that 
 rugged philanthropist, him of the broad brow and 
 the great heart and the deep purse, always at work 
 and always at home, about the very last man in 
 England to be suspected of belonging to the sickly 
 eort of puling visionaries. 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 19 
 
 Do you want to meet with a type of the saintly 
 parish priest^ one after holy George Herbert's heart, 
 one with hardly a thought that does not turn upon the 
 service of the sanctuary or the duties that he owes to 
 his scattered flock ? Come with me, and we will 
 go together and look at, one of the most beautiful 
 village; churches in the land,, on which our devout 
 Ambrose has spent his thousapds only with deep 
 gratitude that he has been permitted to spend them 
 so^ahd with never a word of brag or publicityj 
 never a paragraph foisted, into the newspapers. 
 And as we pass out of that quiet churchyard, trim 
 as a queen's parterre^ I will shovv you the window of 
 that little study which Ambrose has not thought it 
 right to enlarge, and if he be not there, be sure we 
 shall find him at his school or by the sick-bed of the 
 poor, or inquiring into some case of sorrow or sin 
 where a kindly hand or a wise word may peradven- 
 ture solace the sad or. go some way to raise the 
 fallen. . 
 
 What country parson among all the nine hundred 
 and odd within this unwieldy diocese has lived a 
 simpler or more devoted life than- our Nestor-^76jO«ai' 
 lmri]Ka-Ta NecrTcap — he- who for more than threescore 
 years and ten has gone in and out among his 
 people, and doing his pastoral work so naturally, so 
 much as a matter of course, that no one thinks of 
 
20 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 his being a rich man, except when those towering 
 horses of his stop at our lowly portals and have to 
 be corkscrewed into our diminutive stables ? 
 
 And who knows not of thee, Euerges, treasurer 
 and secretary and general mainstay of every good 
 work, the idol of thy people and their healer, the 
 terror of the impostor, and the true friend of all that 
 deserve thy helping hand and purse ! or thee, too, 
 Amomos, who after thirty years of work as an 
 evangelist in the city, spending there thyself and 
 thy substance all the while, hast now betaken thee 
 to the poor villagers, if haply some little good may 
 yet be done among the lowly ones before the night 
 Cometh when no man can work ? 
 
 " But do not such well-meaning gentlemen as 
 these demoralize the poor ? " Oh dear yes ! of course 
 they do. It is so very demoralizing to help a lame 
 dog over a stile. It does so pauperize a broken- 
 down couple to whom the Poor Law Guardians 
 allow three shillings a week and half a stone of flour, 
 if you give them a sack of potatoes about Christmas 
 time. It corrupts and degrades Biddy Bundle to 
 bestow an old petticoat upon her when she is 
 shivering with the cold, and it takes all self-respect 
 and independence from the unruly bosom of Dick 
 the fiddler to offer him your old hat or a shabby pair 
 of trousers. The truest, wisest, most far-sighted 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 21 
 
 and most magnanimous charity is to let Harry 
 Dobbs have " an order for the house " when he is 
 out of work and short of coals — Harry Dobbs, who 
 set himself against all the laws of political economy, 
 and married at eighteen, when he had not the 
 wherewithal to buy the chairs and tables. So we 
 country parsons are a demoralizing force in the body 
 politic forsooth, because we cannot bear to see poor 
 people starve at our gates. We have been known 
 actually to give soup to a reckless couple guilty 
 of twelve children ; actually soup ! And we have 
 dropped corrupting shillings into trembling hands, 
 only because they were trembling, and distributed 
 ounces of tobacco to the inmates of the Union, and 
 poisoned the souls of old beldames with gratuitous 
 half-pounds of tea. And we counsel people to come 
 to church, when they would much rather go to 
 the public-house, and we coddle them and warm 
 them now and then, and instead of leaving them 
 to learn manliness and independence and self- 
 reliance on twelve shillings a week, we step between 
 them and the consequences of their own improvi- 
 dence, and we disturb the action of the beautiful 
 laws of the universe, and where we see the ponder- 
 ous wheels of Juggernaut just going to roll over a 
 helpless imbecile who has tripped and dropped, we 
 must needs make a clutch at him and pull him out 
 
22 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY. PARSON. 
 
 by the scruff of his neck, and tell him to get up and 
 not do it again. And all this is demoralizing and 
 pauperizing, is it ? 
 
 Out upon you ! you miserable prigs with your 
 chatter and babble! You to talk of the parson's 
 narrowness and his bigotry and his cant ? You to 
 sneer at him for being the slave of a superstition ? 
 You to pose as the only thinkers with all the logic of 
 all the philosophers on your side, all the logic and 
 never a crumb of common sense to back it? Bigotry 
 and intolerance and cant and class jealousy and scorn 
 — that refuge for the intellectually destitute and the 
 blustering coward^ — where will you find them in all 
 their most bitter and sour and hateful intensity, if 
 not among the new lights, the self-styled economists? 
 And we have to sit mum and let brainless pretenders 
 superciliously put us out of court with a self-com- 
 placent wave of the hand, as they give utterance to 
 perky platitudes about the clergy pauperizing the 
 working man. No, Mr. Dandy Dryskull. No ! this 
 gospel of yours, a little trying to listen to, is being 
 found out ; ours will see the end of it. 
 
 You preach Sir Andrew and his love of law, 
 And we the Saviour arid His law of love 1 
 
 I, for one, hereby proclaim and declare that I 
 intend to help the sick and aged and struggling poor 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 23 
 
 whenever I have the chance, and as far as I have 
 the means, and I hope the day will never come 
 when I shall cease to think without shame of him who 
 is said to have made it his boast that he had never 
 given a beggar a penny in his life. I am free to 
 confess that I draw the line somewhere. I do 
 draw the line at the tramp — I do find it necessary to 
 he uncompromising there. Indeed I keep a big dog 
 for the tramp, and that dog, inasmuch as he passes 
 his happy life in a country parsonage — that dog, I 
 say, is not muzzled. 
 
 , " But don't you get imposed upon ? Don't you 
 get asked to replace dead horses and cows and pigs 
 and donkeys, that never walked on four legs and 
 no mortal eye ever saw in the land of the living ? " 
 
 Of course we do ! Is it a prerogative of the 
 country parson to be duped by a swindler ? Oh, 
 Mr. Worldly Wiseman, were you never taken in ? 
 Never! Then, sir, I could not have you for a son- 
 in-law ! As for us — we country parsons — we do 
 occasionally get imposed upon in very absurd and 
 contemptible fashion. Sometimes we submit to be 
 bled with our eyes open. A bungling bumpkin has 
 managed to get his horse's leg broken by his own 
 stupidity. We know that the fellow was jiggling 
 the. poor brute's teeth out of his mouth at the time, 
 or the animal would never have shown himself as 
 
24 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 great an idiot as his master. But there stands the 
 master horseless, with the tears in his eyes, and we 
 know all about him and the hard struggle he has 
 had to keep things going, and we say to ourselves, 
 " I wonder what would happen to me if my horse 
 dropped down dead some fine morning. Who would 
 help me to another ? and what then ? " So we 
 pull out the sovereign, and give the fellow a note to 
 somebody else, and that is how we demoralize him. 
 
 Or another comes at night-time and wants to 
 speak to us on very particular business, and im- 
 plores us to tide him over a real difficulty, and . . . 
 " What ? do you mean to say, you lend fellows 
 money ? " Yes. I mean to say I have even done 
 that and very very rarely repented of it, and I mean 
 to say there are men, and women too, to whom I 
 would lend money again if I had it ; but it does not 
 follow that I would lend it to everybody, least of all 
 that I would lend it to you, Mr. Worldly Wiseman. 
 Try it on, sir ! Try it on ! and see whether you 
 would depart triumphant from the interview ! 
 
 Moreover, the country parson has always to pay a 
 little — just a very little — more than any one else for 
 most things that come to his door. The market 
 has always risen when he wants to buy, and has 
 always suddenly fallen when he wants to sell. The 
 small man's oats are invariably superior to any one's 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 25 
 
 when he has a small parcel to dispose of to the 
 parson. As to the price of hay, when the parson 
 has to buy it, that is truly startling. I never see 
 half a rood of carrots growing in a labourer's allot- 
 ment, but I feel sure I shall have to buy those 
 carrots before Christmas, and sorry as I am to 
 observe how rarely any fruit trees are ever planted 
 in a poor man's garden, I reflect that perhaps it is 
 just as well, for already the damsons and the apples 
 that besiege the rectory are almost overwhelming. 
 I never ask what becomes of them, but it is morally 
 and physically impossible that they should be eaten 
 under this roof. " But, my dear, you must buy 
 Widow Coe's damsons ; nobody else will, you know ! " 
 This is what I am told is "considering the poor 
 people " ; that is our way of putting it. You, Mr. 
 Worldly Wiseman, you call it demoralizing them. 
 
 Then, too, the country parson is expected to 
 " encourage the local industries." I wonder whether 
 they make pillow-lace in Bedfordshire as they did 
 once. If they do, and especially if the demand 
 for it in the outer world has waned, the country 
 parsons' wives in that part of England must have 
 a very trying time of it. 
 
 Once, when I was in the merry twenties, a dirty 
 old hag with an evil report, but no worse than other 
 people, except that she was an old slut, knocked at 
 
26 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 my back door and asked to see " The Lady Shepherd." 
 Mrs. Triplet was a Mormonite, at; any rate her hus- 
 band was ; and it was credibly believed that Mrs. 
 Triplet herself had been baptized by immersion in a 
 horsajpond in the dead of night, dressed as Godiva 
 was dressed during her famous ride, and seated, 
 not upon a palfrey, but upon a jackass. How 
 Triplet could ever have been converted to a belief 
 in polygamy with his experience of the married 
 state, I am entirely unable to explain. But Mrs, 
 Triplet came to our door and asked for " The 
 Lady Shepherd." It was a delicate piece of 
 flattery. She must have thought over it a long 
 time. Was not the parson the shepherd ? a bad 
 one it might be, a hireling, a blind leader of the 
 blind, but still a shepherd. Then his wife must 
 needs be a shepherdess — and she did not look like 
 it— or a sheep^No ! that wouldn't do at all — or 
 the shepherd's lady — and shepherds don't have 
 ladies ; or — happy thought ! — the Lady Shepherd. 
 
 Accordingly Mrs. Triplet asked for the Lady 
 Shepherd. Mrs. Triplet in former times had been 
 a tailor's hand, and in that capacity had made 
 a few shillings a week by odd jobs for the Cam- 
 bridge tailors in term time ; but she had married, 
 and- now she lived too far away in the wilds to 
 be able to continue at her old employment, and 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 27 
 
 being a bad manager, she soon had to cast about 
 for some new source of income. In the more 
 comfortable cottages in the eastern counties you 
 may often see laid out before the fire a mat of 
 peculiar construction which sometimes looks like 
 a small mattress in difficulties. It is made from 
 selvages and clippings, the refuse of the tailor's 
 workshop ; these strips of cloth are cut into lengths 
 of two or three inches long by half an inch wide, 
 and are knitted or tightly tied together with string, 
 the variously coloured scraps being arranged in 
 patterns according to the genius and taste of the 
 artist. The complex structure when completed is 
 stuffed with the clippings too small to be worked 
 up on the outside, and the mass is then subjected 
 to a process of thumping and stamping and pulling 
 and hammering till at last there exudes — yes ! that 
 is the correct term, whatever you may say — a 
 lumpy bundle, which in its pillowy and billowy 
 entirety is called a hearthrug. The thing will last 
 for generations, it never wears out, and it takes 
 years of continuous stamping upon it before you 
 can anyhow get it fiat. It was one of these 
 triumphs of industry that Mrs. Triplet desired to 
 turn an honest penny by. Would her ladyship 
 come and look at it in situ ? 
 Now the lady shepherd is a woman of business, 
 
28 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 which the shepherd, notoriously, is not, and if she 
 had gone alone no great harm would have come of 
 the interview ; but on that unlucky day the shepherd 
 and - his lady resolved to go together. That is a 
 course which no shepherd and shepherdess should, 
 ever be persuaded to follow. Two men will 
 often help one another when associated in a 
 difficult enterprise ; two women will almost always 
 do better together than single-handed, but a man 
 and a woman working together will always get in 
 one another's way. On the occasion referred to 
 the quick-witted old crone saw her chance in a 
 moment, and commenced to play off one of her 
 visitors against the other with consummate skill. 
 From a hole beneath the narrow stairs she dragged ' 
 the massive structure, and slowly unfolding it before 
 our eyes commenced to stamp upon it in a kind 
 of hideous demon dance, gazing at it fondly from 
 time to time as if she could hardly bear to part 
 with it. 
 
 In those days the fashion of wearing gay clothing 
 had only just gone out among the male sex. For, 
 less than forty years ago, we used to appear, on 
 state occasions, in blue dress coats and brass 
 buttons, and at great gatherings you might see 
 green coats and brown ones, mulberry coats and 
 chocolate ones, and there was a certain iridescence 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 25 
 
 that gave a peculiarly sprightly look to an assembly 
 even of males in those days, which has all passed 
 away now. Hence when Mrs. Triplet displayed 
 her exhibit we found ourselves gazing at a very 
 gaudy spectacle. " There, lady ! And I made the 
 pattern all myself, I did. Many's the night I've 
 laid awake thinking of it. Ah ! them bottle-greens 
 was hard to get, they was ; gentlefolks has give 
 up wearing greens. But that yaller rose, lady. 
 Ain't that a yaller rose ? " For once in her life the 
 lady shepherd lost her nerve. Spasms of hysterical 
 laughter wrestled within her, and her flushed face 
 and contorted frame betrayed the conflict that was 
 raging. How would it end ? in the rupture of a 
 vein or in shrieks of uncontrollable merriment ? 
 The shepherd was in terror ; he stooped to the 
 foolishest flattery; he went as near lying as a 
 shepherd could without literally lying ; but comedy 
 changed to tragedy when from his lean purse he 
 desperately plucked his very last sovereign, and 
 giving it to that guileful old sorceress, ordered her 
 to bring that hearth-rug to the parsonage without 
 delay. 
 
 Next week — the very next week — came a pressing 
 offer from another parishioner of another of these 
 articles of home manufactiire ; next month came 
 a third though the price had dropped fifty per 
 
30 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 cent., which was accepted with exultant thankful- 
 ness. There was positively no stopping the activity 
 of the new industry ; until,' before three months 
 were over, six of these fearful contrivances had 
 been all but forced upon us, one of. them travelling 
 to our door in a donkey-cart and one in a wheel- 
 barrow — the lady Shepherd being told she might 
 have them at her own price, and pay for them at 
 her own convenience — only have them she must : 
 the makers could by no means take them away. 
 
 " Weil, but you had nobody but yourselves to 
 thank. How could you be so weak and silly ? " 
 
 That may be very true. But do not our trials — 
 our smaller trials — become so just because we have 
 only ourselves to thank for them ? We in the 
 wilderness are exposed to temptations which go 
 some way to make us silly and soft-hearted. Some- 
 how, few of us are certain to keep our hearts as 
 hard as the nether millstone. I do not pretend to 
 be one of the seven sages : what I do say is that 
 we country parsons have our trials. 
 
 It is, however, when the country parson has 
 to buy a horse that he finds himself tried to the 
 uttermost. Day after day, from all points of the 
 compass, there appear at his gate the cunningest 
 of the cunning and the sharpest of the sharp ; 
 And if at the end of a week the parson has 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 31 
 
 not arrived at the settled conviction that he 
 is three parts of a fool, it is impossible for him 
 to dispute that the whole - fraternity' oi horsey 
 men feel no manner of doubt that he is so. Now, 
 I don't like to be thought a fool : not many 
 men do, unless they hope to gain something 
 by it. The instinct of self-preservation or the 
 hope of a kingdom might induce me to play the 
 part of Brutus ; but in my secret heart I should 
 be buoyed iip by the proud consciousness of 
 superior wisdom. When, however, it comes to a 
 long line of rogues-^one after another for days and 
 days without any collusion — -continuing to tell yoti 
 to your face, almost in so many words, that you 
 certainly are a fool — it really ceases to be mono- 
 tonous and becomes, after a while, vexatious. The 
 fellows are so clever, too ; they have such an 
 enviable fluency of speech ; they are possessed of 
 such a rich fund of anecdote, such an easy play 
 of fancy, such a readiness of apt illustration, and 
 such a magnificent command of facial contortion, 
 expressive of the subtlest movements of the heart 
 and brain, that you cannot but feel, how immeasur- 
 ably inferior you are to the dullest of them in 
 dialectic. But why should a man, when he asks 
 you to try his charger, bring it round to the door- 
 step, tempting you to get up on the off side ? — what 
 
32 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 does he gain by it ? Why should he tell you that 
 " this hoss was a twin with that as Captain Dixie 
 drives in his dog-cart " ? Why should he assure 
 you, upon his sacred honour, "that Roman nose 
 will come square when the horse gets to be six 
 years old — they always do " ? or that " you always 
 find bay horses turn chestnut if they're clipped 
 badly " ? 
 
 These men would not try these fictions upon 
 any one else; why should I suffer for being a 
 country parson by being told a long story — with 
 the most religious seriousness — of "that there 
 horse as Mr. Abel had, that stopped growing in 
 his fore-quarters when he was two and went on 
 growing with his hind-quarters till he was seven — 
 that hoss that they called Kangaroo, 'cause he'd 
 jump anything — anything under a church tower, 
 only you had to give him his head " ? I used to 
 get much more irritated by this kind of thing 
 when I was less mellowed by age than I am : and 
 I have learnt to be more tolerant even of a horse- 
 dealer than I once was. In an outburst of indig- 
 nation one day, I turned angrily upon one of the 
 fraternity, and said to him, " Man ! how can you 
 go on lying in this way; why won't you deal 
 fairly, instead of always trying to take people in ? " 
 The man was not a bit offended — indeed he smiled 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 33 
 
 quite kindly upon me. " Lor,' sir, do you suppose 
 we never get took in ? " I am fully persuaded 
 that horse-dealer thought I was going to try the 
 confidence trick with him. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 I am often assured by my town friends that the 
 loneliness of my country life must be very trying. 
 I reply with perfect truth that I have never known 
 what it is to feel lonely except in London. Some 
 years ago one Sunday afternoon I was compelled 
 to consult an eminent oculist. When the cab 
 drove up to the great man's door in Cardross 
 Square, his eminence was at the window in a 
 brown study, with his elbows leaning on the wire 
 blind, the tip of his nose flattened against the 
 pane, his eyes vacantly staring at nothing. When 
 we were shown into his presence, the forlorn 
 and desolate expression on that forsaken man's 
 face was quite shocking to the nerves. A painter 
 who could have reproduced the look of aimless and 
 despairing woe might have made a name for ever. 
 When people talk to me of loneliness I always 
 instinctively recall the image of that famous oculist 
 in the heart of London on a Sunday afternoon. 
 Ever since that day I have never been able to 
 get over a horror of wire blinds. Happily, they 
 are articles of furniture which have almost gone 
 
 4 
 
J4 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 out now, but they used to be fearfully common. 
 Even now the Londoner thinks it de rigueur to 
 darken the windows of his sitting-room on the 
 ground floor; and in furnished lodgings you must 
 have wire blinds. Why is this ? When I ask the 
 question I am told that you must have wire blinds : 
 if you didn't, people would look in. In the country 
 we never have wire blinds, and yet nobody looks 
 in; therefore you call our life lonely. But loneli- 
 ness is not the simple product of external circum- 
 stances — it is the outcome of a morbid temperament, 
 creating for itself a sense of vacuity, whatever may 
 be a man's surroundings. 
 
 To sit on rocks, to muse on flood and fell, 
 To climb the trackless mountain, &C. 
 
 I suppose we all know that wishy-washy stuff, 
 so there is no need to go on with the quotation,;. 
 
 What is trying in the country parson's life is 
 its isolation. That is a very different thing from 
 saying that he lives a lonely life. The parson who 
 is conscientiously trying to do his duty in a country 
 parish occupies a i unique position. He is a man, 
 and yet he must be something more than man, 
 and something less too. He must be more than 
 man in that he must be free from human passions 
 and human weaknesses, or the whole neighbour- 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. JS 
 
 hood is shocked by his frailty ; he must be some- 
 thing less than man in his tastes and amusements 
 and way of life, or there will be those who will 
 be sure to denounce him as a worldling who ought 
 never to have taken orders. If he be a man of 
 birth and refinement, h^ is sure to be reported 
 of as proud and haughty; if he be not quite a 
 gentleman, he will be snubbed and flouted, out- 
 rageously. The average country parson and bis 
 family has often to bear an amount of patronizing 
 impertinence which is sometimes very trying. Even 
 the squire and, the parson jda not always , get on 
 well together, and when they do not, the parson 
 is very much at the other's mercy, and may be 
 thwarted and worried and humiliated almost to 
 any extent by a powerful, ill-conditioned, and un- 
 scrupulous landed proprietor. But it is from the 
 come-and-go people, who hire the country houses 
 which their owners are compelled to let, that we 
 suffer most. Not that this is always the case, for 
 it not unfrequently happens that the change in 
 the occupancy of a country mansiop is a clear 
 gain socially,; morally, and intellectually to a whole 
 neighbourhood — when, in the place of a necessitous 
 Squire Western, and his cubs of sons and his 
 half-educated daughters, drearily impecunious but 
 not the less self-asserting and supercilious, we get 
 
36 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 a family of gentle manners and culture and accom- 
 plishments, and lo ! it is as sunshine after rain. 
 But sometimes the new comers are a grievous in- 
 fliction. Town-bred folk who emerge from the back 
 streets and have amassed money by a new hair- 
 wash or an improvement in sticking-plaster. Such 
 as these are out of harmony with their temporary 
 surroundings : they giggle in the faces of the 
 farmers' daughters, ridicule the speech and manners 
 of the labourers and their wives, and grumble at 
 everything. They cannot think of walking in the 
 dirty lanes, they are afraid of cows, and call 
 children nasty little things. These people's hos- 
 pitalities are very trying. 
 
 "Come, my boy. Have a cut at the venison. 
 Don't be afraid. You shall have a good dinner for 
 once ; sha'n't he, my dear ? and as much champagne 
 as you like to put inside you ? " It was a bottle- 
 nosed Sir Gorgious Midas who spoke, and his lady 
 at the other end of the table gave me a kindly wink 
 as she caught my eye. But the wine was Gilby's, 
 and not his best. These are the people who 
 demoralize our country villages. They introduce 
 a vulgarity of tone quite indescribable, and the 
 rapidity of the change wrought in the sentiments 
 and language of the rustics is sometimes quite 
 wonderful. 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 37 
 
 The rustics don't like these come-and-go folk, but 
 they get dazzled by them notwithstanding; they 
 resent the airs which the footmen and ladies' maids 
 give themselves, but nevertheless they envy them 
 and think, " There's my gal Polly — she'd be a lady 
 if she was to get into sich a house as that ! " When 
 they hear that up at the hall they play tennis on 
 Sunday afternoons, the old people are perplexed, 
 and wonder what the world is coming to ; the boys 
 and girls begin to think that their jolly time is near, 
 when they too shall submit to no restraint, and join 
 the revel rout of scoffers. The sour puritan snarls 
 out, "Ah ! there's your gentlefolks, they don't want 
 no religion, they don't — and we don't want no 
 gentlefolks ! " For your sour puritan somehow has 
 always a lurking sympathy with the Socialist pro- 
 gramme, and it's honey and nuts to him to find out 
 some new occasion for venting his spleen at the things 
 that are. But one and all look askance at the 
 parson, and inwardly chuckle that he is not having 
 a pleasant time of it. " Our Reverend's been took 
 down a bit, since that young gent at the Hall lit 
 his pipe in the church porch. ' That ain't seemly/ 
 says parson. ' Dunno about that,' says the tother, 
 ' but it seems nice.' " Chorus, half-giggle, half- 
 sniggle. 
 
 Do not the scientists teach that no two atoms are 
 
38 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 in absolute contact with each other; that some 
 interval separates every molecule from its next of 
 kin ? Certainly this is inherent in the office and 
 function of the country parson, that he is not quite 
 in touch with any one in his parish if he be a really 
 earnest and conscientious parson. He is too good 
 for the average happy-go-lucky fellow who wants to 
 be let alone. There is nothing to gain by insulting 
 him. " He's that pig-headed he don't seem to mind 
 nothing— only swearing at him ! " You cannot get 
 him to take a side in a quarrel. He speaks out 
 very unpleasant truths in public and private. He 
 occupies a social position that is sometimes anoma- 
 lous. He has a ptovoking knack of taking things 
 by the right handle. He does not believe in the 
 almighty dollar, as men of sense ought to believe 
 and he is usually in the right when it comes to a 
 dispute in a vestry meeting because he is the only 
 man in the parish that thinks of preparing himself 
 for the discussion beforehand. This isolation 
 extends not merely to ma;tters social and intel- 
 lectual ; it is much more observable in the domain 
 of sentiment. A rustic cannot at all understand 
 what motive a man can possibly have for being a 
 bookworm ; he suspects a student of being engaged 
 in some impious researches. " To hear that there 
 Reverend of ours in the pulpit you might think we 
 
THE TRIALS OF A CO UN.TR Y PARSON. 39 
 
 was all right. But, bless you ! he ain't same as 
 other folk. He do keep a horoscope top o' his house 
 to look at the stares and sich." 
 
 Not one man in a hundred of the labourers reads 
 a book, and only when a book is new with a gaudy 
 outside does he seem to value it even as a chattel. 
 That any one should ever have any conceivable use 
 for a big book is to him incomprehensible. 
 
 " If I might be so bold, sir," said Jabez, an 
 intelligent father of a family with some very bright 
 children who are " won'erful for'ard in their larning," 
 " If I might be so bold, might I ask if you've really 
 ndi all these grit books ? " " No, Jabez ; and I 
 should be a bigger dunce than I am if I ever tried 
 to. I keep them to use ; they're my tools, like your 
 spade and hoe. What's that thing called that I 
 saw in your hand the other day when you were 
 working at the draining job? You donit^ofteij use 
 that tool I think, do you ? " " Well, no. Jju^^^Bg^ ' 
 we don't get a job o' draining now same as we used. 
 I mean to say as a man may go ten years at a 
 stretch and never lay a drain-tile." *' Well, then 
 how about the use of his tools all this time ? " 
 Jabez smiled, slowly put his hand to his head, saw 
 the point, and yet didn't see it. " But, lawk sir ! 
 that's somehow different. I can't see what yow can 
 du wi' a grit book like this here." It was a massive 
 
40 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 volume of Littr^'s great dictionary, which I had 
 just taken down to consult ; it certainly did look 
 portentous. "Why, Jabez, that's a dictionary— a 
 French dictionary. If I want to know all about 
 a French word, you know, I look it up here. Some- 
 times I don't find exactly what I want ; then I go 
 to that book, which is another French dictionary; 
 and if ..." I saw by the blank look in honest 
 Jabez' face that it was all in vain. " Want to know 
 ... all about . . . words. . . . Why you ain't 
 agoing to fix no drain-tiles with them sort o' things. 
 Now that du wholly pet me aywt, that du." 
 
 I think no one who has not tried painfully to lift 
 and lead others can have the least notion of the 
 difficulty which the country parson has to contend 
 with in the extreme thinness of the stratum in which 
 the rural intellect moves. Since the schools have 
 given more attention to geography, and since emi- 
 gration iias brought us now and then some enter- 
 taining letters from those who have emigrated to 
 " furren parts," the people have slowly learnt to 
 think of a wider area of space than heretofore they 
 could imagine. Though even now their notions of 
 geography are almost as vague as their notions of 
 astronomy ; I have never seen a map in an agricul- 
 tural labourer's cottage. But their absolute ignorance 
 of history amounts to an incapacity of conceiving the 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 41 
 
 reality of anything that may have happened in past 
 time. What their grandfathers have told them, 
 that is to them history — everything before that is 
 not so much as fable; it is not romance, it is a 
 formless void, it is chaos. The worst of it is that 
 they have no curiosity about the past. The same is 
 true of their knowledge of anything approaching to 
 the rudiments of physical science ; it simply does 
 not exist. A belief in thfe Ptolemaic system is 
 universal in Arcady. I suspect that they think less 
 about these things than they did. " That there old 
 Gladstone, lawk ! he's a deep un he is ! He's as 
 deep as the Pole Star he is ! " said Solomon Bunch 
 to me one day. " Pole Star ? " I asked in surprise, 
 " Where is the Pole Star, Sol ? " " Lawks ! I dunno ; 
 I've heard tell o' the Pole Star as the deep un ever 
 sin' I was a booy ! " 
 
 It is this narrowness in their range of ideas that 
 makes it so hard for the townsman to become an 
 effective speaker to the labourers. You could not 
 make a greater mistake than by assuming you have 
 only to use plain language to our rustics. So far 
 from it, they love nothing better than sonorous 
 words, the longer the better. It is when he attempts 
 to make his audience follow a chain of reasoning 
 that the orator fails most hopelessly, or when he 
 comes to his illustrations. The poor people know 
 
4» THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 so little, they read nothing, their experience is so 
 confined, that one is very hard put to it to find a 
 simile that is intelligible. 
 
 " Young David stood before the monarch's throne. 
 With harp in hand he touched the chords, like some 
 later Scald he sang his saga to King Saul ! " It 
 really was rather fine — plain and simple too, mono- 
 syllabic, terse, and with a musical sibillation. Un- 
 fortunately one of the worthy preacher's hearers 
 told me afterwards with some displeasure that " he 
 didn't hold wi' David being all sing-songing and 
 scolding, he'd no opinion o' that." The stories of 
 the queer mistakes which our hearers make in 
 interpreting our sermons are simply endless, some- 
 times almost incredible. Nevertheless, no invention 
 of the most inveterate story-teller could equal the 
 facts which are matters of weekly experience. 
 
 "As yow was a saying in your sarment, 'tarnal 
 mowing won't du wirout 'tarnal making — ^yow mind 
 that! yer ses, an' I did mind it tu, an' we got up 
 that ha:y surprising ! " Mr. Perry had just a little 
 misconceived my words. I had quoted from Philip 
 Van Arteveldt. " He that lacks time to mourn, 
 lacks time to mend. Eternity mourns that." 
 
 Not many months ago I was visiting a good 
 simple old man who was death-stricken, and had 
 been long lingering on the verge of the dark river. 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 43 
 
 " I've been a thinking, sir, of that little hymn as 
 you said about the old devil when he was took bad. 
 I should like to hear that again." I was equal to 
 the occasion^ 
 
 The devil was sick — ^the devil a saint would be ; 
 The devil got well— not a bit of a saint was he 1 
 
 [It was necessary to soften down the language of 
 the original !] 
 
 " Is that what you mean ? " Yes ! it was that. 
 " Well I've been a thinking, if the old devil had 
 laid a bit longer and been afflicted same as some 
 on 'em, as he'd a been the better for it. Ain't 
 there no more o' that there little hymn, sir? " 
 
 The religious talk of our Arcadians is sometimes 
 very trying^-trying I mean to any man with only 
 too keen a sense of the ludicrous, and who would 
 not for the world betray himself if he could help it. 
 
 It is always better to let people welcome you as a 
 friend and neighbour, rather than as a clergyman, 
 even at the risk of being considered by the " unco 
 guid " as an irreverent heathen. But you are often 
 pulled up short by a reminder more or less reproach- 
 ful, that if you have forgotten your vocation your 
 host has not ; as thus : — 
 
 " Ever been to Tombland fair, Mrs. Cawl ? " Mrs. 
 Ca,wl has a perennial How of words, which come 
 
44 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 ri"om her lips in a steady, unceasing, and deliberate 
 monotone, a slow trickle of verbiage with never the 
 semblance of a stop. 
 
 " Never been to no fairs sin' I was a girl bless the 
 Lord nor mean to 'xcept once when my Betsy went 
 to place and father told me to take her to a show 
 and there was a giant and a dwarf dressed in a green 
 petticoat like a monkey on an organ an' I ses to 
 Betsy my dear theys the works of the Lord but they 
 hadn't ought to be shewed but as the works of the 
 Lord to be had in remembrance and don't you think 
 sir as when they shows the works of the Lord they'd 
 ought to begin with a little prayer ? " 
 
 There is one salient defect in the East Anglian 
 character which presents an almost insuperable 
 obstacle to the country parson who is anxious to 
 raise the tone of his people, and to awaken a re- 
 sponse when he appeals to their consciences and 
 aifections. The East Anglian is, of all the inhabi- 
 tants of these islands, most wanting in native 
 courtesy, in delicacy of feeling, and in anything 
 remotely resembling romantic sentiment. The re- 
 sult is that it is extremely difficult, almost im- 
 possible, to deal with a genuine Norfolk man 
 when he is out of temper. How much of this 
 coarseness of mental fibre is to be credited to 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 45 
 
 their Danish ancestry I know not, but whenever 
 I have noticed a gleam of enthusiasm, I think I 
 have invariably found it among those who had 
 French Huguenot blood in their veins. Always 
 shrewd, the Norfolk peasant is never tender; a 
 wrong, real or imagined, rankles within him through 
 a lifetime. He stubbornly refuses to believe that 
 hatred in his case is blameworthy. Refinement of 
 feeling he is quite incapable of, and without in the 
 least wishing to be rude, gross, or profane, he is 
 often all three at once quite innocently during five 
 minutes' talk. I have had things said to me by 
 really good and well-meaning men and women in 
 Arcady that would make susceptible people swoon. 
 It woul3 have been quite idle to remonstrate. You 
 might as well preach of duty to an antelope. If you 
 want to make any impression or exercise any in- 
 fluence for good upon your neighbours, you must 
 take them as you find them, and not expect too much 
 of them. You must work in faith, and you must 
 work upon the material that presents itself. " The 
 sower soweth the word." The mistake we commit 
 so often is in assuming that because we sow — which 
 is our duty — therefore we have a right to reap the 
 crop and garner it. " It grows to guerdon after- 
 days." 
 Meanwhile we have such home truths as the 
 
46 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 following thrown at us in the most innocent 
 manner. 
 
 " Tree score ? Is that all you be? Why there's 
 some folk as 'ud take you for a hundred wi' that hair 
 o' yourn 1 " 
 
 Mr. Snape spoke with an amount of irritation 
 which would have made an outsider believe I was 
 his deadliest foe ; yet we are really very good friends, 
 and the old man scolds me roundly if I am long 
 without going to look at him. But he has quite 
 a fierce repugnance to grey hair. " You must take 
 me as I am, Snape," I rieplied,; "I began to get 
 grey at thirty. Would you have me dye my hair? " 
 '' Doy ! Why that hev doyd, an' wuss than that— 
 thet's right rotten thet is ! " 
 
 Or we get taken into confidence now and then, and 
 get an insight into our Arcadians' practical turn of 
 mind. I was talking pleasantly to a good woman 
 about her children. " Yes," she said, " they're all 
 off my hands now, but I reckon rve;had a expense- 
 hive family. I don't mean to say as it might not 
 have been worse if they'd all lived, and we'd had to 
 bring 'em all up, but my meaning is as they never 
 seemed to die convenient. I had twins once, and 
 they bqth died, you see, and we had the club money 
 for both of 'em, but then one lived a fortnight after 
 the other, and so that took two funerals, and that 
 come expense-hive ! " 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 47 
 
 It is very shocking to a sensitive person to hear 
 the v^ay in which the old people speak of their dead 
 wives or husbands exactly as if they'd been horses 
 or dogs. They are always proud of having been 
 married more than once. " You didn't think. Miss, 
 as I'd had five wives, now did you ? Ah ! but I have 
 though — leastways I buried five on 'em in the 
 churchyard, that I did — and tree on 'em beewties ! "^ 
 On another occasion I playfully suggested, " Don't 
 you mix up your husbands now and then, Mrs. Page, 
 when you talk about them ? " " Well, to tell you 
 the truth, sir, I really du 1 But my third husband^ 
 he was a man ! I don't mix him up. He got killed, 
 fighting-rryou've heerd tell 0* that I make no doubt. 
 The others warn't nothing to him. He'd ha' mixed 
 them up quick enough if they'd interfered wi' him. 
 Lawk ah | He'd 'a made nothing of 'em 1 " 
 
 Instances of this obtuseness to anything in the 
 nature of poetic sentiment among our rustics might 
 be multiplied indefinitely, Norfolk has never pro- 
 duced a single poet or romancer." We have no 
 
 ' A genuine Norfolk man never aspirates a t when followed 
 by an r. It is always trew for through, troat for throat, tree for 
 three, &c. 
 
 " I do not forget Crabbe— that sweet and gentle versifier. 
 But the romantic element is wholly wanting in him. Very 
 ■probably Sir Wilfrid Lawson would vetemently protest that 
 Crabbe deserves to be reckoned among the greatest of the 
 
48 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 local songs or ballads, no traditions of valour or 
 nobleness, no legends of heroism or chivalry. In 
 their place we have a frightfully long list of ferocious 
 murderers: Thurtell, and Tawell, and Manning, and 
 Greenacre, and Rush, and a do^en more whose 
 names stand out pre-eminent in the horrible annals 
 of crime. The temperament of the sons of Arcady 
 is strangely callous to all the softer and gentler 
 emotions. 
 
 • ■•••• 
 
 There still remains something to say. In the 
 minor difficulties with which the country parson has 
 to deal, there is usually much that is grotesque, and 
 this for the most part forces itself into prominence. 
 When this is so, a wise man will not dwell too much 
 upon the sad and depressing view of the situation ; 
 he will try and make the best of things as they are. 
 There are trials that are, after all, bearable with a 
 light heart. Unhappily there are others that make 
 a man's heart very heavy indeed, partly because he 
 thinks they need not be, partly because he can see 
 no hope of remedy. It is of these I hope to speak 
 hereafter. 
 
 great. Was not his first poem entitled Inebriety t When a 
 child I used to be told that Bloomfield's Farmer's Boy was 
 equal to Spenser, but I concluded that Spenser must be very dull, 
 and coiiceived a horror of the Faery Queen in consequence. 
 
II. 
 
 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON, 
 u. 
 
 "Ther's times the world does look so queer, 
 Odd fancies come afore I call 'em, 
 An' then agin, for half a year, 
 No preacher 'thout a call's more solemn.'' 
 
 In speaking of the trials of the country parson's life 
 in my last essay, I left much unsaid that needed 
 saying. I rather shrank from dealing with matters 
 which are outside the range of my own experience, 
 and confined myself to such illustrations of the 
 positions maintained as my own personal knowledge 
 could supply. There are, however, some phases of 
 the country parson's life which I am perhaps less 
 competent to dwell on than others who have been 
 all their lives rustics, and because I would not 
 willingly wound the feelings of those whom I honour 
 and respect, therefore I am inclined to hang back 
 and hold my peace and say nothing. 
 
 5 
 
50 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 Why does not somebody else step in and take up 
 the thread where I dropped it, deliver his testimony, 
 and give us the record of his larger experience ? Or 
 shall vire ask another question ? How is it that 
 people who have much to tell, so often have no 
 faculty of setting it down in words and sentences ? 
 We boast of our advance in education, a^d yet 
 what has it done for us — what is it doing for 
 us ? 
 
 I mean my son to be really educated. I mean him 
 to be able to sit down to an organ and satisfy his 
 soul as he dreams his dreams or sends forth his wail 
 of aspiration, or sobs out. his grief and penitence, or 
 laughs forth his ecstasy of rapture, now in a passion 
 of melody, now in subtle tangle of mysterious fugue, 
 now in awful billows of harmony, making full concert 
 to the angelic symphony. I mean him to be able to 
 catch the laugh of the child, or the scowl of the 
 ruffian, or the smirk of the swindler, or the wonder 
 and triumph and joy and pride of the maiden who 
 has just listened to her lover's tale, or the sombre 
 beauty of the aged when the twilight deepens and 
 they are thinking of the dawn. I mean my son to 
 have the power to catch these things, and to hold 
 them and show them to me, saying, " Look 1 there 
 they are for you and me to dwell on when we will." 
 Then, and not till then, will that lad of promise have 
 
7HE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 51 
 
 begun to be educated. But we — or such as I — ^what 
 upstarts we are ! We that talk badly, write worse, 
 and fumble and bungle miserably with that beggarly 
 vehicle of communication between man and man 
 which we call language — ^that wretched calculus 
 which serves just a very little way towards helping 
 us to hold converse with men as foolish as ourselves, 
 but leaves us helpless to make the throstle feel how 
 much we love him, and which we fling aside as a 
 mere burden when our hearts are dying in us with 
 what we call our loneliness or our despair. Edu- 
 cated ! Who is educated ? Certainly not the man 
 who, having his memory full of a vast assemblage of 
 odds and ends, can no more bring them out and 
 produce them in an intelligible shape than I can 
 produce on canvas the face of yonder old beldame 
 with the square jaw and the bushy brows and the 
 blazing eyes, and that burlesque of a bonnet, square 
 and round and oval at one and the same moment, 
 and no more capable of being described in words than 
 of being written out in musical notation. 
 
 Yet it is undeniable that the knack of Mr. 
 Gigadibs is a convenient knack, and it is a pity that 
 my friend Mr. Cadaverous has not got it ; he is " of 
 those who know." Gigadibs is of those who can 
 juggle with the parts of speech, and very pretty 
 jugglery it is. I envy Gigadibs whenever I am 
 
Missing Page 
 
Missing Page 
 
54 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 outside. Every morning he goes to his school a 
 long mile off, every afternoon he has some one to 
 " look after," to visit in sickness or sorrow, to watch 
 or advise or comfort. One year with another he 
 calculates that he has to walk at least 1,500 miles 
 in the way of duty. As to the mere Sunday work, 
 that needs no dwelling on ; take it all in all, it is about 
 the least wearing and least troublesome part of the 
 parson's duties, always provided he puts his heart 
 into it, and has some faculty for it. But in all that 
 tract of country over which he is sometimes cruelly 
 assumed to be no more than a spiritual overse er 
 among all those goo people, there is not a single 
 man, woman, or child that cares to talk to him, or 
 ever does talk to him, about anything outside the 
 parish, and its concerns. Nay ! I forgot the school- 
 master and his wife. They are young, intelligent, 
 hopeful, and they came out of Yorkshire, and have 
 something to say of their experience in the North. 
 But they are just a little — undeniably a little sore, 
 just a little touchy : they have a grievance. When 
 they first came down to X., Mrs. Rector did not 
 leave her card on Mrs. Petticogges. It was a slight. 
 It was hoity-toity, it was airified. That is not all ; 
 the farmers are not, as you may say, cordial with the 
 schoolmaster; and Farmer Gay, the big man who 
 holds 700 acres in the next parish and gives lawn- 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 55 
 
 tennis parties, never had the grace to take any 
 notice of the Petticogges, does not in fact know the 
 Petticogges. Meanwhile, friend Burney is manager 
 of the school, and by far the largest contributor to 
 the funds, and day by day he is in and out, he and 
 his daughters. But there is no time to talk or 
 confer. The Petticogges have their hands full; 
 when their day's work is over they have had enough 
 of it. Round and round and round they go in the 
 dreary mill ; every now and then there is a new 
 regulation of My Lords to worry them, a new book 
 to get up, a new code to study. Then there are the 
 pupil teachers to look after, and returns to make up, 
 and all the dull routine which has to be got through. 
 How can an elementary schoolmaster in a remote 
 country village be a reading-man, or what motive 
 has he to get out of the narrow groove in which he 
 has been brought up ? The best teachers, as a rule, 
 are they who know their work best and very little 
 indeed outside it. " How is it that at Dumpfield 
 they don't get a larger grant ? " I asked one day of 
 an inspector noted for his shrewdness and good 
 sense. " Surely Coxe is by far the ablest and most 
 brilliant teacher for miles round ; he is almost a 
 man of genius ? " " Precisely so," was the reply, 
 " the man's out of place. These brilliant men with 
 a touch of genius are a nuisance in an elementary 
 
56 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 school. My dear fellow, never let a man of views 
 come into your school. Keep him out. Beware of 
 the being who is for revolutionizing spelling and 
 grammar ! " 
 
 Mr. Petticogge is not a man of genius, only a 
 better sort of elementary schoolmaster, and entirely 
 absorbed in his work. He, too, as all the members 
 of his fraternity do, occupies a position of isolation, 
 and between him and the parson there is just so 
 much in common as to make each hold aloof from 
 the other without making either of them congenial 
 to their other neighbours. As for the rest of friend 
 Burney's neighbours, take them in the gross, and 
 you may say of them what the ticket -of-leave man 
 said of the Ten Commandments ; " They're rather 
 a poor lot and you can't make much out of 'em." 
 I know no class of men who are less sociable than 
 the smaller farmers, as we reckon smallness in the 
 East. I mean the men who hold a couple of 
 hundred acres and under. It has often been laid 
 to the charge of the great occupiers in West 
 Norfolk and elsewhere that in the good times they 
 were lavish beyond all reason in their hospitalities. 
 I believe there never has been anything of the sort 
 among the smaller men ; they are not unfriendly, 
 they are not wanting in cordiality, but they are not 
 companionable. 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 57 
 
 It is my privilege to know some who are notable 
 exceptions to the all but universal rule. I have noc 
 far to go from my own door to find one whom I 
 never pay a visit to without pleasure ajid profit, one 
 who has for many years been a great reader of Lord 
 Tennyson's poems, has strong opinions on politics 
 and the questions of the day, a thoughtful, resolute, 
 and true-hearted woman, who farms a hundred acres 
 of land without a bailiff, and, among other evidences 
 of her good taste and intelligence, is a diligent reader 
 of the Spectator. But such are few and far between. 
 
 It is one of the trials of the country parson 
 that, as soon as he passes out of the stratum to 
 which the labourer belongs, he finds himself in a 
 stratum where there is nothing that has any of 
 the interest of originality, picturesqueness, or even 
 passion. The people who live and move in that 
 stratum are dismally like the ticket-of-leave man's 
 ten commandments. My neighbours hardly believe 
 me when I tell them I can see, even among the 
 smaller farmers, much to admire, much to respect, 
 and something to love; but I do not wonder that 
 many a country parson " can't make much out of 
 'em." These men are having rather a hard life just 
 now, but they have not to learn the most elementary 
 lessons of thrift and frugality. As a class they have 
 always practised these virtues, and as a class they 
 
58 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 are far less complaining than those who belong to 
 the higher stratum ; they bear their burdens silently, 
 perhaps too silently, and they tell you that it's no 
 good grumbling — " that," one of them said to me, 
 " only makes things worse, 'cause it makes you 
 worse ! " Take them all in all, they whom I have 
 elsewhere called the little ones are usually those of 
 his parishioners with whom the parson seldom 
 comes into unpleasant relations; they are usually 
 very hard at work, very practical, very straight- 
 forward, and very seldom indeed prone to give 
 themselves airs. 
 
 It is often very different with the large occupiers. 
 In the good times the large farmers must have made 
 very large profits, the percentage upon the actual 
 capital embarked (unless my information has been 
 strangely untrue, and the calculations that have been 
 laid before me strangely inaccurate) being in many 
 cases larger even than that which the shipowners 
 earned in their good times. Is it to be wondered at 
 that they became frequently intoxicated by their 
 success, and got to believe that they were a superior 
 order on whom the welfare of the nation depended ? 
 Or, again, can we be surprised that their awakening 
 from their dream has not been pleasurable, and has 
 somewhat soured them ? Ten years ago a gentleman 
 farmer — and every man who farmed 500 acres was 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 59 
 
 a gentleman farmer^ooked down upon the retail 
 tradesman as quite beneath him in station, and 
 regarded the parson as a respectable official whom 
 it was the right thing to support, though he might 
 care very little for him and his ways. In those days 
 the farmer's sons and the parson's were frequently 
 schoolfellows ; the young people drew together, and 
 the farmer's pupils too were another link between 
 the farmhouse and the rectory. The bad seasons 
 and the fall in prices came together, and the col- 
 lapse was very rapid. But in nine cases out of ten, 
 whereas the farmer's losses meant a disastrous 
 abatement which extended over his wholz income, 
 the parson felt the pinch only in the fall of the tithe 
 or in the rent of his glebe. His private fortune, 
 being for the most part settled, remained as it was 
 before. In East Anglia not 5 per cent, of the 
 clergy are living upon the income of their benefices ; 
 but I should be very much surprised to find that 
 5 per cent, of the tenant-farmers have any con- 
 siderable investments outside their working capital. 
 The result is, that though the clergy have suffered 
 quite severely enough, they have not suffered nearly 
 so much as the farmers. The one has had to 
 submit to a painful loss of professional income, and 
 has had to fall back upon his private resources ; the 
 other has too often found himself with his credit 
 
6o THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 balance approaching the vanishing point, the trade 
 profit has been nil, and there have been no dividends 
 from investments outside the going concern to keep 
 up the old style or meet the old expenditure. When 
 neighbours have been in the habit of meeting on 
 equal terms, and one goes on pretty much as before, 
 while the other has become a trifle shabby, and has 
 to consider every shilling that he spends, it is almost 
 inevitable that the poorer of the two should feel less 
 cordial than before. He revenges himself upon the 
 laws of the universe by proclaiming that there is 
 wrong and injustice somewhere. Why is he on the 
 brink of ruin while the parson has only knocked oft 
 his riding horse, or ceased to take his annual trip to 
 the Continent, or lessened his establishment by a 
 servant, or it may be two ? He forgets thai his 
 neighbour is living upon the interest of realized 
 property, and that he himself has to live upon what 
 he can make, and upon that alone. 
 
 But what irritates the farmer most is that, at the 
 worst, the parson is getting something out of the land 
 while he is getting little or nothing ; and though he 
 knows as well as any one else that the tithe stands 
 for a first mortgage upon the land, or for an annuity 
 charged upon the land, which takes precedence of 
 every other payment ; and though he knows also 
 that, in too many instances, he has himself to pay 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 6i 
 
 interest on the capital with which he has been 
 pursuing his business, and that this interest has to 
 be provided for whether that business is carried on 
 at a profit or a loss, yet he persists in trying to 
 convince himself that he was "let in" when he 
 made himself liable for the tithes ; he tells you 
 he has " to pay the parson," and he does not like it. 
 The parson is always m evidence, the landlord is out 
 of the way — almost an abstraction, as the Govern- 
 ment is ; the agent must be submitted to, so must 
 the tax gatherer. But the parson, could he not be 
 got rid of ? Granted that it would all come to the 
 same in the end, and that if you could eliminate the 
 parson the tithe would be laid on to the rent sooner 
 or later, yet it might be very much later, and the 
 end might be a long way off, and in the meantime 
 he, the farmer, would put the tithe into his own 
 pocket and into that of no one else. Hence there 
 smoulder in the minds of many the smoky embers 
 of discontent, and there is a coldness between the 
 former friends. We are conscious of it, but we see 
 no cure at present. When the tithe comes to be 
 paid by the landlord, there may be a return to the 
 old friendliness ; but the gratia male sarta always 
 leaves traces of the rift. I forbear from dwelling 
 any longer upon this branch of the subject. When 
 men are sore and in danger of becoming soured. 
 
Missing Page 
 
Missing Page 
 
64 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 been atoms too long ; we want coherence, my dear 
 sir — coherence. We are moving towards the general 
 adoption of the Catholic cassock ! " " Do you mean 
 to say," I answered, " that you will persist in sport- 
 ing that emasculated felt turbanette till you arrive 
 at the general adoption of the cassock ? Then, in 
 the name of all the lines of beauty, on with the 
 cassock, but away with the wide-awake 1 " I'm 
 afraid my young friend was hurt ; suspected me of 
 some covert profanity, and deplored my flagrant 
 want of esprit de corps. 
 
 And yet I have been almost a worshipper of Burke 
 from my boyhood, and was early so impregnated 
 with the fundamental positions of the Thoughts on 
 the Causes of our present Discontents that, if I only 
 could choose my party, I should follow my leader to 
 prison or to death, and do his bidding, avSpeiai koI 
 fivaavra, never looking behind me. Unhappily in 
 matters political the curse of a flabby amorphous 
 eclecticism is upon too many of us; watching the 
 conflict of principles or policies in a dazed and 
 bewildered frame of mind, we persuade ourselves 
 that we are philosophically impartial when we are 
 only indolently iOidifferent. "Which train are you 
 going by, sir — up or down ? " " I'll wait and see I " 
 And both engines rush out and leave the unhappy 
 vacillator to his reveries, till by-and-by the platform 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 6; 
 
 is cleared and the station is shut up for the night, 
 and the gas lamps are turned down ; and there is no 
 moon and no stars and no shelter, and the wind is 
 rising. 
 
 But ever since I have, so to speak, taken the 
 shilling and entered the Church's service and put 
 myself under orders, I have loyally stood up for my 
 cloth, and I am quite willing to bear the reproaches 
 of that service where there are any to bear. We 
 clergy get a good deal of stupid and very vulgar 
 ridicule hurled at us, and we cannot very well 
 retaliate. It is a case of Athanasius contra mundum. 
 The " world " is very big and rather unassailable, 
 and we of the minority are apt to assume that we 
 can afford to hold our peace, that we gain by turning 
 the right cheek to him who smites us on the left, 
 and that we should lose by giving a foul-mouthed 
 liar and coward a drubbing and tossing him into the 
 horse-pond. We stand upon the defensive. We 
 have hardly any other choice. But it is rather 
 trying to have to answer for all the sins, negli- 
 gences, and ignorances, the follies and the bad taste 
 of all who wear the wide-awake. 
 
 As far as the instances of downright wickedness 
 and immorality go, I think nobody will pretend that 
 any class in the community can show such a clean 
 bill of health as the -clergy. As I look round me 
 
 6 
 
66 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 upon my clerical brethren of all ages and all 
 opinions, I can honestly, say I do not know one of 
 the.ni whose daily life is not free from reproach or 
 suspicion. During all my life I have never myself 
 known more than one beneficed clergyman who was 
 a real black sheep. That there are such men of 
 course I cannot doubt, but their aggregate number 
 constitutes, I am sure, a very small percentage of 
 the class which they disgrace by being included in 
 it. Surely it is very trying and very irritating to 
 have such instances brought up against you, not as 
 rare exceptions, but as examples of the general rule. 
 Our Nonconformist neighbours know all aboUt such 
 cases, and cannot understand why they should exist. 
 They know that a Wesleyan or a Congregational 
 minister who should underlie any grave suspicion 
 would infallibly disappear from the neighbourhood 
 
 in a week. Why should the rector of Z , whose 
 
 intemperance has been clearly proved, be allowed to 
 return to his parish after his term of suspension, 
 and begin again to minister among the same people 
 whose sense of decency he has outraged till it was 
 past all bearing ? You tell your Nonconformist 
 friend that it cannot be helped because the reverend 
 sot has got a freehold in his benefice. " Oh, it can't 
 be helped, can't it ? " he answers ; " that's it, is it ? 
 The law ain't to blame, and the bishop ain't to 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 67 
 
 blame, and the churchvvardens ain't to blame, and, 
 according to that, the parson ain't to blame neither, 
 except that the old. fool's been and got found out." 
 These people know that such scandals are impossible 
 at the chapels ; they are not impossible at the 
 churches ; they know that the deacons, and the 
 elders, and the conference, or whatever the power 
 may be that keeps up the discipline, comes down 
 with swift severity in the one case, and the rural 
 dean and archdeacons and the bishops are all but 
 powerless in the other. In many cases the influence 
 of a bad example, or the memory of a shameful 
 reputation, i,s avoided by giving an incumbent, inde- 
 finite leave of absence ; but this is, after all, only a 
 confession of weakness, and the fact that the parson 
 still takes the income of the benefice, though his 
 work is done by another, that itself is a scandal. 
 Ecclesiastical reformers, lay or clerical, who stop 
 short of dealing with the subject of the parson's 
 freehold, are. merely hacking and lopping the 
 branches in the vain hope of saving the tree. If 
 the thing is, rotten, let it die placidly, or let it be 
 cut down bravely. Where you have not the pluck 
 to do the one thing, why fidget about the other ? 
 
 Happily, however, we are not much troubled with' 
 " criminous clerks," we country pairsons. The regu- 
 lar out-and-out bad ones usually retire into holes 
 
68 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 and corners, and they are but few and far between. 
 We hear of them much more from our Meetingers 
 than from any one else. The Meetinger keeps 
 himself posted up with the last clerical escapade, 
 and fires it off at us when he gets a chance, and 
 the old argument has to be gone over again, and the 
 parson goes home feeling that he was born to be 
 badgered, and that he must expect it even to the 
 end of the world. 
 
 It may seem strange to the inexperienced, but it is 
 none the less true, that we suffer a great deal more 
 from the best of our brethren than we do from the 
 worst. They are the over-zealous, who are deter- 
 mined to change the face of the world and revo- 
 lutionize society and reform everything, and improve 
 everybody, and who cannot leave things alone to 
 develop and grow, who make their fellow-creatures' 
 lives a burden to them. When we are young we 
 have such unbounded faith in ourselves, and such 
 unbounded ignorance and inexperience. The world 
 is all before us, and all to conquer and remodel ; our 
 seniors are sad fogeys, so slow, so stiff, so cautious. 
 There is so much dust everywhere and upon every- 
 thing. Our brooms are so new, so swishy, and our 
 arms so strong. We have our wits about us, and 
 our senses all keen and sharp. We find it hard to 
 believe that we have not been called into being to do 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 69 
 
 a great deal of sweeping and getting rid of cobwebs. 
 I love to see the young fellows all bubbling over 
 with energy, and all aflame with fiery zeal ; I would 
 not have it otherwise. God bless them ! say I, but 
 they do rout us about very uncomfortably, and they 
 are very foolish. 
 
 It was only the other day that I was asked to go 
 and visit a church to which a very hurricane of a 
 man had been recently appointed, and which he had 
 already set himself to restore. He knew no more 
 about church architecture than I do about Sanskrit, 
 and less about history than I do about chemistry. 
 He had a small army of bricklayers picking and 
 slopping about the sacred edifice, tearing down this 
 and digging up that and smalming over the other. 
 And this reverend worthy had not even consulted 
 the parish clerk ! "Of course you have had a 
 faculty for all this ? " I suggested. 
 
 " Not I ! Faculty indeed ! I have to save all 
 the expense I can. I have made up my mind to 
 have nothing whatever to do with any officials or 
 professionals of any sort or kind; I'm my own 
 architect ! " 
 
 Now, if a man chooses to be his own tailor, 
 nobody will be much the worse and nobody will 
 much care; but when a man sets himself to 
 " restore " a church by the light of nature, it is a 
 
Missing Page 
 
Missing Page 
 
n THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 interest to open his mouth ; is he not inducted into 
 possession of the sacred building, and is he not 
 therefore tenant for hfe of the freehold ? As long 
 as he makes himself liable for all the expense, it is 
 surely better to let him have his way. " I ain't a 
 going to interfere," says one after another ; and in 
 six weeks a church which had upon its walls and 
 floors, upon its tower and its roof, upon its windowsr 
 and its doors, upon its every stone and timber, the 
 marks and evidences which constituted a continuous 
 chronicle, picturing — not telling — a tale of the 
 faith and hope, and folly and errors, and devotion 
 and sorrow, and strivings after a higher ideal and 
 painful gropings for more light in the gloom — a tale 
 that goes back a thousand years, a tale of the rude 
 forefathers of the village world which still regards 
 the house of God as somehow its own — in six weeks, 
 I say, all this is as effectually obliterated as if a ton 
 of dynamite had been exploded in one of the vaults, 
 and the genius of smugness had claimed the com- 
 minuted fragments as her own. 
 
 Then there is the mania for decorations too. I 
 like to see them ; I am sure the new fashion has 
 been the occasion for awakening a great deal of 
 interest in, and something approaching proud affec- 
 tion for, our old churches ; but here again people, 
 with every desire to be reverential and to do the 
 
, THE TRIALS OF A CO UNTR Y PARSON. 73 
 
 right thing, succeed amazingly in doing just the 
 wrong one. Have I not seen a most beautiful 
 fourteenth-century rood screen literally riddled with 
 tin tacks and covered with various coloured paper 
 roses, festooned in fluffy frills of some cheap material 
 on which languid dandelions and succulent bluebells 
 lolled damply at the Eastertide ? Next time I saw 
 that exquisite work of art, lo ! there was a St. 
 Lawrence with his eye put out and two holes in his 
 forehead, and between the lips of a St. Barbara, 
 who for her loveliness might have been painted by 
 Carlo Crivelli, there protruded a bent nail which 
 looked for all the world like an old tobacco pipe. 
 Who can " restore " that precious rood screen or 
 repair the damage wrought in an hour by the 
 decorators turned loose into that meek little church 
 a year ago ? 
 
 I think the average laymen who live in the towns 
 can have very little notion of what the parson suffers 
 when he finds himself turned into a church in which 
 he has to officiate for the rest of his life, and which 
 his predecessor has mauled and mangled and 
 murdered, leaving no more life in it than there is 
 among the wax figures at Madame Tussaud's. 
 
 " But do not these rash and furious young zealots 
 of whom you have spoken burn their fingers some- 
 times, and does not the bishop sometimes come 
 
74 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 down upon them ? " Yes ! very often, after the 
 mischief has been done. I knew one monster who 
 upon his glebe had some seven of the noblest oak 
 trees in the county of Norfolk. Lucus ligna was 
 his view of the case, and he sold them all. Down 
 they came every tree of them. Some said he wanted 
 to see how the landscape would look without them, 
 some that he wanted to go to Norway, and there are 
 plenty of trees there. The patron of the living 
 called that man to account, and I am told made 
 him disgorge the proceeds of his ill-gotten gains; 
 and the bishop is generally believed to have sent 
 him a mandate to put back those trees in their 
 former position. But that clerical monster, though 
 he plays the fiddle to put Amphion to shame, has 
 never learnt Amphion's tune or cared to charm back 
 the giant vegetables that were once the pride and 
 glory of the countryside. In the days when the 
 wicked received their reward in this world a thou- 
 sand evil-doers have been hanged for crimes in- 
 comparably less injurious to the community at 
 large than that which lies to the charge of this 
 reverend sinner ; but he enjoys the income of his 
 benefice to this day, and grows willows instead of 
 oaks, not to turn to the use which Timon recom- 
 mended to one of his visitors, but to turn into cash ; 
 for they grow fast, and the manufacturers of cricket 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 75 
 
 bats are hard put to it to supply the demand for their 
 wares. 
 
 What we want is to make it at least a misde- 
 meanour punishable by imprisonment for the parson 
 to touch the fabric of the church under any circum- 
 stances whatever, except with the consent and under 
 the license of some external authority. But that 
 implies that the ownership of the church should no 
 longer be vested in a corporation sole. It brings us 
 again face to face with the whole question of the 
 parson's freehold; and how long is that mischievous 
 legal fiction— which is, however, a very stubborn 
 legal fact — to be endured ? 
 
 If I were to go on in this vein, and dwell upon all 
 the parson has to suffer from his predecessors — the 
 man who built the house two miles from the parish 
 church; the man who added to it to find room for 
 a score of pupils ; the man who loved air, or the 
 man who loved water, or the man who loved society^ 
 or the man who bred horses, or the man who turned 
 the rectory into a very lucrative lunatic asylum — 
 I should tire out my reader's patience, and the 
 more so that there aris other trials about which it 
 is advisable that I should utter my querulous wail. 
 
 I know one clergyman who, though ordained some 
 forty years ago, has never written or preached a 
 sermon in his life ; but I only know one. His is 
 
76 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 perhaps a unique case. As a rule, we all begin by 
 being curates — that is, we begin by learning our 
 business as subordinates. It would be truer to say 
 we used to begin that way; but subordination is 
 dying out all over the world, and in the ministry of 
 the Church of England subordination is a virtue 
 which is in articulo mortis. Nowadays a young 
 fellow at twenty-three, who has become a reverend 
 gentleman for just a week, poses at once as the 
 guide, philosopher, and friend of the whole human 
 race. He poses as a great teacher. It is not only 
 that he delivers the oracles with authoritative sen- 
 tentiousness from the tripod, but he has no doubts 
 and no hesitation about anything in earth or heaven. 
 He fortifies himself with a small collection of brand- 
 new words which you, poor ignorant creature, don't 
 know the meaning of. You feel rather " out of it " 
 when he gravely calls your gloves Mannaries (he 
 does not wear them), and your dressing-gown a 
 Poderis ; expresses his mournful regret that there is 
 no Scuophylacium in the Presbytery, nor any Bankers 
 on the walls; gently admonishes you for standing 
 bareheaded by the grave at your time of life, when 
 prudence would suggest, and ecclesiastical precedent 
 would recommend, the use of the Anahata; tells 
 you he always goes about with a Totum under his 
 arm, and a Virge in his right hand. When ha 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 77 
 
 vanishes you slyly peep into your Du Cange, but the 
 Bankers are quite too much for you. 
 
 I am not much more ignorant than other men of 
 my age, but I never did pretend to omniscience, and 
 when I don't know a thing I am not ashamed of 
 asking questions. But our modern curates never 
 ask questions. " Inquire within upon everything," 
 seems to be stamped upon every line of their placid 
 faces. When I was a young curate I was very shy 
 and timid, and held my dear rector in some awe. It 
 might have been hoped that as the years went by 
 I should have grown out of this weakness — but no ! 
 I am horribly afraid of the curates now. I dare 
 hardly, open my mouth before my superiors, and 
 that they are my superiors I should not for a 
 moment presume to question. I know my place, 
 and I tremble lest I should betray my silliness by 
 speaking unadvisedly with my lips. All this is very 
 trying to a man who will never see sixty again. 
 The hoary head is no crown at all to the eyes of the 
 young and learned. They don't yet cry out at me, 
 *' Go up, thou baldhead," but I can't help suspecting 
 that they're only waiting to do it sooner or later. 
 For myself I have, unfortunately, never been able 
 to afford to engage the services of a clergyman who 
 ishould assist me in my ministrations. So much the 
 w^orse for me, and' so much the worse for my parish. 
 
78. THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 When I am no longer able to do my own pastoral 
 work, I shall feel the pinch of poverty; but I am 
 resolved to be very meek to my curate when he shall 
 vouchsafe to take me under his protection. I will 
 do as I am told. 
 
 It is a very serious fact, however, which we can- 
 not but think of with anxiety, that since the Curate 
 Market rose, as it did some fifteen or twenty years 
 ago, there has been a large incursion of young men 
 into the ministry of the Church of England who are 
 not gentlemen by birth, education, sentiment, or 
 manners, and who bring into the profession (regarded 
 as a mere profession) no capital of any sort-rnp 
 capital I mean of money, brains, culture, enthusiasm, 
 or force of character. This is bad enough, but 
 there is a worse behind it. These young curates 
 almost invariably marry, and the last state of that 
 man is worse than the first. My friends assure me, 
 and my observation confirms it, that the domestic 
 career of these young people is sometimes very 
 pathetic. Sanguine, aifectionate, simple-minded and 
 childlike, they learn the hard lessons of life all too 
 late, and their experience comes to them, as Cole^- 
 ridge said, " like the stern lights of a ship, throwing 
 a glare only upon the path behind." When their 
 children come upon them with the usual rapidity, it is 
 but rarely that we country parsons keep these married 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. ,79 
 
 curates among us. They emigrate into the towns 
 for the sake of educating their progeny, or because 
 they soon find out that there is no hope of prefer- 
 ment for them among the villages. When there. is 
 no family, or when the bride has brought her spouse 
 some small accession of income, the couple stay 
 where they are for years till somebody gives thejn a 
 small living, and there they do as .others do. But 
 in the first exuberance of youth, and when the 
 youthful .pair are highly delighted with the position 
 that has been acquired, Ae is profoundly impressed 
 with the sense of his importance, and she exalted at 
 the notion of having married a " clergyman and a 
 gentleman ; " he is apt to be stuck up, and she is 
 very apt to be huffy. It's bad enough to be asso- 
 ciated officially with an underbred man, but it's a 
 great deal worse to find yourself brought into social 
 relations, which cannot be avoided, with an under- 
 bred woman. The curate's wife is sometimes a 
 very dreadful personage, but then most dreadful 
 when she is a "young person " of your own parish 
 who has angled . for the clerical stickleback and 
 landed him. 
 
 The Rev. Percy De la Pole was a courtly gentle- 
 man, sensitive, fastidious, and just a trifle, a little 
 trifle, distant ' in his demeanour. His curate, the 
 Rev. Giles Gog^s, was a worthy young fellow enough, 
 
8o THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 painstaking and assiduous, anxious to do his duty, 
 and not at all airified. We all liked him till Rebecca 
 Busk overcame him. Mr. De la Pole was cautious 
 and reserved by temperament ; but who has never 
 committed a mistake ? In an evil hour— how could 
 he have been so imprudent ? — he gently warned the 
 curate against the wiles of Miss Busk and her 
 family, telling him that she was far from being a 
 desirable match, and going to the length of saying 
 plainly that she was making very indelicate advances. 
 " All that may be quite true," replied Mr. Goggs, 
 " but I am sure yOu will soon change your opinion. 
 I come in now to let you know that I am engaged to 
 be married to Miss Busk." From that day our 
 reverend neighbour had so bad a time of it that it is 
 commonly believed his valuable life was shortened 
 by his sufferings. I am afraid some people behaved 
 very cruelly, for they could not help laughing. Mrs. 
 Goggs took her revenge in the most vicious way. 
 On all public occasions she clasped the rector's arm 
 and looked up in his face with the tenderest interest. 
 She tripped across lawns at garden parties to pluck 
 him by the sleeve, screamed out with shrill delight 
 when he appeared, called him her dear old father 
 confessor, giggled and smirked and patted him, and 
 .fairly drove him out of the place. at last by finding 
 that he had twice preached borrowed sermons, and 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSOlv. 8i 
 
 keeping the discovery back till the opportune 
 moment arrived, when, at a large wedding party, 
 she shook her greasy little ringlets at him with a 
 wicked laugh, exclaiming, " Ah ! you dear old sly- 
 boots, when you can speak like that why do you 
 preach the Penny Pulpit to us?" The wretched 
 victim could not hold up his head after that, and 
 when a kind neighbour strongly advised him to 
 dismiss the curate whose wife was unbearable, the 
 broken-down old gentleman feebly objected. " My 
 dear friend, I may haye an opportunity of getting 
 preferment for Mr. Goggs some day, but in the 
 meantime I have no power to send away my curate 
 because his wife — well, because his wife is not nice" 
 
 It often happens that the parson has to go away 
 from his parish for some months, and he finds con- 
 siderable difficulty in getting any one to take charge 
 of it during his absence. At the eleventh hour he is 
 compelled to take the last chance applicant. And 
 behold, he and his parishioners are given over to a 
 locum tenens. This is nothing more than saying that 
 he has put himself into the power of a man with a 
 loose end. 
 
 When the worthy rector of Corton-in-the-Brake 
 had reached his fiftieth year, he obtained an acces- 
 sion of fortune and gave out that he intended to 
 marry. He furnished his house anew at a great 
 
 7 
 
82 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON, 
 
 expense, and found no difficulty in getting a wife. 
 Then he vowed that he would go to the south of 
 France for the winter, and get a curate. He was a 
 prim and punctilious personage, and he did not mean 
 to deal shabbily with his substitute. But two things 
 he insisted on : first, that this locum tenens should be 
 married, and secondly that he should be childless. 
 He got exactly the right man at last, a scholarly, 
 well-dressed, and evidently accomplished gentleman, 
 who spoke of Mrs. Connor with respectful confidence 
 and affection, who had been tnarried ten years, and 
 had no family, who made no difficulties except that 
 the stables were, he feared, inconveniently too small, 
 but he would make shift. With a mind relieved and 
 a blissful honeymoon before him, the Rev. John 
 Morris set out for Nice — in the days when the rail- 
 way system was not as complete as now — and the 
 Rev. Mr. Connor arrived at the rectory the next 
 Saturday afternoon. Mrs. Connor came too, with 
 fourteen brindled bulldogs — ^young and old. That was 
 her speciality, and she gave her whole mind to keeping 
 the breed pure and making large sums by every litter. 
 During the following week appeared seven pupils, 
 the rejected of several public schools, who were 
 committed to the care of Mr. Connor to be kept out 
 of their parents' sight and to " prepare for the Uni- 
 versity." Mrs. Connor kept no female servants. 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 83 
 
 Not a woman or a girl dared pass the rectory gate. 
 The Connors had a man cook and men housemaids. 
 The bulldogs would prowl about the neighbourhood 
 in threes and fours with a slow shuffling trot, 
 sniffing, growling, turning their hideous blood-shot, 
 eyes at you, undecided whether or not to tear you 
 limb from limb; and then passing on with mena- 
 cing contempt. Sometimes there were rumours of 
 horrible fights ; no one dared to separate the brutes 
 except Mrs. Connor. Once the two mightiest of the 
 bulldogs got " locked," as the head man expressed 
 it. " What did you do ? " " Do ? Why I shrook 
 oiit to Billy to hang on, and I called the Missus, 
 and she gave 'em the hot un, and they give in ! " 
 The hot un turned out to be a thin bar of steel with 
 a wooden handle which was always kept ready for 
 use in the kitchen fire, and which Mrs. Connor had 
 her own method of applying red hot so as to paralyze 
 the canine culprit without blemishing him. But 
 imagine the condition of that newly furnished 
 parsonage when the poor rector came back to his 
 home. 
 
 It is easy for everybody else to look only at the 
 ludicrous side, but the clerical sufferer has to bear 
 the real bitterness of such an experience, and to him 
 the mere damage to his property is the least part of 
 the business. Everybody says sulkily, " Why were 
 
84 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 we left to such a man as that ? " For the country 
 parson has to answer for all the sins and short- 
 comings of those whom he leaves to represent him- 
 self; all their indiscretions, their untidiness, their 
 careless reading, their bad preaching, their irrever- 
 ence or their foolery, their timidity or their violence, 
 their ignorance or their escapades. One man is 
 horribly afraid of catching the measles; another 
 " has never been accustomed to cows " and will not 
 go where they are ; a third is a woman-hater, and 
 week by week bawls out strong language against the 
 other sex, beginning with Eden and ending with 
 Babylon. The absentee returns to iBnd everything 
 has been turned topsy-turvy. The locum tenens has 
 set every one by the ears, altered the times of service, 
 broken your pony's knees, had your dog poisoned for 
 howling at the moon, or kept a monkey in your 
 drawing-room^ People outside laugh, but when you 
 are the sufferer, and the conviction is forced upon 
 you that harm has been done which you cannot hope 
 to see repaired, you are not so likely to laugh as to 
 do the other thing. 
 
 Shall I go on to dwell upon the aggrieved 
 parishioner, the amenities of the School Board, the 
 anxieties of the school treat, the scenes at the 
 meetings of the Poor-law guardians, the faithful 
 laity who come to expostulate, to ask your views 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 85 
 
 and to set you right ? Shall I ? Shall I dwell upon 
 the occasional sermons which some delegate from 
 some society comes and fulminates against you and 
 your people ? Nay ! Silence on some parts of our 
 experience is golden. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 When we have said all that need be said about the 
 minor vexations and worries which are incident to 
 the country parson's life, and which, like all men 
 who live in isolation, he is apt to exaggerate, there is 
 something still behind it all which only a few feel to 
 be an evil at all, and which those who do feel, for 
 many good reasons, are shy of speaking about ; 
 partly because they know it to be incurable, partly 
 because if they do touch upon it they are likely to be 
 tabulated among the dissatisfied, or are credited with 
 unworthy motives which they know in their hearts 
 that they are not swayed by. 
 
 That which really makes the country parson's 
 position a cheerless and trying one is its absolute 
 finality. Dante's famous line ought to be carved 
 upon the lintel of every country parsonage in 
 England. When the new rector on his induction 
 takes the key of the church, locks himself in, and 
 tolls the bell, it is his own passing bell that he is 
 ringing. He is shutting himself out from any hope 
 of a further career upon earth. He is a man trans- 
 
86 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 ported for life, to whom there will come no reprieve. 
 Whether he be the sprightly and sanguine young 
 bachelor of twenty-four who takes the family living ; 
 or the podgy plebeian whose uncle the butcher has 
 bought the advowson for a song ; or the college tutor, 
 fastidious, highly cultured, even profoundly learned, 
 who has accepted university preferment ; or the 
 objectionable and quarrelsome man, whom it was 
 necessary to provide for by " sending into the 
 country " ; — be he who he may, gifted or very much 
 the reverse, careless or earnest, slothful or zealous, 
 genial, eloquent, wise, and notoriously successful in 
 his ministrations, or the veriest stick and humdrum 
 that ever snivelled through a homily — from the day 
 that ht accepts a country benefice he is a shelved 
 man, and is put upon the retired list as surely.as the 
 commander in the navy who disappears on half-pay. 
 I do not mean only that the country parson is never 
 promoted to the higher dignities in the Church, or 
 that cathedral preferment is very rarely bestowed 
 upon him ; but I do mean that he is never moved 
 from the benefice in which he has once been planted. 
 You may ply me with instances to the contrary 
 here and there, but they are instances only numerous 
 enough to illustrate the universality of the law 
 which prevails — Onca a country parson always a country 
 parson; where he finds himself there he has to stay. 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 87 
 
 As long as the patronage of ecclesiastical prefer- 
 ment in the Church of England remains in the hands 
 it has remained in for a thousand years and more, 
 and as long as the tenure of the benefice continues 
 to be as it is and as it has been since feudal times, I 
 can see no remedy and no prospect that things should 
 go on otherwise than they do now. Give a man 
 some future in whatever position you put him, and 
 he will be content to give you all his best energies, 
 his time, his strength, his fortune, in return for the 
 chance of recognition that he may sooner or later 
 reasonably look forward to ; but there is no surer 
 way of making the ablest man a faineant at the best, 
 a soured and angry revolutionist at the second best, 
 and something even more odious and degraded at 
 the worst, than to shut him up in a cage like Sterne's 
 starling, and bid him sing gaily and hop briskly from 
 perch to perch till the end of his days, with a due 
 supply of sopped bread crumbs and hemp seed 
 found for him from hour to hour, and a sight of the 
 outer world granted him — only through the bars. 
 
 There is a something which appeals to our pity in 
 every carrilre manque. The statesman who made 
 one false step, the' soldier who at the crisis of his 
 life was out-generalled, the lawyer who began so well 
 but who proved not quite strong enough for the 
 strain he had to bear — we meet them now and then 
 
E8 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 where we should least have expected to find them, 
 the obliterated heroes of the hour, and we say with 
 a kindly sigh, " This man might have had another 
 chance." But each of these has had his chance ; 
 they have worked up to a position and have forfeited 
 it when it has been proved they were in the wrong 
 place ; they have gone into the battle of life, and the 
 fortune of war has gone against them; tried by the 
 judgment of that world which is so " cold to all that 
 might have been," they have been found wanting; 
 they have had to step aside, and make way for abler 
 men than themselves. But up and down the land in 
 remote country parsonages — counting by the hun- 
 dreds — there are to be found those who have never 
 had, and never will have, any chance at all of show- 
 ing what stuff is in them — sometimes men of real 
 genius shrivelled, men of noble intellect, its expansion 
 arrested, men fitted to lead and rule, men of force of 
 character and power of mind, who from the day that 
 they entered upon the charge of a rural parish have 
 had never a chance of deliverance from 
 
 The dull mechanic pacing to and fro, 
 The set grey life and apathetic end. 
 
 You might as well expect from such as these that 
 they should be able to break away from their sur- 
 roundings, or fail to be dwarfed and cramped by 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 89 
 
 them, as expect that Robinson Crusoe should develop 
 into a sagacious politician. 
 
 " Pathos," did I say ? How often have I heard 
 the casual visitor to our wilds exclaim with half- 
 incredulous wonder, " What, that Parkins ? Why, 
 he used to walk the streets of Camford like a god i 
 He carried all before him. The younger dons used 
 to say the world was at his feet — a ball that he 
 might kick over what goal he might please to 
 choose. And was that other really the great 
 Dawkins, whose lectures we used to hear of with 
 such envy, we of St. Chad's College, who had 
 to content ourselves with little Smug's platitudes ? 
 Dawkins ! How St. Mary's used to be crowded 
 when he preached! Old Dr. Stokes used to say 
 Dawkins had too much fire and enthusiasm for 
 Oxbridge. He called him Savonarola, and he 
 meant it for a sneer. And that's Dawkins ! How 
 are the mighty fallen ! " 
 
 I lay innocent traps for my casuals now and 
 then, when I can persuade some of the effaced 
 ones to come and dine with us, but it is often 
 just a little too sad. They are like the ghosts 
 of the heroic dead. Men of sixty, old before their 
 time ; the broad massive brow, with the bar of 
 Michael Angelo, is there, but — the eyes that used 
 to flash and kindle have grown dim and sleepy. 
 
90 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 those lips that curled with such fierce scorn, or 
 quivered with such glad playfulness or subtle 
 drollery — it seems as if it were yesterday — have 
 become stiff and starched. Poverty has come and 
 hope has gone. Dawkins knew so little about the 
 matter that he actually believed he only required 
 to get a piei d terre such as a college living would 
 afford him, and a (nominal) income of £700 a year, 
 and there would be a fresh world to conquer as 
 easy to subdue as the old Academic world which 
 was under his feet. Poor Dawkins 1 Poor Parkins ! 
 Poor any one who finds himself high and dry some 
 fine morning on his island home, while between 
 him and the comrades who helped him to his fate 
 the distance widens ; for him there is no escape, 
 no sailing back. There are the fruits of the earth, 
 and the shade of the trees, and the wreckage of 
 other barks that have stranded there; but there 
 is no to-morrow with a different promise from 
 to-day's, nor even another islet to look to when 
 this one has been made the most of and explored, 
 only the resource of acquiescence as he muses on 
 the things that were, 
 
 Gazing far out foamward. 
 
 Such men as these I have in my mind were 
 never meant to be straitened and poor. They 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. gi 
 
 never calculated upon six or eight children who 
 have to be educated; the real dreariness of the 
 prospect, its crushing unchangeableness only gradu- 
 ally reveals itself to them ; they shut their eyes 
 not so much because they will not as because 
 they cannot believe that such as they have no 
 future. Their first experience of life led up to 
 the full conviction that character and brain-power 
 must sooner or later bring a man to the first rank — 
 what did it matter where a man cast anchor for 
 a time ? So they burnt their ships bravely, " hope 
 like a fiery column before them, the dark side 
 not yet turned." But suppose there was no scope 
 for the brains and consequently no demand for 
 them ? We in the wilderness have abundance 
 of butter and eggs, but keep these commodities 
 long enough, and they infallibly grow a trifle 
 stale. 
 
 People say with some indignation, " What a 
 pity, what a shame, that Parkins and Dawkins 
 should be buried as they are ! " No, that is not 
 the shame nor the pity; the shame is that, being 
 buried, they should have no hope of being dug 
 up again. Yonder splendid larva may potentially 
 be a much more splendid imago; let it bury itself 
 by all means, but do not keep it for ever below 
 ground. Do not say to it, " Once there, you must 
 
92 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 stop there, there and there only. For such as 
 you there shall he no change, your resting place 
 shall inevitahly be your grave." 
 
 But if it be a melancholy spectacle to see the 
 wreck of a man of great intellect and noble nature, 
 whom banishment in his prime and poverty in his 
 old age have blighted ; scarcely less saddening is 
 the sight of the active and energetic young man 
 of merely ordinary abilities to whom a country 
 living has come in his youth and vigour, and once 
 for all has stunted his growth and extinguished 
 his ambition. There is no man more out of place, 
 and who takes longer to fit into his place, than 
 the worthy young clergyman who has been ordained 
 to a town curacy, kept for four or five years at 
 all the routine work of a large town parish, worked 
 and admirably organized as — thank God ! — most 
 large town parishes are, and who, at eight or nine 
 and twenty, is dropped down suddenly into a small 
 village, and told that there he is to live and die. 
 He does not know a horse from a cow. He has 
 had his regular work mapped out for him by his 
 superior officer as clearly as if he. were a policeman. 
 He has been part of a very complex machinery, 
 religious, educational, eleemosynary. Every hour 
 has been fully occupied, so occupied that he has 
 lost all the habits of reading and study which he 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 93 
 
 ever possessed. He has to preach at least one 
 hundred sermons in the course of the year, and 
 there is not a single one in his very small repertory 
 that is in the least suitable for the new congrega- 
 tion; and for the first time in his life he finds 
 himself called upon to stand alone with no one 
 to consult, no one to lean on, no one to help him, 
 and in so much a worse condition than the afore- 
 said Robinson Crusoe that the indigenous sons of 
 the soil come and stare at him with an eye to 
 their chances of getting a meal out of him, or 
 making a meal off him, in the meantime doing, as 
 the wicked always have done since the Psalmist's 
 days, making mouths at him and ceasing not ! 
 
 Talk of college dons being thrown away upon 
 a handful of bumpkins! You forget that the 
 cultured Academic has almost always some re- 
 sources within himself, some tastes, some pursuits ; 
 and if he spends too many hours in his library, 
 at any rate his time does not hang so very heavily 
 upon his hands. When he goes among his people 
 he will always have something to tell them which 
 they did not know before, and something to inquire 
 of them which they will be glad to tell him about. 
 But your young city curate pitchforked into a rural 
 benefice when all his sympathies and habits and 
 training are of the streets streety, is the most 
 
94 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 forlorn, melancholy, and dazed of all human 
 creatures. An omnibus driver compelled to keep 
 a lighthouse could scarcely be more deserving of 
 our commiseration. Ask him in his moments of 
 candour and depression, when he realizes that he 
 has reached the limit of his earthly hopes, when 
 he has been in his parsonage long enough to know 
 that he will never leave it for any other cure, 
 when he realizes that he must (by the nature of 
 the case, and by the unalterable law which prevails 
 for such as he) wax poorer and poorer year by 
 year, and that men may come and men may go, 
 but he will stay where he is till he drops — ask 
 him what he thinks of the bhss of a country 
 living, its independence, its calm, its sweetness, 
 its security, above all, ask him whether he does 
 not think the great charm of his position is that 
 he can never be turned out of it, and I think you 
 will find some of these young fellows impatiently 
 giving you just the answer you did not expect. 
 I am sure you will find some among them who 
 will reply : " It is a useful life for a time. It is 
 a happy life for a time. For a time there is a 
 joy in the country parson's life which no other 
 life can offer; but we have come to see that this 
 boasted fixity of tenure is the weak point, not 
 the strong one ; it is movement we want among 
 
THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY P ARSON i 95 
 
 us, not stagnation ; the Parson's Freehold is a 
 fraud." 
 
 Our vehement young friends in the first warmth 
 of their conversion to new ideas are apt to express 
 themselves with more force than elegance, and 
 to push their elders somewhat rudely from behind. 
 But they mean what they say, and I am glad they 
 are coming to think as they do. As for us, the 
 veterans who have lived through sixty summers 
 and more, there is no cloud of promise for us 
 in the horizon. We are not the men who have 
 anything to gain by any change; we know the 
 corner of the churchyards where our bones will 
 lie. We do not delude ourselves ; some of us 
 never looked for any career when we retired into 
 the wilderness. We asked for a refuge only, and 
 that we have found. 
 
 Oh, Hope of all the ends of the earth, is it 
 a small thing that for the remainder of our days 
 we are permitted to witness for Thee among the 
 poor and sad and lowly ones ? 
 
 But you, the strong and young and fervid, take 
 heed how you leave the life of the camp, its stir 
 and throb and discipline, too soon. Take heed how 
 before the time you join the reserve, only to dis- 
 cover too late that you are out of harmony with 
 your Surroundings, that you are fretting against 
 
96 THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. 
 
 the narrowness of the inclosure within which you 
 are confined, that there is for you no outlook— none 
 — only a bare subsistence and a safe berth, as there 
 is for other hulks laid up to rot at ease. If that 
 discovery comes upon you soon enough, break 
 away! Make the change that will not come, and 
 leave others to chuckle over their fixity of tenure, 
 and their security, and their trumpery boast that 
 "no one can turn them out." But let us have 
 your testimony before we part — you and we. Bear 
 witness Yes or No! Has the consciousness of 
 occupying a position from which you could never 
 be removed raised you in your own estimation, or 
 helped you for one single moment to do your duty ? 
 Has it never kept you down? Frauds are for the 
 weak, not for the strong — for the coward, not for 
 the brave ; they are for those who only live to 
 rust at ease, as if to breathe were life ; they 
 are not for such as make the ventures of Faith,, 
 and help their brethren to overcome the world. 
 
III. 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 Few men can have watched the movements of 
 opinion during the last few years without being im-' 
 pressed by the change of attitude observable in the 
 two contending parties engaged upon the assault and 
 defence of the possessions of that mysterious entity 
 which goes by the name of the Church of England. 
 
 This entity it must be premised, so far as it has 
 a collective existence, exists in the person of certain 
 officials who are supposed to be devoting their lives 
 to certain duties, and are in the possession of funds 
 which, after every deduction from the grossly ex- 
 aggerated esitmates of the rhetoricians, are certainly 
 large, and yet are being added to every week by 
 the lavish offerings of the English people. We 
 must go back to a remote past if we desire to trace 
 the origin of that reserve fund for the maintenance 
 of our clergy on which they now live ; a fund which 
 has gone on growing, sometimes rapidly, sometimes 
 slowly, for considerably more than a thousand years. 
 
 8 
 
98 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 When people talk of disendowing the Church of 
 England, they mean that this accumulated fund 
 shall be confiscated by the nation for whose benefit 
 it exists, and that it shall no longer be used for the 
 purpose to which it has been so long devoted. 
 
 But what is this Church that it is to be despoiled 
 and beggared, to be disestablished and disendowed ? 
 We cannot call it a corporation, for it has no 
 corporate existence as a chartered company or a 
 college has. It has no representatives in the Lower 
 House of Parliament, as the universities have. It 
 has no common council with disciplinary powers, as 
 the Incorporated Society of Law or the Inns of 
 Court have. It has no voice speaking with 
 authority, no homogeneity deserving the name. 
 It cannot pass ordinances for the regulation of its 
 minutest affairs, or impose rules of conduct upon 
 any one, or levy the smallest contribution from man, 
 woman, or child by its own decrees. You may call 
 it an army if you please ; but it is an army in which 
 the commissioned officers have no control over the 
 rank and file, no power of enforcing attendance at 
 drill, no articles of war which, any one heeds, and 
 no generals whom any one fears. This mysterious 
 entity, which is the sum-total of a multitude of more 
 or less isolated units, we say is the owner of lands 
 and buildings and rent-charge, and this property it is 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 99 
 
 said is the property of the Church — the Church? 
 l^os numerus sumus I 
 
 Without any very great misuse of language, it 
 may be said that among us there is another 
 mysterious entity; this, too, the sum-total of a 
 number of isolated units. These units, too, were 
 only the other day in possession of houses and lands, 
 and buildings considered to be public buildings ; the 
 units were almost in the same position as the clergy 
 are at this moment, freeljiolders and practically irre- 
 movable ; they were expected to perform certain 
 duties which, as a rule, they perfornxed with zeal 
 and fidelity. In many cases, when sickness or old 
 age came upon them, they discharged their functions 
 by deputy ; they had practically little or no discipline 
 of control over them ; " visitors " who never visited, 
 feoffees who never interfered, governors who never 
 governed. Each of these functionaries was called a 
 Schoolmaster, and the building in which he officiated 
 was called a school. The sum-total of these many 
 units had no name; but if the public buildings were 
 rightly called schools, the aggregate of them might 
 for convenience be called The , School, A noun of 
 multitude, standing in the same relation to its units 
 as the current term "the Church " does to its units 
 —the Churches. 
 
 To whom did the property from which the schools 
 
loo THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 were kept in efficiency, and their masters furnished 
 with a maintenance — sometimes with much more 
 than a mere maintenance — to whom did this pro- 
 perty belong ? I can find but one answer. It was 
 the property of the nation ; a reserve fund which the 
 nation had permitted certain individuals to set apart 
 from time to time for the furtherance of the education 
 of the people, the object aimed at being considered 
 so excellent that the conditions imposed upon pos- 
 terity by the founders were allowed to remain in 
 force, these founders being supposed to have entered 
 into a contract with the nation that, in consideration 
 of the value of the surrender made, the reserve of 
 property should be sanctioned, and the conditions 
 imposed be held to be binding upon posterity. The 
 land or the rent-charges which yesterday were 
 private possessions ceased to be so to-day: they 
 were private property, they became public property, 
 and constituted the Educational Reserve. 
 
 I can no longer resist the conviction that, as in 
 the one case so in the other, the nation may re- 
 consider its treaty with School or Church; may 
 determine that the reserve hitherto set apart for 
 the education Of a class, or a district, or the 
 founder's kin, should no longer be applied according 
 to the compact sanctioned in previous ages, and 
 may in the same way reconsider its compact with 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. loi 
 
 the alienation of property now known as Church 
 property, and deal with that far larger reserve 
 hitherto applied for the promotion of the moral 
 and spiritual welfare of the people. The nation 
 has the right to do this, as it undoubtedly has 
 the power. Whether in this case summum jus would 
 not be found to be summa injuria is quite another 
 question. 
 
 But it is one thing to say this large reserve shall 
 be administered otherwise than it is, and quite 
 another thing to say that it shall cease to exist as 
 a reserve at all. It is one thing to deal with our 
 ecclesiastical endowments on the lines that school 
 endowments have been dealt with, and quite another 
 to deal with them as Henry the Eighth dealt with 
 the property of the religious houses. To adopt the 
 one course would be readjustment, to adopt the 
 other would be confiscation. Nevertheless, if the 
 majority of the new electorate should decidedly and 
 unequivocally pronounce that such is its pleasure, 
 assuredly the property now held in reserve in the 
 shape of religious endowments will be confiscated. 
 Religion will be the luxury of the rich and well-to- 
 do ; the proletariate and the agricultural labourer 
 will have to supply themselves with an inferior 
 article, or to do without it altogether. 
 
 If a revolution so tremendous, if a calamity so 
 
102 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 overwhelming, is to befall this nation, and is to take 
 effect by the deliberate choice of its people, at least 
 let a great nation address itself to the task with the 
 semblance of dignity; at least let it be clearly 
 explained and firmly adhered to that the clergy 
 reserve is not to be given over to general pillage. 
 Do not be guilty of the baseness of bidding for the 
 votes of the proletariate by holding out hopes of a 
 general scramble. Do not corrupt the poor dwellers 
 in the villages by inviting them to embark in a 
 filibustering raid upon their friends and neighbours. 
 • *.«•• 
 
 It is a question which a philosopher might 
 worthily employ himself in answering — how it has 
 come to pass that during the last fifty years the 
 struggle for supremacy between political parties has 
 tended to become less and less a regular warfare and 
 to assume more and more the character of a game. 
 Nay! It is rapidly developing into a game rather 
 more of chance than of skill, and one in which the 
 most daring and reckless adventurer is just as likely 
 to sweep off the stakes as the most gifted and 
 sagacious player. It is one of the most unhappy 
 results of this condition of affairs that there has 
 grown up in our midst a class of touts and hangers- 
 on who do the dirty work of either side and bring 
 discredit upon both. They are the swell-mob of 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 103 
 
 politics. Such creatures live by inv;enting griev- 
 ances and fomenting discontent, their doctrine 
 being that whatever is is wrong; their artillery is 
 always charged with explosive promises. These 
 men are going up and down the land loudly pro- 
 claiming that the parsons have robbed ih& poor of 
 their own, and are holding out to their dupes the 
 wildest hopes that when the spoliation comes the 
 poor shall be the first to benefit by the great change. 
 We shall never be able to silence the voice of 
 charlatans. The sauSage-seller in Aristophanes is 
 the type of a class of men who have found no scope 
 for their talents in any honest calling, and who 
 because they must live have been forced into the 
 trade of lying vociferously. I do not write for these 
 — ^to these I have no word to say. It is with the 
 men whose hearts are throbbing with some 
 patriotism} and who have not lost all loyalty to 
 truth and honour, that I desire to have my dealings. 
 It is with such that I would humbly and earnestly 
 expostulate, whatever their philosophical or political 
 opinions, and whatever may be their creed. Even if 
 it were as easy to prove, as it is demonstrably the 
 reverse, that there ever did exist in England at any 
 time or in any place a right on the part of the poor 
 to any portion of the tithes of a pa.rish of to the 
 glebe, who, it may be asked, are the poor ? The 
 
104 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 receivers of parochial relief, whether in the work- 
 house or outside it ? Or every able-bodied peasant 
 who claims to belong to the needy classes ? Are 
 you going to ask the agricultural labourer to cry for 
 spoliation, and to bribe him to raise the cry by the 
 promise of converting him into what our fathers 
 called a " sturdy beggar " ? And then are there no 
 poor artisans ? Are the millions of our towns to be 
 left out in the cold while Hodge disports himself 
 with his new possessions ? Are Liverpool and East 
 London to go on as they are, while Little Mud- 
 borough is to enjoy a feast of fat things ? 
 
 But the demagogues who live to corrupt the people 
 have promises to make to others than the labourers. 
 They are telling the tenant-farmers, too, that they 
 will be gainers by the great confiscation, and 
 endeavouring to persuade them, too, that when it 
 comes they will be relieved from the burden of the 
 tithes. Would they be so ? If the payment of tithe 
 were abolished to-morrow, can any sane man believe 
 that the tenant-farmer would be allowed to put the 
 tithe into his pocket or to keep it there ? Can any 
 sane man believe that rents would not rise exactly in 
 proportion to the amount of charges from which the 
 tenant was relieved ? Rent is nothing more than 
 the money payment supposed to represent the just 
 return which the owner claims from the occupier for 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 105 
 
 the privilege of cultivating his land. The occupier 
 makes his account and calculates how much he can 
 gain by the compact. The landlord's share is his 
 rent. He is the sleeping partner. Relieve the 
 expenses of the going concern from the payment of 
 the tithe, or, which is the same thing, add it to the 
 profits, and what power on earth will prevent the 
 landlord, directly or indirectly, sooner or later, 
 absorbing the proceeds of the newly-created honus ? 
 
 Moreover, if you begin to "do away with the 
 tithes," are you going to do away with them only 
 in the case where the parson receives them and does 
 something — at any rate something — in return for the 
 income he derives from them ? Are you going to let 
 the tithes be levied as before where they are paid to 
 laymen, to corporations, or colleges ? Are those 
 tithes which are necessarily spent in the parish 
 by the resident parson to be "done away with," 
 but all such tithes as are necessarily carried out 
 of the parish and paid to a London company, an 
 alien, or a college at Oxford or Cambridge, to be 
 levied as before ? Is it a gravamen against the 
 parson that he spends his tithe where it is paid 
 him, and among the people who pay it, and that 
 he is bound in return for it to do the payers some 
 services which they may exact on demand? Are 
 you going to confiscate the tithe where the receiver 
 
io6 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 does something for it, and to let the man who does 
 nothing for it collect it as before? Imagine the 
 amazement and disgust of a farmer who should be 
 told that his neighbour on the other side of the 
 hedge is never to pay tithe again because in that 
 parish there has been a parson to pillage ; but that 
 he, on this side of the hedge, is to pay it as before, 
 because Mr. Tomkins, or Mrs. John Smith, or the 
 Saddlers' Company is the lay impropriator, and the 
 rights of property are to be respected. It would not 
 be long, I imagine, before our friend the farmer 
 would go for the lay impropriator, and with a will 
 too. 
 
 Buti if the labourer and the tenant-farmer are not 
 to be cajoled by promises that must needs be illusory, 
 least of all are the landlords to be gained over by the 
 inducement held out to them that they, of all men, 
 are to benefit by the change. They more than any 
 other class are responsible for the loud outcry that 
 has been raised. The tithe-rent-charge is a first 
 charge upon the produce of the land. They are the 
 landlords who, as a class, have done their best to 
 make people forget this fact. How often have we 
 heard of a landlord or his agent declaring loudly, " I 
 have nothing to do with the tithe — that is a matter 
 between the tenant and the parson 1 " A more mon- 
 strous assertion it would be difficult to invent ! Far 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. laj 
 
 more true would be the direct opposite, if the parson, 
 or the impropriator, should say, " I, as receiver of 
 tithe, have nothing to do with you, the tenant — ^the 
 tithe is no concern of yours ; my claim is upon the 
 owner of the soil ! " In point of fact, it is in the 
 last resort upon the landlord, and the landlord alone, 
 that the tithe-owner, lay or clerical, has his claim. 
 • ••••• 
 
 But, if we should only aggravate the incidence of 
 the immense calamity which would ensue from the 
 confiscation of the clergy reserve by handing over 
 the spoils to the labourers, or the proletariate, or the 
 farmers, or the landlords, and yet the electorate should 
 resolve to carry out this great spoliation, and call upon 
 th» executive to sweep away the clerical incomes, 
 and lay its hand upon the property from which these 
 incomes are derived; what is to be done with this 
 huge fund so confiscated, and how are we to prevent 
 the landlords being in some form or other the only 
 gainers by the change ? 
 
 If confiscation comes, let it come, say I, as no 
 half-measure. Let there be no bargaining, no 
 tinkering, no compromise — in fact, no mercy! No 
 — no mercy ! Let this thing be done in root-and- 
 branch fashion. Let the nation set its face like a 
 flint; let the Church— it would be the Church then 
 — begin its new life naked and bare. Both sides will 
 
loS THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES, 
 
 have a bad time of it. It takes little to decide which 
 will have the worst time of it, the starved Church or 
 the starved people. 
 
 Set the two forces foot to foot, 
 And every man knows who'll be winner, 
 Whose faith in God has e'er a root 
 That goes down deeper than his dinner. 
 
 Therefore, if indeed this nation decides that it can 
 do without religious teachers, and that these shall 
 live of those who want them, let us put up our 
 parish churches to auction, and dispose of the glebes 
 to the highest bidder, and flood the market with 
 comfortable parsonage-houses, sold without reserve, 
 and let the tithe be levied by the tax-gatherer, and 
 let it he levied from the owner of the soil, as the land- 
 tax is. Furthermore, let us have no assignment of 
 any share of the plunder to any class or any special 
 fund. Let us hand over the proceeds of the sale of 
 churches and houses and lands to the Commissioners 
 for the Extinguishing of the National Debt, and not 
 to the ratepayers, not to the Education Commis- 
 sioners, nor to the Commissioners in Lunacy for 
 building madhouses, or any other cheerful and 
 heroic object. Let us have a measure which shall 
 be simple and thorough, with the fewest possible 
 details to vex and embarrass us all. As the parsons 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 109 
 
 die, sell their houses, their glebes and their churches, 
 and let the State at once appropriate the tithe. Let 
 us be brought face to face with the real meaning of 
 a revolution, the tremendous magnitude of which few 
 men can have the faintest conception of. In less 
 than a year after the measure had become law, we 
 should begin to know in what an experiment we had 
 embarked. The sooner our eyes were opened the 
 better for us all. The logic of facts is better than 
 gabble. 
 
 Nevertheless, firmly convinced as I am that such 
 a revolution would be an immeasurable calamity to 
 the people of this country, and especially so to the 
 agricultural districts, I am quite as firmly convinced 
 that the present condition of affairs as regards the 
 tenure and administration of the property now con- 
 stituting the clergy reserves cannot possibly go on 
 much longer ; that the mere mockery and pretence 
 of discipline among the clergy themselves must be 
 replaced by something much more real and effective ; 
 that, in short, some large and radical measures of 
 Church reform are being called for, such as the 
 nation feels must and shall be carried out, though 
 the great body of the people do not yet see, and 
 cannot yet be expected to see, on what fundamental 
 principles such reform should be advocated, or on 
 what lines such reform should travel. 
 
no THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 As a preliminary, as a sine qud non of all really 
 effective Church reform, it seems to me that, first 
 and foremost, you must begin, not by disestablishing, 
 but by establishing, the Church. As things are 
 among us, it seems to me that the very word 
 establishment is a confession on the part of those 
 who use it that they have failed to discover the 
 right word for that which they would fain ob- 
 literate. 
 
 We say the Church is a great landlord and 
 wealthy owner of property. Ought not such an 
 owner to have some control over its own and some 
 voice in the disposition of that property. Every 
 railroad company in the land, every joint-stock bank 
 or co-operative association for the . providing of milk 
 and butter, every society for the protection, of cats 
 and dogs, has a constitution. It has its directors 
 or governors, its recognized officers, its power to 
 make or to alter at least its own bye-laws, its liberty 
 to dispose of its own funds within certain limits, the 
 privilege of irieeting and of discussing its own affairs 
 when and where.it pleases, and the right of applying 
 to the Legislature of the country for larger powers if 
 such shall appear necessary for the carrying out of 
 objects not dreamt of at its first start. 
 
 The Church is absolutely lacking in all these 
 respects, for the very simple reason that the Church, 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. in 
 
 viewed as a going concern in possession of property, 
 has nothing that can he called a constitution. 
 
 If the glaring anomalies and the wholly unjustifi- 
 able grotesqueness which startle us at every turn 
 when we begin to discuss " Church questions " are 
 to be removed, where are we to begin, and what 
 should be the lines on which any scheme of read- 
 justment should proceed ? 
 
 First and foremost, let all obsolete and antiquated 
 privileges, which are survivals of a long extinct condi- 
 tion of affairs, be swept away, and with the privileges 
 let the disabilities go also. Let no man be made either 
 more or less than a citizen of the Empire by reason 
 of his being in any sense a member of the Church — 
 not a peer of the realm on the one hand, not disquali- 
 fied from entering the House of Commons on the 
 other. 
 
 As a preliminary to giving the Church a working 
 constitution, it is my conviction that the bishops 
 should no longer have seats in the House of Lords. 
 I cannot see how any director or overseer of any 
 corporaiioh, or indeed of any department of the 
 State, should be made a peer of the realm by virtue 
 of his holding office. I am not wholly ignorant of 
 our constitutional history, although into the his- 
 torical aspect of the question I decline to enter now. 
 
112 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 The facts are what we have to face ; and as things 
 are, however much we may deplore it, there seems 
 just as little reason why bishops should be raised to 
 the peerage as why the naval lords of the Admiralty 
 should be created barons. But, if you dismiss the 
 bishops from the Upper House, you certainly cannot 
 exclude the inferior clergy from the lower one. 
 Whether in the one case the Church or the House 
 of Lords would be much the loser may very reason- 
 ably be doubted, notwithstanding the conspicuous 
 ability which is and has for long been characteristic 
 of the Episcopal Bench. In the other case, the 
 Church and the House of Commons are just as little 
 likely to be much the gainers by letting clergymen 
 represent the constituencies in Parliament. As in 
 France, so would it be in England; the clerical 
 candidates would be very few, the clerical members 
 fewer. That, however, does not affect the question 
 whether or not clerical disabilities should be 
 abolished. 
 
 But by far the most necessary and radical reform 
 that is imperatively called for is the abolition of that 
 preposterous antiquarian curiosity, the Parson's 
 Freehold. 
 
 The philosopher of the future who "with larger, 
 other eyes than ours," shall survey the history of our 
 institutions and tell of their origin, their growth or 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 113 
 
 their decay, will, I believe, be amazed and perplexed 
 by nothing so much as by the strange vitality of this 
 legal phenomenon— the Parson- s Freehold. That any 
 man who is in any sense a public servant should, 
 by virtue of being nominated to hold an oifice, be 
 made tenant for life of a real estate from which only 
 by an act of his own can he be removed — that would 
 seem to most of us so entirely startling and out- 
 rageous in the abstract as to be absolutely intolerable 
 in the concrete reality. Let us look this thing in 
 the face. 
 
 Imagine a postman or a prime minister, a clerk in 
 the Custom House or the capta,in of a man-of-war, 
 an assistant in a draper's shop or your own gardener, 
 having an estate for life in his office, and being able 
 to draw his pay to his dying day, though he might 
 be for years blind and deaf and paralyzed and 
 imbecile — so incapable, in fact, that he could not 
 even appoint his own deputy, or so indifferent that 
 he cared not whether there was any deputy to 
 discharge the duties which he himself was paic" to 
 perform. Imagine any public servant being thrown 
 into prison for a flagrant misdemeanour, or worse 
 than a misdemeanour, and coming back to his work 
 when the term of his imprisonment was over, re- 
 ceiving the arrears of pay which had accrued during 
 the time he was in gaol, and quietly settling down 
 
 9 
 
114 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLA GES. 
 
 into the old groove as if nothing had happened. 
 Imagine any public servant being suspended from 
 his office for habitual drunkenness, suspended say 
 for two years, and not even requiring to be reinstated 
 when the two years were over, but gaily taking his 
 old seat and returning to his desk and his bottle, as 
 irremovable from the emoluments of the first as he 
 was inseparable from his devotion to the last. 
 
 Yet all this, and much more than this, is possible 
 for us beneficed clergymen. I am myself the patron 
 of a benefice from which the late rector was non- 
 resident for fifty-three years. Is it at all conceivable 
 that we should continue to keep up this condition of 
 affairs under which we have been living so long? 
 The last thing that any other public servant would 
 dare to confess would be that he was physically or 
 intellectually or morally unfit for his ofiiqe. The 
 retort in his case would be obvious enough-^then 
 leave it, and make way for a better man. But the 
 holder of the Parson's Freehold smilingly replies, 
 " Certainly I will retain my hold upon the income 
 after paying my deputy. Am I not a landlord ? and 
 as tenant for life I will assuredly cling tb^my own." 
 
 Being such as we are, men of flesh and blood as 
 others, and occupying the frightfully impregnable 
 position which we do ; fenced about with all sorts 
 of legal safeguards which put us above our parish' 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 115 
 
 ioners on the one hand, and out of the reach of our 
 bishops on the other ; having, as we have, an almost 
 unlimited power of turning our benefices into sine- 
 cures while we reside upon them, or of leaving them 
 to the veriest hireling to serve while we are disport- 
 ing ourselves in foreign travel almost as long as we 
 should choose to stay away; — I know no more 
 splendid testimony to the high and honourable 
 character of the English clergy than that which 
 would be wrung from their worst enemies who 
 should fairly consider what the law of the land 
 would allow of their being if they were so disposed 
 — and what, in fact, they are. It is because as a 
 class they are so animated by a high ideal ; because 
 as a class their conscience is their law ; it is, there- 
 fore, that, in spite of legal safeguards which in their 
 tendency are corrupting and demoralizing, as a class 
 they are incomparably hdter than they need he. The 
 clergy of the Church of England constitute the 
 one protected interest in the universe that does not 
 languish. Nevertheless, C'est magnifique, mats ce 
 n'est pas la guerre. These things ought not so to 
 
 be. 
 
 • • • • • * , 
 
 How then are the evils inseparable from the present 
 state of things to be remedied? They are evils 
 which do not appear on the surface where the clergy 
 
u6 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 themselves are conscientious, high-minded, and 
 zealous, throwing themselves into their duties with 
 self-denying earnestness, and hardly aware of how 
 much they might abuse their powers if they were 
 so disposed. They are very real and scandalous 
 evils in the case of the careless, the worthless, 
 and the immoral; that is, exactly in the case of 
 those whom we can least afford to leave as they 
 are. 
 
 I can see no other plan for utilizing to the utmost 
 the resources already at our disposal than by 
 sweeping away altogether this archaic anomaly of 
 the parson's freehold. We are all a great deal 
 too tenacious of vested rights, a great deal too 
 reluctant to deal harshly with those who have 
 accepted any office under certain conditions expressed 
 or implied, to allow of our disturbing the present 
 occupants of the benefices, or to bring them under 
 any new regime. As long as the existing beneficed 
 clergy choose to retain their hold upon their » 
 benefices, obviously they must be left undisturbed ; 
 as they are freeholders, so they must continue to 
 be, and practically irremovable; but, as they drop 
 off either by death or voluntary resignation, let the 
 freehold be vested in other hands. Let us follow 
 the main lines upon which the Endowed School 
 Commissioners pursued their revolution in the case 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES 117 
 
 of the educational reserve fund, learning experience 
 by their blunders, their failures or their /arfs. 
 
 And when we do so, where shall we find our- 
 selves ? 
 
 1. The freehold of every church, churchyard, 
 glebe-house and lands, together with the tithes and 
 any other invested funds now constituting the 
 endowment of a benefice, would be vested in a body 
 of trustees or governors exactly as the estates and 
 buildings of the endowed schools are at this moment. 
 These governors would have the administration of 
 this estate entrusted to them, and be personally and 
 collectively responsible for its management — respon- 
 sible, that is, to a duly constituted authority with a 
 power of enforcing its precepts. 
 
 2. All liability to keep house and chancel in repair, 
 together with all powers of mortgaging the lands of 
 a benefice, would be transferred from the incumbent 
 to the governing body of trustees. 
 
 3. The patronage of every benefice would, as a 
 matter of course, pass out of the hands of the 
 present patrons, and would be vested in the trus- 
 tees of the benefice ; exactly as the patronage 
 of Shrewsbury and Sedbergh schools passed out of 
 the hands of St. John's College, Cambridge, or as 
 the patronage of Thame school passed out of the 
 hands of New College, Oxford, or as the patronage 
 
.»18 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 'of Brentwood, Kirkleatham, and Bosworth schools 
 has passed out of the hands of pyivate patrons into 
 those of the newly-constituted governing bodies. 
 
 4. The governors in presenting to a beneiice 
 would in each case be expected to consider the 
 financial position in which it happened to be at the 
 -time of the vacancy, and would be empowered to 
 determine what amount of net income could be 
 assigned to the incumbent according to the cir- 
 cumstances of the estate in their hands ; in all cases 
 guaranteeing a minimum stipend and, in cases where 
 a house was provided, a house free of all rates, taxes, 
 and repairs. 
 
 5. The governing body would be required to 
 render an account of all moneys received and ex- 
 pended to the constituted authority, to which they 
 would be answerable. 
 
 6. Any clergyman presented to a benefice by the 
 governing body would be liable to be dismissed for 
 inefficiency or misconduct ; such dismissal to be 
 subject to an appeal as against caprice, malevolence, 
 or tyranny. 
 
 • ■ . • • « « 
 
 Before proceeding further, it will be as well at 
 this point to consider an objection that may be offered, 
 and then to see how such ai reform as that proposed 
 would work. 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 119 
 
 First, with regard to handing over the property of 
 a benefice, together with the patronage, to a body 
 of trustees. Such a course will certainly be de- 
 nounced as revolutionary, and of course that word 
 has a very alarming sound. But I venture to 
 remind objectors that we have already embarked 
 upon this revolutionary course, and on a very large 
 scale tot). . We have already taken vast estates out 
 of the hands of ecclesiastical corporations, and 
 vested them in the hands of the Ecclesiastical 
 Commissioners. We have already made our bishops 
 stipendiaries, receiving their salaries from the holders 
 of their estates ; and happy are those deans and 
 canons who are in such a case, and not in the 
 pitiable condition of landlords with their farms upon 
 their hands, or let to tenants who, just now, can 
 make their own terms with the panic-stricken life- 
 holders of the freehpld. But this is not all. There 
 are at least a thousand benefices in England at this 
 moment, the patronage of which is already in the 
 hands of trustees ; and in many of these cases — in 
 many more cases than people suspect — the very 
 freehold of the church itself is vested in those 
 trustees, who have almost entire control over the 
 funds, and almost entire control over the fabric of 
 the church. At this moment, as I write, there is 
 lying on my table an application from the Trustees of 
 
I20 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 St. Excellent's Church, at Jericho, asking me to 
 subscribe for the erection of a tower, and pleading 
 that the Trustees have done all that was possible, 
 and have been loyally seconded by their devoted 
 »»icar. 
 
 Ask those who know anything of what has been 
 going on in the second city in England during the 
 last forty years what condition the masses at Liver- 
 pool would be in at this moment but for the church- 
 building on the Trustee system which has been in 
 operation there so long. Ask them whether that 
 system has worked well or ill, and whether there is 
 any reason to regret that the patronage of the Trustee 
 churches is not in other hands. 
 
 • ••••■ 
 
 And now with regard to the working of the scheme 
 proposed. 
 
 The rectory of Claylump finds itself vacant by 
 the promotion of its rector to the bishopric of Loo 
 Choo. The governors forthwith proceed to take a 
 survey of the property they hold in trust, and to 
 look about for a new parson. The character and 
 qualification of the various candidates for the vacant 
 benefice are carefully inquired into, and, the choice 
 being made, the new incumbent is presented to the 
 bishop of the see and instituted with all fitting 
 and necessary solemnity. 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. I2i 
 
 But before he enters upon his charge the new 
 rector has been informed that, in view of the 
 governors being responsible for certain outgoings, 
 they can for the present guarantee the parson only 
 a minimum income of x pounds per annum, to be 
 increased according as the funds at their disposal 
 shall allow of the augmentation. 
 
 Observe that we already iind ourselves face to 
 face with the problem which has been found so 
 difficult of solution — viz., how to deal with Eccle- 
 siastical Dilapidations. A beneficed clergyman at 
 present may, if he pleases, let his house tumble 
 about his ears — may let his barn be tenanted by the 
 rats, turn his stable into a pigsty, and, keeping his 
 glebe in his own hands, render it valueless for his 
 successor for the next five years. At his death he 
 may be absolutely insolvent. The next incumbent 
 is, however, called upon to put all into tenantable 
 repair at his own cost, and by the very fact of 
 accepting the living is liable for these substantial 
 repairs. 
 
 Or a beneficed clergyman may do exactly the 
 reverse. Being tenant for life of a living of less 
 than three hundred a year, he may convert the 
 parsonage-house into a noble mansion — erect hot- 
 houses and conservatories ai libitum, build stables 
 for a dozen horses, and lay out acres of the glebe in 
 
122 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 ornamental gardens ; and he too may die in difficul- 
 ties. At the avoidance of the living the bishop may 
 give orders for pulling' down half the house and 
 more than half the appurtenances ; but the question 
 of who is to pay for the expenses of the alteration 
 will present a serious difficulty, and may be settled 
 in the strangest way at last. As long as the living 
 is in a good neighbourhood, with certain advantages 
 which it is unnecessary to particularise, it will not 
 be hard to find another man of fortune who for the 
 sake of the house will consent to accept the cure. 
 But, if it chance that a neighbourhood has 
 "changed," and the parish has become otherwise 
 than a desirable place of residence, that parish may 
 find it very hard indeed to get any who will face the 
 terrible prospect of having to keep up a palace on 
 ;f300 a year. In either case — that of finding hin-i^ 
 self with a tumble-down rectory,; or that of finding 
 himself with an entirely unsuitable one— rthe in- 
 coming parson will assuredly, have to make his 
 account to submit to a serious abatement from 
 the nominal revenue of his preferment, and will 
 assuredly be in no better position than he would be 
 if, not he, but the trustees, were the owners, of the 
 parson's freehold. 
 
 But once more. Let us suppose that the new 
 rector under the new regime finds it desirable to add 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 123 
 
 to his parsonage-house for any reason or for none. 
 What follows ? Is he to be allowed to do as he 
 pleases ? CertainlJ>!' not. If he can get the' consent 
 of his governors, well and good ; without that 
 consent he would have no more right to build up 
 than to pull down. He would be living in an 
 ■o-ftcial residence ^xov\&eA for him. Clearly, he could 
 not be permitted to- deal with it as if it were his 
 own. 
 
 Again, let us suppose that the parsonage should 
 sorely need repair, and that the parson, being poor 
 or otherwise unwilling to be meddled with, should 
 declare it was good enough for him. Would it be 
 reasonable to let an obstructive eccentric continue 
 living in a house which was seriously lessening in 
 value from the want of structural repairs ? It is 
 obvious that the governors who were liable for 
 these repairs being duly executed, and whose interest 
 was to maintain the buildings in good and tenantable 
 condition, would interpose. The official residence 
 having to be kept up by the income of the benefice 
 in their view would clearly not be regarded as some- 
 thing to be handed over in its entirety to the present 
 holder of the living, as if his personal interest were 
 the only thing to consider. 
 
 As it would not be allowable for a Plutus to over- 
 build, so it would not be permitted to a niggard to 
 
124 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 let the parsonage fall into disrepair. In either case 
 the governing body would have a voice, and over the 
 buildings of the benefice they would exercise a 
 general supervision and control. 
 
 What, however, will startle most people, and 
 especially clergymen, is the proposal to give to any 
 body at all or any person or any officer the power to 
 dismiss a parson from his cure. Yet, as an abstract 
 question, why should the parson be the only func- 
 tionary to enjoy the immunity he does ? Is it 
 because it does not matter much to his parishioners 
 whether he is fit or unfit, moral or immoral, active 
 or indolent, whether he is exhibiting an example of 
 holiness or is a mere helot whose daily walk is an 
 abominable scandal ? As things are, the more con- 
 scientious a clergyman is, the more easily you may 
 hunt him out of his preferment ; such men cannot 
 bear to stay where — as they put it in all earnestness 
 and devout sincerity — they are " doing no good." 
 Such men are ready enough to go out into the 
 wilderness if you convince them they are not wanted 
 or are hindering Christ's work by staying where they 
 are. But tell the bad man that he is not wanted in 
 his parish, and his ministrations are hateful to the 
 people among whom he lives, and he will laugh in 
 your face with the grim joke that, if the people don't 
 like to come to church, they may stay away, and if 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 125 
 
 they don't want him at the font or the altar or the 
 grave, so much the better ; he will have less work 
 to do for his money. The thick-skinned with a 
 seared conscience defies you ; safe in the possession 
 of the parson's freehold, he holds his own. 
 
 How is it that we are always so ready to conjure 
 up the worst imaginable evils when any new pro- 
 posal is offered to us, and always draw some picture 
 of abuses and horrors when we begin to think of any 
 great change, as if there were no abuses and horrors 
 which called for the change ? "A body of governors 
 with a power of dismissal," it is said ; " why, no 
 man's position would be safe ! " To begin with, I 
 do not see why the first thing to be aimed at should 
 be that any one's position should be safe. The first 
 thing that is needed, imperatively needed, is that the 
 duties of any office, from that of tlie Prime Minister 
 downwards, should be effectively discharged. It 
 may be very desirable, that the driver of an express 
 train should be safe of getting his wages as long as 
 he lives. It is infinitely more desirable that the 
 train itself should not run off the metals from the 
 aforesaid driver going to sleep. 
 
 But whose position in the case before us would be 
 unsafe ? As a rule, only his whose position ought to 
 be unsafe. The Endowed Schools Commissioners 
 have been at work for more than twenty years. 
 
126 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 Every one of their schemes gives to the governing 
 body a power of dismissal, and that too with usually 
 no appeal. During these twenty years, I have never 
 heard of more than two cases in which this power 
 has been exercised ; so slow are we Englishmen to 
 be hard on an old servant, or to use to the utmost 
 the powers which we have in our hand. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 Our next point to consider is, what should be the 
 constitution of the governing body ? 
 
 Let it be premised that, in embarking upon a 
 reform so radical as this that is contemplated, I for 
 one at the outset shrink from committing ourselves 
 to any details until we have first laid down the grand 
 principles on which we are going to proceed. More- 
 over, it must never be forgdtten that the circum- 
 stances of every parish or district in England vary 
 to an extent which they who have never thought 
 much upon the subject could hardly bring them- 
 selves to believe. In a matter of so much intricacy 
 and complexity we must not be afraid to feel our 
 way, and at any rate let us have at the outset as few 
 hard-and-fast lines as may be. 
 
 With this caution and proviso, I yet venture to 
 suggest that the main lines to be laid down should 
 be as follows : — 
 
 I. The governing body should not be too lafgei 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VH^LAGES. 127 
 
 nor should it ever be chosen from the inhabitants of 
 the parish exclusively. 
 
 2. It should be a representative body. 
 
 3. Its meetings should not be held too frequently. 
 
 4. Its proceedings should be duly chronicled, and 
 a record kept which might be produced and referred 
 to when necessary. 
 
 1. Not too large, because experience proves that 
 any administrative body is in danger of becoming a 
 speechifying body, and liable to be influenced by 
 pressure from without, almost exactly in proportion 
 to the increase of its numbers. Nor should this 
 body be chosen exclusively from the inhabitants of 
 the parish. In the case of small parishes, it would 
 be quite impossible to find persons qualified to 
 exercise the powers to be conferred, or fitted by 
 education and intelligence to occupy the independent 
 and important position of governor. 
 
 2. It will be necessary that the governing bbdy 
 should in all cases be a representative body. In 
 such a body what interests should be represented ? 
 
 (i) First the owners of the land on which tithes 
 are paid. Observe, I do not say the tithe-/«j'6»'« ; 
 for, of all the objectionable practices which have 
 sprung up among us affecting the tenure of the 
 land, and the burdens it has to bear, nolle appears 
 
128 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 to me more mischievous or indefensible, none has 
 done more to make the tillers of the soil discon- 
 tented, or led them more passionately to set them- 
 selves against their best friends, than the practice 
 sanctioned by the Legislature of calling upon the 
 tenant to pay the tithe in addition to the rent of his 
 land. As long as this goes on, so long will both 
 tenant and landlord be tempted to make common 
 cause with one another in hopes of getting rid of the 
 tithe. You might just as well call upon the tenant 
 to pay the landlord's mortgage interest, or the 
 jointures and annuities with which the estate is 
 charged, or the premiums upon his policies of 
 insurance, as call upon him to pay the tithe. A 
 landlord holds his lands subject to certain charges, 
 which are antecedent to any profits that may remain 
 to him after they are discharged. 
 
 The land-tax, the county-rates, the tithe, are all 
 on the same level ; so are the jointures, annuities, 
 and interest of money borrowed. Of course the 
 landlord would gladly throw them all upon the 
 tenant if he could, and does throw upon him all he 
 can. In permitting him to follow this course, you 
 tempt the tenarit to cry out, " Away with this pay- 
 ment, and away with that ! " and you tempt the 
 landlord to cry, " Amen ! So be it, as long as my 
 rent is assured me ! " Worried by the annual 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 129 
 
 recurrence of extra, payments, for which he has to 
 provide at all sorts of inconvenient times, the tenant 
 is ready enough to demand relief from these burdens, 
 never reflecting that he is playing the landlord's 
 game, directly or indirectly robbing somebody else 
 to enrich the owner of the soil. " Down with the 
 rates ! " means " Throw them upon the Consolidated 
 Fund and let the taxpayer relieve the landlord." 
 " Down with the jointures ! " would mean " Rob the 
 dowagers and let the landlord be the richer for the 
 pillage." " Down with the mortgage interest ! " 
 would mean " Up with the debtor at the expense of 
 the creditor ; " and " Down with the tithe 1 " would 
 mean the extinction of the parson, but with the gain 
 of not a shilling ultimately to the tenant, though 
 with a very considerable gain to the owner of the 
 land. It must be, and it is, demoralizing to allow 
 the payment of the tithe to be regarded as an extra 
 with which the tenant is chargeable. The obligation 
 to pay the tithe is a condition antecedent to the 
 owner of the soil enjoying the very possession of his 
 land. The tithe is a rent-charge upon the land, 
 exactly as an annuity or jointure is — or, if you 
 choose to call it a tax because the term tax is an 
 odious word, and therefore serviceable when you' 
 want to make those you hate odious — it is a land- 
 lord's tax, and no tenant should be allowed to pay it 
 
 10 
 
lyy THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 without having the right under all circumstances of 
 deducting it from his rent. 
 
 Moreover, without yielding to the temptation of 
 straying into an historical argument, yet remember- 
 ing that in the past there was a very close connec- 
 tion between the landlord whose estate supplied the 
 tithe from which the parson was supported and the 
 patron of the living to which the parson was insti- 
 tuted, I think there are good reasons why the owners 
 pf the soil liable to pay tithe should he represented 
 in the proposed governing body of a benefice. 
 Where the parish was a close parish — i.e., owned by 
 a single landlord — he would naturally and very 
 properly be the only person eligible, or at any rate 
 capable of nominating the tithe-owner's representa- 
 tive. Where there were many landlords, they could 
 elect their representatives— one or more, as the case 
 might be — in the ordinary way. 
 
 (ii) But, if the owners of the soil and the rate- 
 payers should be represented, it would be more than 
 unreasonable — ^it would be a monstrous injustice — 
 that the regular worshippers in the church should 
 be left without their representative governors. I am 
 quite aware that some people are ready with all sorts 
 of difficulties and all sorts of objections when we 
 come to deal with the qualification of church mem- 
 bership, and quite aware, too, that at this point one 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 131 
 
 is sorely tempted to do that which I protested 
 against above— rviz., go into details ; but I resist the 
 temptation, simply expressing my conviction that 
 there can be and there is no real and insuperable 
 difficulty in defining what is meant by "regular 
 worshippers," and that such difficulty would vanish 
 at once if we were really in earnest in grappling with 
 it. I am not hinting at a compromise. Here as 
 elsewhere what we want is — common sense 1 
 
 (iii) Again, I conceive that on any board of 
 governors there should be a representative appointed 
 by the bishop of the diocese, and that he should be a 
 resident in the archdeaconry in which the benefice 
 was situated. In every board of directors, be it of a 
 railway or bank or insurance company, it is held to 
 be essential to effectiveness that one or more of such 
 directors should have some pretension to technical 
 or professional knowledge of the business carried on^ 
 Is it too much to ask that at least one expert should 
 be found upon every body of church governors? 
 Such a representative would, if discreet and able, be 
 always listened to with respectful attention ; if 
 inclined to be domineering or impracticable, he would 
 assuredly be outvoted when it came to a contest. 
 He would be a voice, but he would be no more. 
 
 (iv) It is conceivable, nay it is probable, that in 
 addition to these representative governors it niight- 
 
132 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 in some cases be advisable that other members 
 should be added to the governing body. Thus it 
 might be contended by the present patrons of bene- 
 fices, whetber lay or clerical, that they should be 
 represented, and I can see no particular objection to 
 such a claim being allowed. It is also conceivable 
 and probable that, after due consideration and dis- 
 cussion, it might be thought advisable to group two 
 or more benefices together and vest their funds in 
 the same body of governors. Indeed, in many 
 country districts, where the endowments are very 
 small and the population very sparse, it might prove 
 extremely difficult and sometimes extremely undesir- 
 able to have a board of governors for each of these 
 tiny units, let alone the absurb waste of power which 
 in such cases would be inevitable. But, such as I 
 have sketched it out, such in the main would be the 
 constitution of the governing body of every benefice 
 in the country, and to that governing body the free- 
 hold of that benefice and its appurtenances, together 
 with the patronage thereof, should be handed over. 
 
 (v) With regard to the qualification of those 
 eligible for a seat upon the governing body, I am not 
 prepared to discuss that question at the present 
 stage. This, however, I know — viz., that there is 
 only one subject of the Queen who is now disquali- 
 fied from presenting a clergyman to any benefice in 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 133 
 
 England. A Jew or a Mormonite, a Mohammedan 
 or a Parsee, Mr. Bradlaugh or Mr. Congreve, may 
 be, and for ought I know is, patron of the richest or 
 the poorest living in England ; but if any of these 
 worthy persons should suddenly become influenced 
 by Cardinal Manning and be received as a member 
 of the Church of Rome, then and then only would 
 he become incapable by law from exercising his 
 patronage — then and then only would it pass out of 
 his hands. If we have come to this pass, that in 
 anything like a large majority of cases Churchmen 
 should find themselves outvoted by Jews, Turks, 
 infidels, and heretics in the governing bodies, would 
 it not be pretty clear that something was wrong ? 
 
 (vi) As the owners of land subject to the payment 
 of tithes should be represented, so should the rate- 
 payers of the parish have their representative upon 
 the board of governors. And here I confess I can- 
 not see that you could introduce any religious test 
 whereby any one should be disqualified by reason of 
 his creed. I do not believe that in ordinary cases any 
 real inconveniences would arise. That under no 
 circumstances conceivable evils should emerge is 
 too much to hope for ; but whether or not, we must, 
 I repeat, face the facts, and what reasonable man, 
 who watches the signs of the times, will be sanguine 
 enough to expect that, in our days, we have any 
 
134 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 chance of extorting from the Legislature anything in 
 the shape of a conscience clause ? But, when I 
 speak of ratepayers, I mean bond, fide payers of rates. 
 I exclude from this category the compound house- 
 holder: I by no means exclude unmarried women 
 who pay their own rates and taxes, who are often 
 among the most sagacious, high-miflded, and exem- 
 plary inhabitants of a country parish, or of a town 
 one too, for that matter. If any should have a voice 
 in the choice of a representative governor, clearly 
 they should. 
 
 But would the functions of the governing body be 
 confined to the management of the estate of a bene- 
 fice and to the appointing and, where necessary, to 
 the dismissal of the incumbent ? Yes. It seems to 
 me that the functions of a governing body should go 
 no further. That was a golden rule which Lord 
 Palmerston laid down for the governing bodies of 
 our endowed schools, and which these bodies have 
 generally had the wisdom to carry out in practice^ 
 " Get the best man you can find and — get out of his 
 way ! " It should be no part of the duties of the 
 governing body to interfere with what may be called 
 the internal affairs of the church and the minis- 
 trations of the parson. These should be matters of 
 arrangement between the congregation and their 
 minister. Let the powers and the duties of church- 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 135 
 
 wardens be defined as clearly as may be — let the 
 number of the churchwardens be increased if you 
 will, or let the old sidesman be revived ; but let it be 
 clearly understood that the parish is one thing and 
 the congregation is another. Let it be understood 
 that the rector of the parish as a parish officer should 
 be accountable to the governors in so far as they are 
 trustees for the parisK reserve fund ; but in matters 
 with which only the congregation worshipping habi- 
 tually in the church are concerned, let no outsider 
 have any locus standi. If in his administrations a 
 clergyman insists on dbing or leaving undone certain 
 practices which are hateful to the congregation to 
 which he ministers; if between priest and people 
 things should come to a deadlock ; by all means let 
 it be allowable, as it ought to be, for the people to 
 demand redress, and let them ask for that redress 
 with authority and a claim to have their grievances 
 considered. In such cases there would be no need 
 of rushing into the law courts, no spiteful resort to 
 costly legislation to crush or iruin a foolish, obstinate, 
 and ignorantly conscientious clergyman. The con- 
 gregations-speaking through their representatives, 
 the churchwardens, sidesmen, or whatever other 
 name you might choose to call them by — ^would lay 
 their complaint before the bishop first, and as an 
 ultimate resort would go to the governing body, and 
 
136 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 claim that their parson should be dismissed, on 
 grounds which should be, of course, properly formu- 
 lated. 
 
 And this brings us to another matter — viz., the 
 prominence (I do not say pre-eminence) to be given 
 to the congregational element in any readjustment 
 of church regimen at the present time. It is idle to 
 talk as if the Church were co-extensive with the 
 nation, or as if the inhabitants^ of a parish were all 
 worshippers in the church fabric. If a man now 
 does not like the ritual or the doctrine offered to him 
 In^is parish church, he leaves it, and goes where he 
 finds what he wants. It will always be so. There 
 was a good deal of nonconformity in the Apostolic 
 times, and there will be nonconformity as long as 
 men love to have things their own way.,. If an 
 apostle were to find himself rector of any parish in 
 England, with an angel to play the organ, and a 
 multitude of the heavenly host to chant the psalms 
 and " render " the anthems, would Jannes and Jam- 
 bres be satisfied ? On the other hand, though it is 
 impossible but that offences should arise (which 
 means that offence should be taken), it is our duty 
 and our interest to minimise the occasion of offence ; 
 and it is clearly neither right nor politic that any 
 man should occupy such a position as that he may, 
 if he please, go very far towards making himself a 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. lyj 
 
 "lord over God's heritage," and by adopting such a 
 course not only lessen his own influence, but commit 
 a serious wrong to the assembly of worshippers to 
 whom, after all, it must be remembered, he is ap- 
 pointed to minister, not to be an irresponsible 
 dictator. 
 
 Wherever there is a " congregation of faithful 
 men " regularly worshipping together in any church, 
 the very sign and evidence of life among them is that 
 there is a great deal of mere business to be got 
 through. There are large sums of money raised for 
 various purposes, there are organizations great and 
 small to be looked to, there are meetings to be held, 
 arrangements of very different kinds to be made, and 
 work of all sorts to be done. It must be done, and 
 it can only be done by the incumbent in conjunction 
 and co-operation with the congregation ; as long as 
 the two work together all goes on smoothly, if they 
 are at variance friction ensues. It would be prepos- 
 terous that all the money collected by and through 
 the voluntary contributions and the voluntary exer- 
 tions of the congregation should be handed over to 
 an outside body such as the governing body we have 
 been dealing with above. Indeed, such a proposal 
 scarcely deserves to be seriously considered ; the con- 
 gregation as a congregation must in all reason be 
 allowed to manage its own affairs. But, inasmuch 
 
138 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 as no institution in the world can hope to flourish if 
 its manager prove himself incompetent, quarrelsome, 
 and fractious, and when it becomes apparent that 
 the well-being of the institution is being sacrificed 
 only to keep the wrong man in the wrong place, then 
 you get rid of that wrong man, sometimes with joy, 
 sometimes with sorrow. So should it be with our 
 churches. To give the congregations the appoint- 
 ment of their parsons or to arm them with a veto 
 would be to follow a course which all our experience 
 warns us against, and to which — I cannot explain 
 why — all our national habits of thought, convictions, 
 and prejudices are opposed. But, under any circum- 
 stances, cases might occur where a reluctant congre- 
 gation might find itself saddled with a minister who, 
 after a fair trial, should prove himself altogether 
 unsuited to deal with the peculiar conditions, social, 
 financial, or religious — which presented themselves ; 
 and where such cases did occur the congregation in 
 its own interests — ^to go no further — ought to have 
 the opportunity of making its wishes or its objections 
 known. As to graver matters, where a parson's 
 moral character was in question, I do not think it 
 worth while to deal with them. As to the proposal 
 of setting up parochial councils in our country 
 villages, I find it very hard to believe that this can 
 have ever been put forward seriously by any sane 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 139 
 
 man of the world. Surely, surely it can only be 
 the clumsy joke of a dreamer which suggests that 
 We should establish village parliaments for the dis- 
 cussion of matters of ritual and theology among the 
 representatives of a population which sometimes 
 counts by tens, usually by a few hundreds, aind 
 very rarely by thousands. In the single diocese of 
 Norwich there are actually one hundred and two 
 parishes in each of which the population is less than 
 a hundred, including the last baby. Think of a 
 parochial council in the parish of Bittering Parva, 
 where I was once told "there are between fourteen 
 and fifteen inhabitants ! " 
 
 • •••*• 
 
 I am quite aware that the questions which still 
 remain to be dealt with in considering any compre- 
 hensive measure of what is known as Church 
 Reform are many and difficult, and some of them 
 are of the highest importance. They will come on 
 for discussion, we may be sure, and abler men than 
 I am, and men better qualified to handle such ques- 
 tions, will doubtless engage in them. 
 
 In the hands of such men I would gladly leave the 
 serious and difficult problems which are calling so 
 loudly for solution. The power of dismissal of a parson 
 from his cure, for other than moral offences, at once 
 brings us face to face with the question, " How are 
 
I40 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 we to provide for aged and broken-down clergy in 
 their time of need ? " It also suggests the question, 
 " In what relations will the governing body stand to 
 the congregation on the one side and the bishop on 
 the other ? " The throwing open the benefices to 
 what is sure to be stigmatized as o/>e» competition will 
 be distaseful to some, but will result in changes 
 which I am convinced will be, on the whole, of im- 
 mense benefit to clergy and people, and especially 
 they will tend towards the promotion of the best 
 men to the most valuable cures. Yet here too, when 
 we come to details, it will be necessary to open our 
 eyes to some difficulties, from which, however, we 
 need not shrink, nor will they, I believe, be found so 
 insuperable as may be imagined. 
 
 The training, too, of the younger clergy during 
 their term of apprenticeship, if I may use the ex- 
 pression, and the general supervision and periodical 
 inspection of the benefices which have now become 
 empty forms, will assuredly be called for by all who 
 desire a coherent scheme for the readjustment of 
 matters ecclesiastical. It is hardly to be expected 
 that we should be allowed to go on much longer in 
 the rambling way we do. 
 
 If it were only the supremacy of this or that form 
 of doctrine or worship, however dear to us, however 
 sacred, that was at stake, I for one would not will- 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 141 
 
 ingly embark in the conflict that is before us, or step 
 out from the limits of the humble sphere in which I 
 find myself. I would hold my peace except among 
 my people, and try my best to till the little plot in 
 the heritage of God which His good providence has 
 assigned to me [for my daily work. But there is 
 much more at stake than any merely sectarian view 
 of the case would have us believe. It is no mere 
 fight between religious factions and sects and creeds. 
 The question now is whether or not that machinery 
 whereby the schooling of our moral sentiments has 
 been carried on for ages shall be cast from us as a 
 thing of nought, while we surrender ourselves to the 
 private-venture teachers to provide a new machinery 
 by-and-by. Are we to have no functionaries whose 
 remonstrances any one need attend to ? Is there to 
 to be no voice speaking with the semblance of 
 authority, bidding the people do the right and avoid 
 the evil ? Is there to be no national worship, no 
 national religion, and of course no national creed ? 
 How long can Christian ethics be supposed to 
 last? 
 
 For ages the vessel of the State has gone on its 
 way riding through a thousand storms, and buffeted 
 by a million billows ; its rudder has been at times 
 unskilfully handled ; at times the course has been 
 set with evil consequences ; at times the steersmen 
 
143 THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES. 
 
 have been rash or blind. But shall we now, in an 
 outbreak of passion or panic, unship that rudder and 
 cut ourselves adrift, with never a helm to trust to, in 
 the open sea ? 
 
IV. 
 
 QUIS CUSTODIET? 
 
 There are very few Societies started in our time 
 which have done so much with such slender resources 
 and with so very little adventitious aid as the 
 Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. 
 
 It was only the other day, so to speak, that a 
 handful of men, whose hearts were in the right 
 place, banded themselves together to raise the voice 
 pi warning against a fashion which had become a 
 rage, and which was threatening to make a clean 
 sweep of all that was most venerable, most precious, 
 most iinapproachably inimitable in the architectural 
 remains of our country. 
 
 Undeterred by the clamour of incompetent im- 
 postors, undismayed by the ridicule of people of 
 importance, undiscouraged by the difficulties which 
 must be expected by all gallant crusaders, the little 
 band went forth — a real Salvation Army without 
 dri^ms and without any flourish of trumpets — to save 
 what remained from the devastation that had been 
 
144 QVIS CUSTODIETt 
 
 going on, not despising the day of small things. 
 They were an audacious band ; they proclaimed that 
 the taste and the sentiment of the world had got 
 into an utterly vicious groove — that the taste and 
 the sentiment of the world needed to be corrected, set 
 aright — educated in fact — and that they were going 
 to educate it whether the world liked being educated 
 or not. 
 
 Astonishing presumption ! " Who are ye ? " said 
 the perplexed world, — " who are ye ; the apostles 
 of a new toryism, ye that preach the keeping up 
 of the old, which time and tide, the storms and the 
 elements, have pronounced to be moribund ? Who 
 are ye that would watch over the homes of the bats 
 and the owls in this our age of advance, with the 
 works of the men of mind rising up to heaven to 
 rebuke you? Ruin-mongers that ye be, prating 
 about the loveliness of mild decay, while we live in 
 the days of carving by machinery, and ashlar 
 smoothed to the likeness of the loveliest stucco by 
 the help of the modern stone plough, and windows 
 that no age ever saw the like of till now, and the 
 smuggest of pulpits and the slipperiest of tiles, and 
 the tallest of walls built of, if not daubed with, the 
 most untempered of mortar ? Who are ye ? Are ye 
 to be your brothers' keepers ? " 
 
 Well 1 all this was very terrible, especially that 
 
QUIS CUSTODIETt 145 
 
 last thrust ! But even that last thrust seemed to 
 read very like a leaf from the book of the first 
 murderer ; seemed, too, as if some modern confede- 
 rates of Cain were afflicted with that same irritable 
 temperament, that same jealousy of being called to 
 account for their misdeeds, which would even go the 
 length of justifying the slaughter of Abel if it should 
 be made to appear that the dead could not be 
 restored to life again. 
 
 But the new Reformers, whatever they may have 
 thought, were content to hold their peace. They 
 went peeping and prying about and protesting ; they 
 exposed the gross ignorance of an adventurer here ; 
 they issued a serious warning to a well-meaning 
 gentleman there ; they did as other apostles have 
 done before now — they were instant in season and 
 out of season ; they reproved, rebuked, exhorted ; 
 and almost before they knew where they were, they 
 discovered that they had many more supporters than 
 at first they had suspected, that the world had 
 been waiting for them this long time back, and that 
 they had started upon their mission not a day too 
 soon. 
 
 As soon as people begin to succeed in any mission, 
 they are pretty sure to get into bad odour by the 
 excesses of their more impassioned supporters. 
 Then follow disclaimers, explanations, recrimina- 
 
 II 
 
146 QUIS CUSTODIETt 
 
 tions, and they are comforted by the reminder that 
 " when fools fall out wise men get their due." When 
 this point has been reached, the other side begins to 
 take heart, and mis-statement is apt to be accepted 
 as the explanation of over-statement, just as now it 
 is beginning to be believed that Antirestoration is a 
 full and sufficient summing up of what is meant by 
 the word Protection, and that doing nothing is all that 
 this Society aims at. 
 
 If there are some crazy fanatics who have injured 
 the cause which they have at heart by advocating 
 in a furious way that all we have to do with an 
 ancient building is to let it alone, and leave it to fall 
 down, rather than do anything to preserve it, I for 
 one hereby declare that I hold such fanatics to be 
 heathen men and heretics of the worst kind. I look 
 upon such people much as I look upon those peculiar 
 people who denounce the whole medical profession 
 as interferers with the laws of Providence, and who 
 forbid the members of their sect from ever setting a 
 broken bone or taking a prescription when sickness 
 or infirmity has attacked them. To talk of letting 
 an ancient building take its chance, and doing 
 nothing to prolong its life, is to my mind to talk 
 pestifierous nonsense with which I have no manner 
 of sympathy. But unhappily there has been another 
 view which has been put forward in a very specious 
 
QUJS CUSTODIETf 147 
 
 and ingenious and captivating manner by another 
 set of people, and which unhappily has met with 
 immense favour at the harids of the moneyed public, 
 and which seems to me to finli its exact parallel in the 
 proposal of a certain unfortunate lady who suffered 
 martyrdom for her faith, or at any rate her pro- 
 fession, some years ago. That poor lady proclaimed 
 to the world that she was so profoundly versed in all 
 the virtues of certain mysterious herbs and salves 
 and potions and- mixtures, that she was prepared to 
 guarantee the perfect restoration of youth and loveli- 
 ness to the most aged and most battered of her sex ; 
 in fact, she asserted that she had discovered the 
 grand secret of making them "beautiful for ever." 
 She was, I take it, the high priestess and prophetess 
 of restoration. 
 
 Now between the criminal and indolent neglect of 
 those who would sit down with folded hands and 
 never stretch out a finger to avert the death of the 
 stricken, and the pretentious puffery of quacks who 
 assure us that they have discovered the secret of re- 
 juvenescence, there is a whole werld of difference, 
 and between the stupid do-nothingisra of the one and 
 the rash do-everythingism of the other there is — there 
 must be— 'a middle course. This is what we have 
 to complain of, that when well-meaning people have 
 set themselves to "restore" a church (for I shall 
 
148 QUIS CUSTODlETt 
 
 keep myself to that branch of the subject for the 
 present), some of us have found the greatest difficulty 
 in learning what they were going to restore. 
 
 When these good and well-meaning people take it 
 into their heads that an ancient ecclesiastical build- 
 ing is to be replaced by a modern structure in which 
 " all the characteristic features of the original are to 
 be reproduced and for the most part retained," we 
 ask ourselves with wide-open eyes of amazement and 
 perplexity what is going to be reproduced ? There 
 is a sumptuous Norman doorway, there are abundant 
 indications of the existences of a Norman church 
 having existed on this spot — there are clear proofs 
 that the Norman pillars have been recklessly cut 
 away here to make room for a splendid thirteenth- 
 century tomb, that the north aisle is an addition 
 raised up at the sacrifice of the original north wall — 
 that a chapel of no great artistic merit was added at 
 another time, that the pitch of the roof was altered 
 when the clerestory was added, that the chancel was 
 Tebuilt, flimsily, faultily, fantastically, just before 
 the final rupture with Rome, — and yet that the 
 remains of the superb sedilia which the seventeenth- 
 century mob smashed to pieces were evidently 
 removed from the earlier chancel by the fifteenth- 
 century architects. There are signs, in fact, of the 
 church never having been left undisturbed— that 
 
QUIS CUSTODIETt 149 
 
 from generation to generation the rude forefathers 
 of the hamlet were always doing something to their 
 church, taking a pride in adding to or altering it, 
 according to their notions. They never thought of 
 reproducing anything, but rightly or wrongly they 
 were always aiming at improving everything. You 
 are going to restore, are you ? What are you going 
 to restore? The Norman, the Early English, the 
 Decorated, or the Perpendicular church ? What 
 are the characteristic features of the original? What 
 is your notion of the original which you pretend to 
 be about to restore? The problem that presents 
 itself becomes more difficult, more complex, the 
 longer you look at it — the problem, namely, what you 
 are going to restore. 
 
 If my dear old grandmother should wish to be 
 made " beautiful for ever " — i.e. to be restored — ^what 
 condition of former loveliness shall we call back ? 
 There are some who paid homage to her beauty at 
 eighteen, some who loved her at thirty, and some 
 who almost adored her at threescore years and ten. 
 Look at her portraits ! Which shall we take ? 
 Nay ! I love her as she is, say I, with the smile 
 that plays about her venerable lips and the soft light 
 in the gentle eyes. I love every furrow on her 
 broad brow and would not have the thin grey hairs 
 turned to masses of auburn. I would keep her for 
 
ISO QUIS CUSTODIETt 
 
 ever if I might, but I would no more dream of 
 restoring her to what she was before I was born 
 than I would replace her by something that she is 
 not and never was. 
 
 Now up and down this land of England there are, 
 say, 5,000 churches that at this moment stand upon 
 the same foundations that they stood upon 500 years 
 ago, some few of them standing in the main as they 
 were left eight centuries ago. If for 5,000 any one 
 should suggest not 5,000, but 10,000, I should find 
 no fault with the correction. 
 
 If we could go back in imagination tO; the condi- 
 tion of these churches as they were left when the 
 Reformation began,, it may safely be affirmed that 
 there was not at that time, there never had been, 
 and there is never likely to be again, anything in 
 the world that could at all compare with our English 
 churches. There never has been an area of anything 
 like equal extent so immeasurably rich in works of 
 art such as were then to be found within the four 
 .seas. The prodigious and incalculable wealth stored 
 up in the churches of this' country in the shape of 
 sculpture, glass, needlework, sepulchral monuments 
 in marble, alabaster, and metal — the jewelled shrines, 
 the precious MSS. and their bindings, the frescoes 
 and carved work, the vestments and exquisite vessels 
 in silver and gold, and all the quaint and dainty and 
 
QUIS CUSTODIETt 151 
 
 Splendid productions of an exuberant artistic appetite 
 and an artistic passion for display which were to 
 be found not only in the great religious houses, but 
 dispersed about more or less in every parish church 
 in England, constituted such an enormous aggregate 
 of precious forms of beauty as fairly baffles the im- 
 agination when we attempt to conceive it. There 
 are the lists of the church goods — i.e. of the contents 
 of churches — by the thousand, not only in the six- 
 teenth century but in the fourteenth : there they are 
 for any one to read ; and, considering the smallness 
 of the area and the poverty of the people, I say again 
 that the history of the world has nothing to show 
 which can for one moment be compared with our 
 English churches as they were to be found when the 
 spoilers were let loose upon them,^ Well ! We all 
 
 ' The lists of " church goods " — i.e. of the contents of our 
 churches-^during the reign of Edward the Sixth, are to be 
 found in the Record Office. Many of them have been printed 
 t'ft extensOj- they make up in the aggregate a large mass of 
 documents, and some account of them may be found in the 
 seventh and' ninth reports of the Deputy Keeper of the Public 
 Records. Among the miscellaneous books of the Exchequer is 
 a visitation book of the Archdeacon of Norwich for the year 
 1368, which contains a very minute account of the contents of 
 every church in the archdeaconry, including service books, 
 vestments, sacred vessels, banners, processional crosses, orna- 
 ments, &c., all set down in detail^ the names of the donors 
 being frequently given, and spmetimes the value of the more 
 precious articles being stated. Some years ago I stumbled upon 
 
I S3 QUIS CUSTODIETf 
 
 know that a clean sweep was made of the contents of 
 those churches. The locusts devoured all. But 
 the fabrics remained — the fabrics have remained 
 down to our own time — they are as it were the 
 glorious framework of the religious life of the past. 
 There is no need for me to dwell upon the claim 
 which these survivals of a frightful conflagration 
 have upon us for safe custody. I presume we all 
 acknowledge that claim, and the only question is 
 how best to exhibit our loyalty. But when we have 
 got so far we are suddenly met by a vvhoUy unex- 
 pected and anomalous difficulty before we can make 
 a single step in advance. 
 
 Now I am free to confess that hardly a day of my 
 life passes in which I am not oppressed by the con- 
 viction that there are few men of my age within the 
 four seas who are as deplorably ignorant of things 
 in general as I feel myself to be ; — but there is one 
 branch of ignorance, if I may use the expression, 
 which I am convinced that the enormous majority 
 
 an inventory of the contents of the Collegiate Church of St. 
 Mary, Warwick, drawn up in 1467, extending over five folio 
 pages. It seemed to me, on a cursory inspection, to be a 
 document of great value as illustrative of this subject. I 
 know not whether it has ever been printed ; if not, perhaps 
 Warwickshire antiquaries may be glad to be referred to it^ 
 Miscell. Books of the Exchequer, Q.R, No. 30. The inven- 
 tory begins at fol. cci. 
 
QUIS CUSTODIETf 153 
 
 of my most gifted acquaintances are sharing with 
 myself — I really do not know to whom these thou- 
 sands of churches belong. 
 
 There was a time when the church belonged to 
 the parish as a sort of corporation, and when by 
 virtue of their proprietary right in their church the 
 parishioners were bound to keep the fabric in tenant- 
 able repair. But when that obligation was removed 
 by the abolition of Church rates (so far as I can 
 understand the matter), the church practically ceased 
 to belong to any one. Tell the most devoted church 
 people in my parish that because they are church 
 people therefore they are bound to keep the fabric in 
 repair, and they would to a man become conscien- 
 tious nonconformists in twenty-four hours. Tell 
 my most conscientious nonconformists that next 
 Monday there is to be a meeting in the vestry 
 and an opportunity of badgering the parson, and 
 not a man of them but would claim his right to 
 be there : — because, under circumstances which are 
 favourable to his own interests and inclinations, 
 every inhabitant of a certain geographical area pro- 
 tests that he is a shareholder in his parish church. 
 It is true that on a memorable occasion I was 
 presented with the key of my church, and was 
 directed to lock myself in and ring the bell, 
 and then was solemnly informed that I had taken 
 
IS* QUIS CVSTODIETt 
 
 possession of my freehold. I daresay it was quite 
 true, only I am quite certain nobody did believe it 
 at the time and nobody does believe it now. From 
 that day to this I never have been able to understand 
 to whom my church does belong. 
 
 Now as long as it is only a question of letting 
 things drift the question of ownership never troubles 
 anybody. I am in the habit of telling my people 
 that if the Church of our parish were to be 
 swallowed up by an earthquake some iine morning, 
 there would be only one man who would be a gainer 
 by the catastrophe, and that man would be the 
 rector. For his benefice would at once become a 
 sinecure, and there would be nothing to prevent his 
 removing to the metropolis and living there during 
 some months of the year, and living in the Riviera 
 during the other months, and leaving his people to 
 shift for themselves — nothing to prevent this except 
 those trifling considerations of duty and conscience 
 which of course need not be taken into account. 
 But when it comes to a question of preventing the 
 church from tumbling down, or when it comes to a 
 question of pulling it about — when it comes to restor- 
 ing it — then practically the ownership is surrendered 
 to the parson in the frankest and the freest and the 
 most generous way by the whole body of the 
 parishioners. Then the parson is allowed to be the 
 
QUIS CUSTODIETf 155 
 
 only responsible owner of the fabric. It is re- 
 membered that he rang the bell when he came into 
 his freehold: therefore it must be his; and if he 
 does not take the whole burden of collecting the 
 money and seeing the work through and making 
 himself personally responsible for the cost, in nine 
 cases out of ten it will not be done at all. 
 
 Now I am not the man to speak with disrespect 
 of my brethren of the clergy. I do not believe 
 that in any country or in any age there was ever 
 a body of men so heartily and loyally trying to do 
 their duty, and so generously sacrificing themselves 
 to what they believe to be their duty, as the clergy 
 of the Church of England are at this moment. But, 
 whether it is their misfortune or their fault — and we 
 are none of us faultless, not even the parsons— I am 
 bound to express my belief that ninety-nine out of 
 every hundred of the clergy of the Church of England 
 know no more about the technical history of their 
 churches than they know about law — in factj as a 
 body, the clergy know as little about the history of 
 Church Architecture as lawyers know about Theology, 
 and I could not put the case more strongly than that. 
 
 Unhappily, however, the parallel between the 
 amiable weakness of the two professions and their 
 relative attitude towards the two sciences in which 
 each of them delights to dabble may be carried out 
 
156 QUIS CUSTODIETf 
 
 only too closely. For it is painfully observable in 
 both cases that the members of the two professions 
 are profoundly convinced — the lawyers that a know- 
 ledge of theology, the divines that a knowledge of 
 architecture, comes to them severally by a kind of 
 legal or clerical instinct. If a lawyer chooses to 
 plunge into scientific theology, and to write a book 
 on the two Decalogues, or give us his obiter dicta, on 
 the errors of the Greek Church, though nobody is 
 much the wiser nobody is much the worse, except 
 the man who reads the pamphlet or the volume. 
 But when it has been decided that a church requires 
 a thorough overhauling, then the resigning the 
 absolute control over and disposal of the sacred 
 building to the parson to be dealt with as he in 
 his wisdom or his ignorance may judge to be best 
 becomes a very much more serious matter. 
 
 It would be easy to look at that matter from the 
 ludicrous point of view, but it is a great deal too 
 serious for handling as though it were anything to 
 laugh at. Unhappily, we most of us know a great 
 deal too much about it. The parson in some cases 
 jauntily determines to be his own architect, and the 
 village bricklayer highly approves of his decision, 
 and assures him in strict confidence that architects 
 are a pack of thieves, just as, in fact, jockeys are. 
 The builder begins to "clear away," then the parson 
 
QUJS CUSTODIETf 157 
 
 gets frightened. Then he thinks he'd better have an 
 architect — " only a consulting architect you know ! " 
 Then the bricklayer recommends his nephew brought 
 up at the board school who has " done a deal of 
 measurement and that like," and then. ... No ! 
 no 1 we really cannot follow it out to the bitter end. 
 But in many cases where the good man, distrusting 
 his own power, does call in the help of one supposed 
 to be an expert, the process and the result are hardly 
 less deplorable. There is nothing to prevent the 
 most ignorant pretender from starting as an architect 
 to-morrow morning ; nothing to prevent his touting 
 up and down the country for orders, though he is no 
 more qualified to advise and report upon an ancient 
 building than he is to construct the Channel tunnel. 
 And we all know this very significant fact, that there 
 never was a church that ever was reported upon by 
 one of these solemn and aspiring young gentlemen 
 without antecedents and without any misgivings, 
 which was not at once pronounced to be in a most 
 dangerous condition from weathercock to pavement. 
 The roof is always in a most hopeless condition, the 
 walls are frightfully out of the perpendicular and 
 have been so for many generations, the bells jiggle 
 alarmingly in their frames, the jackdaws have been 
 pecking away at the mortar of the tower, fifty rectors 
 lie buried in the chancel, and a hole was dug for 
 
IS8 QUIS CUSTODIETt 
 
 every one of them, and all these holes imperatively 
 demand to be filled up with concrete. But merci-, 
 fully, most mercifully and providentially, a pro- 
 fessional gentleman has been called in at the 
 critical moment, exactly in the very nick of time, 
 and now the dear old church may be saved, saved 
 for our children's children by being promptly re- 
 storedi Thereupon the worthy parson — ;he, too, 
 glad of a job — sets to work and the thing is done. 
 
 But what is done? The men that started this 
 Society, this union for the protection of the noble 
 structures that are a proud inheritance come down 
 to us from our ancestors, they answered with an 
 indignant protest : " An immense and irreparable 
 wrong is done, and the state of things which makes 
 it perfectly easy for a wrong like this to be repeated 
 every week is a shameful national scandal, which we 
 will not cease from lifting up our voices against till 
 some means shall' have been devised for preventing 
 the periodical recurrence of these abominable muti- 
 lations, these cruel obliterations, these fraudulent 
 substitutions up and down the land of new lamps for 
 old ones." 
 
 At starting this was all that our pioneers ventured 
 to proclaim. I have often heard people object, 
 "These gentlemen are so vague, they don't know 
 what they would be at 1 " Now, I know that with 
 
QUIS CUSTODIETf 159 
 
 some folk it is quite sufficient to condemn any men 
 or any opinions to pronounce them vague. Why 1 
 Since the beginnings of the world no great ^^forward 
 movement, no great social religious or political 
 reform, has ever achieved its object and gone on its 
 victoriotis course conquering and to conquer which 
 did not pass through its early stage of vagueness — • 
 that stage when the leaders were profoundly con- 
 scious of the existence of an evil or an injustice or 
 a falsehood which needed to be swept away, though 
 they did not yet see what the proper manner of 
 setting to work was, or where the broom was to be 
 found to do the sweeping with. 
 
 Oh ye merciful heavens 1 save us from cut-and- 
 dried scheme's, at least at starting ! All honour to 
 the men, say I, who did not pledge us all to a 
 scheme, to a paper constitution, but who had the 
 courage to say no more than this t " Here in the 
 body politic there is a horrible mischief at work ; the 
 symptoms are very bad, very alarming. Do let us 
 see if some remedy cannot be found.' Do help us to 
 see our way out of our perplexity." 
 
 Eleven years have now gone by since the Society 
 for the Protection of Ancient Buildings was founded, 
 and I venture to think that the time has come when 
 we must pass out of this stage whose characteristic 
 is said to be vagueness of statement and uncertainty 
 
i6o QVIS CUSTODIETf 
 
 in the plan of operations, and when it behoves some 
 one to speak out and propose that we should take 
 a step in advance. I have no right to compromise 
 my betters by pledging them to any crude proposi- 
 tion, or any course which may seem to myself to be 
 the right one. But, as a mere private person, I 
 hereby declare it to be my strong opinion that no 
 time ought to be lost in settling the very important 
 question to whom the churches of England do 
 belong, and who have the right of defacing, de- 
 grading, debasing the temples of God in the land, 
 turning them into blotchy caricatures, or into lying 
 mummies smalmed over with tawdry pigments, like 
 the ghastly thing in Mr. Long's picture in the 
 Academy this year, with an effeminate young 
 pretender in the foreground making a languid 
 oration over the disguised remains of the dead. 
 
 There are some things (and they are the most 
 precious of all things) which no man has any moral 
 right to treat as his own. They are the things 
 which came to us from an immemorial past, and 
 which belong to our children's children as much 
 as to ourselves. In the county of Norfolk we have 
 one aged oak that has stood where it stands now 
 for at least a thousand years. Under its shadow 
 twenty generations of a noble race have passed their 
 childhood and early youth, left it with a fond regret 
 
QUTS CUSTODIETt i6i 
 
 when the call came to them to engage in the battle 
 of life, and returned at last to find it still there, hale 
 and vigorous as it was centuries before the earliest 
 of their ancestors settled in the land where its 
 mighty roots are anchored. The story of that race 
 is full of romance not untinged by pathos. If that 
 oak were a talking oak, what moving tales it could 
 tell ! If 'Arry 'Opkins of 'Ounslow should cast his 
 fishy eyes upon that monster vegetable, his first im- 
 pulse would be to carve upon its gnarled bark his 
 own hideous name or at least those two unhappy 
 initials which he cannot pronounce. His next would 
 be to suggest that the tree should be trimmed up — 
 restored in fact. I should not like to be the man to 
 make that proposition; And why ? Because I think 
 the noble gentleman who calls that oak his heirloom 
 looks upon it as a sacred trust which he holds from 
 his forefathers, and holds for his posterity too — a 
 trust which it would be dishonour to neglect, to' 
 Eiiutilate, or to destroy. 
 
 But within a pistol-shot of that venerable and 
 magnificent tree stands the little village church. 
 There lie the bones of twenty generations of De 
 Greys ; there they were baptized, wedded, buried. 
 There they knelt in worship, lifted up their voices 
 in prayer and praise ; from father to son they bowed 
 their heads at the altar, gazed at the effigies of their 
 
 12 
 
l69 QUIS CUSTOPIETt 
 
 ancestors — sometimes bitterly lamenting that the 
 times were evil and poverty had come upon them, 
 sometimes silently resolving that they would carve 
 out for themselves a career — sometimes returning to 
 thank God who had enabled them so fully to perform 
 their vow— sometimes glad at the sound of their own 
 marriage bells, sometimes sad when the tolling of 
 those bells announced that another generation had 
 passed away. There stands that little church, 
 The old Norman tower was standing as it stands 
 to-day when, at the beginning of the fourteenth 
 century, the first De Grey came to Merton ; and I 
 have not a doubt that if a self-styled professional 
 gentleman, young enough and presumptuous enough 
 and ignorant enough, were to appear upon the 
 scene, he would solemnly and emphatically advise 
 that Merton Church should at the earliest posisible 
 moment be restored. The horrible thought is that 
 under quite conceivable circumstances the thing 
 might be done with very little difficulty and before 
 you knew where, you were. 
 
 Think of the ,feelings of that old oak then ! 
 
 I kpow I shall be told that a tree is one thing and 
 a church is another, that the one you cannot restore 
 but you can restore the other. You can restore 
 iieither ; you can murder both if you are a heartless 
 assassin. Was it in the 1851 Exhibition that they 
 
QUIS CUSTODIETt 163 
 
 built up the bark of a giant of the Californian forests 
 and told us it was a restoration of a wonder of the 
 world that had reared up its lofty top to heaven even 
 from the days of the Pharaohs ? A restoration ! 
 Nay ! a colossal fraud. But such a fraud as is per- 
 petrated in. our midst every month, and which, when 
 men have committed, they are actually proud of.. 
 
 I am often asked. When was this or that church 
 built? And my answer is ready at hand. It was 
 not built at all! It grew ! For every church in the 
 land that has a real history is a living organism. 
 Do you tell me that yonder doorway is of the twelfth 
 century; that yonder tower may have stood where it 
 does when the Conqueror came to sweep away " pot- 
 bellied Saxondom ; " that the chancel was rebuilt in 
 the time of the Edwards — the rood screen crowded 
 into a place never meant for it during the Wars of 
 the Roses, the pulpit supplied by a village carpenter 
 in the sixteenth century, the carvings of the roof 
 destroyed in the seventeenth, the royal, arms sup- 
 plied in the eighteenth, and therefore that nothing 
 but a clean sweep is to be made of it all, as a pre- 
 liminary to building it all up from the ground in the 
 nineteenth century ? Do you call that restoration ? 
 You assure me that you will faithfully and religiously 
 copy the old. Why that is exactly what you can't 
 do ! You can't copy the marks of the axe on early 
 
164: QUIS CUSTODIETt 
 
 Norman masonry. You can't copy Roman brick- 
 work ; you daren't copy Saxon windows that let the. 
 light in through oiled- canvas in the days when 
 sacredness, and mystery, and a holy fear were some- 
 how associated with the presence of dimness and 
 darkness and gloom. You can't restore^ ancient 
 glass : the very secret of its transcendent glories lies 
 in the imperfection of the material employed. Nay, 
 you can't even copy a thirteenth- century moulding or 
 capital : you can't reproduce the carvings you are 
 going to remove — ^you have no eye for the delicate 
 and simple curves: your chisels are so highly 
 tempered that they are your masters, not your 
 servants : they run away with you when you set to 
 work and insist on turning out sharply cut cusps, all 
 of the same size, all of them smitten with the blight 
 of sameness, all of them straddling, shallow, sprawl- 
 ing, vulgar, meaningless; melancholy witnesses 
 against you that you have lost touch with the 
 living past. You can make the loveliest drawings 
 of all that is left, but the craftsmen are gone. 
 There's where you fail ; you say this and that ought 
 to be done, and this or that is what I mean ; but 
 when you expect your ideas carried out then you 
 utterly fail. 
 
 I. know it is often said that the men of bygone 
 times— say of the fifteenth century — were at least 
 
QUIS CUSTODIETt 165 
 
 as great restorers as we are. If it were true, that 
 would not excuse us. But is it true ? Why, so far 
 from it, it is exactly because the architects of the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries did not aim at 
 restoring that our modern visionaries so often ask 
 to be allowed to destroy their work and to reproduce 
 what they destroyed. I am no great admirer of 
 those perpendicular gentlemen, with their ugly 
 flattened arches and their huge gaping west 
 .windows and their trickery and their pretence and 
 their , insincere display, but . they did know their 
 own minds. They did retain some architectural 
 traditions, and they had some architectural in- 
 stincts. But what have we to represent even 
 their instincts ? Have our craftsmen anything in 
 the shape of historic enthusiasm ? or any sympathy 
 with the religious feeling or ritual of the past ? 
 Emphatically, No ! Have they the old spirit of 
 humility and reverence, of generous regard for their 
 masters, teachers, and pastors in religion or in art ? 
 Have we among us the self-distrust which kept in 
 check the hankering of our forefathers to alter or 
 improve ? Or have we only the fidgetty.and utterly 
 reckless impatience of belonging to the majority of 
 dismal beings, who never make a great hit and leave 
 no monument behind them except of the things they 
 destroyed ? 
 
i66 QUIS CUSTODIETt 
 
 A few weeks ago I was engaged in examining the 
 muniments of the Diocese of Ely, and I came upon 
 an agreement drawn up in strictly legal form 
 between the Prior of the convent of Ely on the one 
 part and Thomas Peynton, master mason of Ely, 
 on the other part — ^the convent agreeing to allow 
 Peynton an annuity for life of twelve marks of 
 lawful money of England — i.e. £8 sterling — ^without 
 board and lodging, and a suit of clothes such as 
 gentlemen wore, he to do such masonry and stone- 
 cutting as the Sacrist of the convent should lay 
 upon him, and further to teach three apprentices, to 
 be nominated, fed, and boarded at the cost of the 
 convent, which in return was to benefit by all the 
 profits of their labour. If the convent should at 
 any time send their master mason to work at any 
 of their outlying possessions, then and only then 
 was the good man to receive an allowance for his 
 maintenance. If his health broke down or he 
 became incapacitated by old age, he was to receive 
 a pension of six marks a year, and his clothes, but 
 nothing more. Who has not stood before some of 
 our cathedrals and found himself asking, " How 
 was this temple piled up to heaven ? How could 
 men build it in those rude old times." How? 
 Because in those rude old times, as we are pleased 
 to call them, there were men like simple old 
 
QUIS CUSTODIETf 167 
 
 Thomas Peyntoh of Ely, who, havihg^ food and 
 raiment, were therewith content ; men who lived 
 for the joy and glory of their work and did not 
 regard their art as a means of livelihood, so much 
 as an end to live for ; men who were so stupid, so 
 far astray, that to sacrifice the joy of living for a 
 mountain of coin seemed to them propter vitam 
 Vivendi perdere causas. 
 
 You will be able to restore the churches which 
 these men built when you can revive among the 
 humblest workmen the spirit which animated the 
 benighted, deluded. Quixotic enthusiasts of the days 
 gone by, and not till then. 
 
 Meanwhile, we do know how to build battel 
 houses to live in — immeasurably grander hotels, 
 magnificent clubhouses, and sumptuous restaurants. 
 Our bridges and our railway stations, our barracks 
 and our shops, are structures of which we have a 
 right to be proud ; but as for our churches, let us be 
 humble^ let us forbeat from meddling with what we 
 do not understand. - Let- us pause before we set 
 ourselves to restore, let us be thankful if we are 
 permitted to preserve. 
 
 But preserve ? How are we going to begin ? As 
 a preliminary, as a sine qud non, what is wanted is 
 to stop all unlicensed meddling with all ancient 
 buildings throughout the land. This can only be 
 
i68 QUIS CUSTODIETt 
 
 done by making it quite plain to whom those 
 buildings belong. The ownership of the Houses 
 of God must no longer be left, as it is, an open 
 question. It is absolutely necessary that the present 
 anomalous condition of affairs should be got rid of, 
 and without delay, and I see only one way out of 
 the difQculty. The old churches are a heritage 
 belonging to the nation at large, and now, more 
 than ever before, it is true that the public at large 
 have a claim to be heard before these venerable 
 monuments of past magnificence should be dealt 
 with as if they were the private property of indi- 
 viduals, or of a handful of worthy people inhabiting 
 a minute geographical area. There are cases not a 
 few where the whole population of a parish could 
 be completely accommodated in a single aisle of the 
 village church. In one case that I forbear from 
 naming lest some incompetent and restless aspirant 
 for notoriety should fly upon the spoil and tear it 
 limb from limb — one case of a certain parish where 
 the population is under 200 all told — where there 
 still exists one of the most magnificent churches in 
 England, capable of accommodating at least 1,200 
 worshippers on the floor, and that church un- 
 touched by profane hands for centuries, its very 
 vastness has frightened the most audacious adven- 
 turers, and it still stands in its majesty as the 
 
QUIS CUSTODIETt 169 
 
 wonder and pride of the county in which it is 
 situated. 
 
 To restore it according to the notions only too 
 much in vogue would absorb a considerable fortune ; 
 to preserve it for future generations, unmutilated, 
 undefaced, and in a condition to defy the elements 
 for centuries, would require a few hundreds; and 
 yet it would probably be easier to find a Groesus 
 who to gratify his own vanity or whim would be 
 ready to lavish thousands upon that glorious 
 structure and turn it into a gaudy exhibition for 
 nineteenth-century sightseers to come and stare at ; 
 easier to find that than to find the hundreds for 
 putting the church into substantial repair. Yet I 
 for one am inclined to think that to do the last is 
 a duty, to do the first would probably end in com- 
 mitting an outrage. When we contemplate such 
 churches as this (and it is by no means a solitary 
 instance), what forces itself upon some of us is 
 that they need first and foremost to be protected 
 before we begin to speak even of repairing them. 
 We talk with pride of our National Church. Is it 
 not time that we should begin to talk of our National 
 Churches, and time to ask ourselves whether the 
 ecclesiastical buildings of this country should not 
 be vested in some body of trustees or guardians or 
 commissioners who should be responsible at least 
 
170 QUIS CUSTODIETf 
 
 for their preservation ? Is it not time thai we 
 should all be protected from the random experiments 
 of 'prentice hands and the rioting of architectural 
 buffoonery ? 
 
 All honour to the generous enthusiasm which has 
 urged so many large-hearted men and women in 
 our time to make sacrifices of their substance, not 
 only ungrudgingly but joyfully and thankfully, to 
 make the Houses of God in the land incomparably 
 more splendid and attractive than they were. But 
 even enthusiasm, the purest and noblest and loftiest 
 enthusiasm, if misdirected and uninstructed, has 
 often proved, and will prove again, a very dangerous 
 passion. Before now there have been violent out- 
 breaks of enthusiastic iconbclasm when the frenzy 
 of destroyers has been in the ascendant and when 
 those who would fain preserve the monuments of 
 the past have been persecuted to the death. Is 
 there enthusiasm abroad — enthusiasm to strengthen 
 the things which remain that are ready to die ? By 
 all means let it have scope ; give it opportunity of 
 action ; let it have vent, but beware how you allow 
 it to burst forth into wild excesses ; let it be at least 
 kept under control. Build your new churches as 
 sumptuously as you please. Ours is the age of 
 brick and iron, of mechanical contrivances, of com- 
 fort and warmth and light. Put all these into your 
 
QUIS CVSTODIETf 171 
 
 new temples as lavishly as you will, and then perad- 
 venture the Church architecture of our own time 
 may take a new departure ; but for the old Houses 
 of God in the land, aim at preserving them and do 
 not aim at more ! 
 
 Let it be enacted that, whosoever he may be, 
 parson or clerk, warden or sidesman, architect or 
 bricklayer, man or woman, who shall be convicted 
 of driving a nail into a rood-screen or removing a 
 sepulchral slab, of digging up the bones of the dead 
 to make a hole for a heating apparatus, bricking up 
 an ancient doorway or hacking out an aperture for 
 a new organ or scraping off the ancient plaster from 
 walls^ that were plastefed five hundred years ago — 
 any one, I say, who shall do any of these acts, even 
 with the very best motives, if he have committed 
 such an offence without the license of a duly consti- 
 tuted authority, shall be adjudged guilty of a mis- 
 demeanour and sent to prison without the option of 
 paying a fine. Would you do less in the case of a 
 student at the National Gallery who should pre- 
 sume tp restore Gainsborough's " Parish Clerk " or 
 Francia's " Entombment " ? 
 
 Having made unlicensed meddling with our 
 churches penal, the next thing to be done is to 
 carry out a survey of our churches, and to obtain 
 an exhaustive report upon the condition of all the 
 
172 QUIS CUSTODIETt 
 
 ancient ecclesiastical buildings in the country which 
 up to this moment have escaped the ravages of the 
 prevailing epidemic. I am afraid the list of such 
 .favoured ediiices would stagger and horrify us all by 
 its smallness. 
 
 The report to be drawn up and published of such 
 
 a survey as I have ventured to propose would set 
 
 out to the world an authoritative presentment of the 
 
 actual condition of each church visited, drawn up 
 
 by duly qualified and certificated professional men 
 
 (according to instructions laid down for them. The 
 
 reports should include accurate ground-plans made 
 
 ■according to one uniform scale, elaborate copies of 
 
 mouldings, window-tracery, doorways, capitals, roofs 
 
 • — not merely pretty little sketches suitable for the 
 
 readers of the Graphic, but working drawings, the 
 
 results of careful measurement; and to this should 
 
 -be added lists of monumental brasses, fonts, remains 
 
 of mural paintings or ancient glass, a complete 
 
 register, in fact, of whatever remains the churches 
 
 contained of ancient work in wood or stone or metal 
 
 at the time the building was examined and reported 
 
 on. Of course I shall be met by the objection that 
 
 the expense of such a survey would be enormous, 
 
 and that any such scheme is therefore for that one 
 
 reason impracticable. I am not prepared to go into 
 
 the estimates. But of this I feel very certain, that. 
 
QUIS CUSTODIETt 173 
 
 so far from the cost of such a survey and such a 
 publication of reports as those contemplated de- 
 serving to be called enormous, it would be much 
 more truly described as insignificant.. 
 
 The great bulk of the ancient churches which 
 have not been violently tampered with during the 
 last thirty years or so belong to two classes : the 
 very small ones, which have seemed not worth' 
 meddling with, and the very large ones which 
 have frightened even the restorers. The cost of 
 drawing up reports upon the small churches would 
 be very trifling and would bring down the average 
 expense considerably, and as to the time required 
 for carrying out such a survey, it need not, I believe, 
 occupy more than three years, though I dare say 
 it might profitably be spread over five. As to any 
 other difficulty standing in the way, it is ridiculous 
 to suggest it. A preliminary survey of all the 
 churches in England was actually begun under the 
 sanction of the Archaeological Institute thirty years 
 ago, and a brief report upon the condition of every 
 church in seven counties was published, and may 
 be purchased now for a song. Each church was 
 personally visited by some competent antiquary or 
 architect, and a slight but instructive notice of every 
 edifice was supplied. The survey of the county of 
 Suffolk alone dealt with no less than 541 ecclesi- 
 
174 QUIS CUSTODIETt 
 
 astical buildings of one sort or another. Will it 
 be said that what was so effectively carried out on a 
 small scale by private enterprise thirty years ago 
 could not be done on a large scale now, or that 
 there is less need to do it now than there was in the 
 past generation ? 
 
 And consider the collateral advantages that would 
 ensue. Consider the immense gain of keeping a 
 band of young architects out of mischief for five 
 years ; of inducing them during that time to confine 
 themselves to the severe study oi an important branch 
 of their art ; of compelling them to become acquainted 
 with the history of its growth and development, and 
 familiarizing them with the minutest detail of Gothic 
 architecture, not in books but in situ ; and above all 
 of giving them a direct interest in keeping up and 
 preserving some hundreds of ancient buildings which, 
 as things are now, they have actually a pecuniary 
 interest in tempting people to pull down. 
 
 But, desirable as it would be-r-nay, necessary 
 though it be — that ^ome such undertaking as this 
 should be carried through, the other question must 
 come first. Again and again we find ourselves driven 
 back upon that when we attempt to stem the current 
 of vandalism that may happen to be setting in this 
 direction or in that. The ownership of our ecclesi- 
 astical edifices must be placed upon a different foot- 
 
QUIS CUSTODIETf 175 
 
 ing from that which we have acquiesced in too long. 
 Sooner or later this must come ; the sooner it comes 
 the better for the interests we have at heart. 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 At this point prudence suggests that I should 
 pause. The time has not come for putting forward 
 more than an outline of a proposal which is sure to 
 be denounced as revolutionary. It will be a great 
 point gained if we can find acceptance for the prin- 
 ciple advocated. We all do dearly love our own old 
 ways of looking at things ; we all do cling tenaciously 
 to the prejudices which we inherited or which were 
 stamped upon our minds in the nursery ; we all do 
 honestly detest being worried into changes which 
 interfere with our habits of thought and action and 
 compel us to enter npon some new course. Yet if it 
 be once brought home to us that a great national 
 heritage is being rapidly sacrificed, allowed to perish, 
 or, worse, being wantonly destroyed for lack of that 
 small measure of protection which life and property 
 have a right to expect in every civilized conimimity, 
 I believe that the sense of a common danger will 
 unite men in a generous forgetfulness' of their 
 favourite maxims and a shame at their own supine- 
 ness, and awaken them to see the necessity for con- 
 certed action ; ahd then the thing that needs doing 
 will be done. 
 
176 QUIS CUSTODIETf 
 
 There was a time in our history when the cry of 
 " the Church in danger " provoked a strange frenzy 
 among the people. The panic did not last very long, 
 and not much came of it. But if another cry should 
 be raised by gentle and simple and men of all creeds 
 and parties, the cry of " the churches in danger ! " 
 I do not think little or nothing would come of that. 
 That would be not the mere expression of a passing 
 sentiment, but it would be a call to action ; and when 
 that cry does come to be raised, the public at large, 
 will not be satisfied with anything less than drastic 
 measures, because the nation will have been roused 
 to a consciousness of the value of their heritage ; 
 and when a great people begins to assert itself, it is 
 not often that it is content with demanding only what 
 it is morally justified in claiming. 
 
 NOTE. 
 The following appeared in The Pall Mall Gazette of 
 August 15, 1889. If a more dreadful comment upon 
 the above essay can be produced, I have not yet met 
 with.it : — 
 
 DISESTABLISHMENT BY DEMOLITION. 
 Mr. Thackeray Turnery the secretary of the Society for the 
 Protection of Ancient Buildings, requests us to publish the 
 following appeal for an ancient church which is in imminent 
 danger of destruction : — 
 
QUIS CUSTODlETt 177 
 
 The parish of Sotterley, in the county of Suffolk, lies about 
 five miles jrom the town of Beccles, and is one of those close 
 parishes which they who live in the opens a.x& wont to look upon 
 with a suspicion of envy. It is the property of a single owner ; 
 not a field or meadow, not a yard of ground by the roadside, 
 not a stake in the hedgerow, not a brick or a gate is to be seen 
 vci Sotterley that is not part and parcel of the possessions of the 
 squire and lord of the manor. The estate was for some 400 
 years held by a family named Playters, which was counted among 
 the great Suffolk houses, and which came to grief at last, partly 
 by taking the wrong side in the troublesome times, and partly 
 by the profuse hospitality which the overgrown size of Sotterley 
 Hall tempted its owners to indulge in. But for four centuries 
 they lived here, and here generation after generation they died 
 and were laid in their graves. In the little church which in life 
 they loved, their bones rest now, and there are their monuments 
 in brass and marble. The walls are studded with their effigies. 
 
 Moreover, these Playters — and indeed their predecessors the 
 Sotterleys — spent money and pains upon the sacred building. 
 There to this day stands the fourteenth-century screen in won- 
 derfully good preservation, four at least of the figures in its 
 panels still retaining a great deal of the old briUiancy of colour, 
 though at least 500 years have passed since they were first set 
 up in the position they now occupy. There, too, in situ may be 
 seen many of the old oak benches with their handsome " poppy- 
 heads," doubtless carved by Sotterly craftsmen, and carved out 
 of the oaks that were growing in Sotterley wood before the Wars 
 of the Roses had begun. The same roof, which might be easily 
 repaired at an insignificant cost, covers the chancel which 
 covered it before people had dreamed of a Tudor king, the panels 
 but little injured, and of the bosses not one missing. 
 
 A man may visit fifty churches in East Anglia, and not meet 
 with one so entirely adapted to the needs of the small popula- 
 tion who delude themselves with the preposterous belief that 
 they have a right to worship there. 
 
 Moreover, Sotterley Church stands in ? churchyard of uil'> 
 
 n 
 
178 QUIS CUSTODIETf 
 
 usually large dimensions. It must cover at least an acre of 
 ground, and nothalf of this space shows the smallest sign of 
 interments having been made in it during the present century. 
 But, unhappily, Sotterley Church and churchyard lie in the 
 middle of Sotterly Park— not that it was always so, for the park 
 has come to the church, not the church to the park— and people 
 will insist in going to church, even farmers and farm labourers 
 will, and worshipping the Most High where their forefathers 
 worshipped before them. The Hall of the Playters was pulled 
 down during the last century, and the new hall — an ugly white- 
 brick mansion of no pretension — wias set up much nearer to the 
 ancient church ; and when Sotterley people died nothing could 
 prevent their relatives from carrying their dead to the old grave- 
 yard and laying them where they themselves hoped to lie some 
 day.- But was not this a little too- bad, to have a funeral pro- 
 cession of tearfiil clodhbppers'-passing through your park gates 
 and under your very windows,- asking no leave, but taking it in 
 quite a brutal fashion ? . ' ' 
 
 Therefore, about ten years ago, a vestry meeting, or some- 
 thing of the sort, was held in Sotterley. The landlord's pleasure 
 was signified, certain formalities were gone through, the tenantry, 
 small and great, were told thait it was desirable that Sotterley 
 churchyard should be closed, and, the legal document being 
 duly dra-wn up, an' order was obtaiAed from the Privy Council, 
 and' the churchyard was closedaccordingly. Outside the park 
 gates, in a place where four ways meet, a square patch of ground, 
 scrubby and soppy, has been fenced off by a mean and ill-kept 
 hedge,~and in the middle of it stares rather than stands, a forr 
 bidding protuberance, an octagonal construction of cheap 
 Sotterley bricks, covered -with cheap Sotterley tiles, looking like 
 a ginger beer stall in a cricket ground where there is no play 
 going on. This thing is called a cliapel, I believe, and here the 
 Sotterley people must needs bring their dead. Will they all be 
 brought here ? High and low— rich and poor one with another? 
 Well, to get rid of the funerals passing through the park was 
 Ofle point scored; but it was but a beginning. On Easter 
 
QUIS CUSTODIETf 179 
 
 Monday last a meeting of the parish in vestry assembled was 
 held as usual in Sotterley church. I am told that the parishioners, 
 knowing what was coming, very discreetly kept away, all except 
 the unhappy parson, who was bound to be there, the landlord 
 and one, two, or three others, who, it is suspected, were told to 
 be there. Forthwith a resolution drawn up beforehand was 
 proposed, seconded, and carried unanimously — for the parson 
 had nothing to do but to " put it to the meeting " — to the effect 
 that it was desirable to pull down or shut up the church of 
 Sotterley, and build another somewhere else. I am told that 
 this resolution has been actually forwarded to the Bishop of 
 Norwich and that a faculty has been actually applied for to 
 close or destroy a church which has been standing in its preselit 
 site for the best part of a thousand years, and that it only remain^ 
 for the Bishop to give his assent to this iniquitous proposition, 
 and one more of those monstrous outrages will have become 
 an accomplished fact which we English submit to with just a 
 little snarling after they , have been committed, and which we 
 allow to be perpfetrated under our eyes without ever liftingf a 
 finger to prevent. Whether the Bishop of Norwich is the man 
 to connive at so shameful a job as this, and to give his episcopal 
 sanction to the proposed desecration, is a question that is 
 a humiliating one to ask, for is it less than infamous that such 
 things are so possible that we begin to inquire about their 
 probability ? 
 
V. 
 
 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR NEGLECTED 
 RECORDS. 
 
 The most delightful place of resort on the face of 
 the globe is to be found within a bow-shot of Temple 
 Bar. Not on the south side of Fleet Street, what- 
 ever enthusiastic gentlemen of the law may say, nor 
 on the west, nor on the east, for there too there is 
 little to attract us except in the shop windows, and 
 there is noise and turmoil and the roar of a restless 
 multitude bewildering and disturbing us whether we 
 move or halt on our way. No! my happy valley lies 
 to the north of the great thoroughfare ; its courts and 
 halls and corridors, its restful solitudes, its mines of 
 gold that are waiting to be worked, its storehouses 
 of precious things that are practically inexhaustible, 
 all are to be found in a favoured region that lies 
 between Chancery and Fetter Lanes. 
 
 " Record Office, Fetter Lane ! " I said to the 
 driver of a Hansom some months ago. " Do you 
 mean Chancery Lane, sir ? " asked the voice through 
 
SPACE FOR NEGLECTED RECORDS. i8i 
 
 the hole over my head. " No, I mean Fetter Lane." 
 The man actually did not know the situation of the 
 earthly Paradise. 
 
 Pone me pigris.ubi nulla vicis 
 Arbor asstiva recreatur aura, 
 
 I murmured to myself — I could not waste my Horace 
 upon Cabby. 
 
 I am in the habit of assuring my lowly congrega- 
 tion upon Sundays that for all their talk about 
 heaven they would find themselves very much out 
 of place there without some previous preparation for 
 that desirable abode. The same warning is equally 
 true when applied to other blissful resting-places 
 besides the celestial mansions. You must have a 
 taste for them ; you must have qualified yourself to 
 enjoy them and to mix with the company you find 
 there. Surely Valhalla could only have suited the 
 few. But this place of resort of which I am think- 
 ing is a pleasure-house whose resources are actually 
 limitless, however well you may have learnt to use 
 your opportunities. " Life piled on life were all too 
 little " to get even so much knowledge of this pro- 
 digious and enormous accumulation of treasures as 
 to be able to answer with certainty what may be 
 found there and what not. For eight-and-forty years 
 there has appeared annually a Report of the Deputy 
 
i82 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 Keeper of the Public Records, preaentmg us with an 
 elaborate summary of work carried on by the func- 
 tionaries employed in examining our national ar- 
 chives ; and so far are we from getting to the end of 
 the work of men cataloguing aiid calendaring that it 
 may reasonably be estimated another fifty years will 
 be required to complete this vast preliminary labour ; 
 and when that time comes it will be necessary to 
 begin again at summarizing and supplying indices to 
 the reports issued.! What next will follow it is diffi- 
 cult to conjecture or imagine. 
 
 The forty-eighth Report; issued in 1887, happens 
 to be lying at my elbow as I write, and there, ready 
 for cbnsultatiorij I find a brief calendar of the Patent 
 Rolls of the seventh year of Edward the Firsts drawn 
 up by one of the many accomplished archivists of 
 the Office. It fills 216 closely printed pages. It 
 summarizes at least 3,000 documents, some of them 
 of considerable length ; they all belong to a single 
 class, and they are all concerned with the life of our 
 forefathers — ^yours and mine, niy estimable reader-^— 
 during the single year ending the aoth of November, 
 1379. Six centuries ago. Think of that ! Yet this 
 collection is but one among thousands. The third 
 Report, issued in 1842, first drew attention to the 
 existence of a huge, mass of ancient letters of the 
 reigns of King' John, Henry the Third, and Edward 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 183 
 
 the First, the most modern of them, observe, coming 
 down no nearer to our own time than the year 
 1307 A.D. " This important mass," we are told, 
 " appears to contain 1,942 bundles, each containing 
 on the average about 200 documents, or about 
 388,400 on the whole." Scared by such figures as 
 these, the imagination, a trifle jaded, refuses to dwell 
 upon 913 Papal Bulls of -various dates, or to take 
 the trouble to speculate upon the probable bulk of 
 seven or eight thousand documents which reveal 
 unknown secrets about the ancient forests and their 
 boundaries. But we are fairly aghaSt at the hews 
 that there are hundreds of rolls averaging: 300 feet 
 in length, and at least one extending to the enormous 
 dimensions of 800 feet, written Within and without 
 with lamentation and mourning and woe. There 
 could be no eating such a roll as that! 
 
 The documents deposited in the Record Office, 
 and which, as we have seen, are likely to have taken 
 a hundred years to catalogue before they become 
 readily accessible to students and explorers, count by 
 millions. They are of all sorts, conditions, and 
 classes, but they may be roughly described as con- 
 cerned with the civil and political history- of the 
 nation; that is, they deal with the development, of 
 our institutions, with the government of our sove- 
 reigns through their ministers, with the changes in 
 
184 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 our laws and their administration, with the corhplex 
 questions of the tenure of land and the changes in 
 its ownership, with the rise and growth of our com- 
 merce, with our wars by land and by sea, with a 
 hundred other matters which never can cease to 
 have a profound and undying interest for the citizens 
 of a great empire. Let us, for convenience' sake, 
 call the Record Office the storehouse of authorities 
 on England's constitutional history. 
 
 This vast tahularium, as the Romans called their 
 Public Record Office, is situated, as I have said, 
 within a bow-shot of Temple Bar, and to the northr 
 east of that vanished structure. About double the 
 same distance on the south-west there exists another 
 huge depository of records, which may be said to be 
 a great storehouse of authorities concerned with our 
 family history. The wills which are stored in 
 Somerset House, though beginning at a date cen- 
 turies later than the early records in Fetter Lane, go 
 back quite far enough to make the reading of the 
 great mass of them not always easy for the unini- 
 tiated. They, too, probably count by millions, and I 
 have known one gentleman who estimated the 
 number which he himself had looked at and exa- 
 mined with more or less attention at not less than 
 a hundred thousand. This collection is more easily 
 accessible to students than the other, inasmuch as 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 185 
 
 here we are dealing with a single class of docu- 
 ments, which present no difficulties of arrangement, 
 and which have been carefully preserved and habitu- 
 ally consulted for generations, and are as a rule bound 
 up in big volumes of transcripts, or offices copies, 
 made for the most part within a short time of the 
 original wills having been proved before the accredited 
 officials. So far as they go the wills in Somerset 
 House contain to a very great extent the genealogical 
 history of England. It is necessary to guard this 
 statement by qualifying words, for the. wills in 
 Somerset House are the wills of men and women 
 who died in the southern province only. 
 
 If we lengthen our radius, keeping to Temple Bar as 
 our centre and sweeping a circle say of five miles in 
 diameter, we shall include within this circumference 
 a vast collection of records of a very miscellaneous 
 character. There are the muniments of the City 
 of London; there is an unknown mass of curious 
 " evidences " in the secret chambers of the London 
 companies ; there are the mysterious and probably 
 very large stores of recondite lore hidden away some- 
 where in the great Inns of Court, and perhaps in 
 forgotten garrets of some of the minor dependencies 
 of those august institutions. There are the sessional, 
 records of the county of Middlesex, which a very 
 moderate estimate has assured us contain more than 
 
i86 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 half a million documents; and, in addition to all 
 these, there are probably many other important col- 
 lections subsidiary to these larger ones, the very exis- 
 tence of which is unknown and unsuspected except 
 by some few reticent creatures, who with the grip of 
 the miser cling secretively to the hoarded treasures 
 that they cannot spend and will not let any one else 
 look at. It must be evident to any one who reflects 
 upon the measureless -bulk — the mere bulk — of these 
 various assemblages of ancient- documents to be 
 found within the metropolitan area alone, that any 
 heroic policy which should contemplate gathering 
 them all under a Single roof, and unifying them in a 
 centralized national tabulanum, is inpracticable. A 
 Public Record Office which should not only be a 
 monster warehouse for the safe custody of our an- 
 cient muniments, but should be a library of reference 
 open to air duly qualified persons desirous of pursu- 
 ing historifcal research among our unprinted sources, 
 would be a building that would more than fill Tra- 
 falgar Square. Obviously such a collection, to be 
 practically accessitle, would require to be metho- 
 dized, arranged, catalogued, and to some extent 
 indexed. An army of trained officials would be 
 needed to deal with the materials under their hands. 
 It would take a lifetime to set the house in order. 
 The very geography of such a world would require a 
 guide-book as perplexing as a Bradshaw. 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 187 
 
 The magnificent collection' now at the Record 
 Office is, as has been seen, only in course of being 
 examined and calendared. Even after fifty years of 
 unremitting labour bestowed upon it we have a very 
 imperfect knowledge of what it contains ; and this, 
 be it remembered, though no department of the 
 public service can compare with this in the ability, 
 industry, enthusiasm, and profound learning which 
 have been for generations the characteristic of the 
 ofiicials, one and all, high and low. From the days 
 of that cross-grained, combative, and overwhelm- 
 ingly learned miracle of erudition William Prynne 
 down to our own day there has been a kind of 
 apostolical succession among the keepers of the 
 national archives and their coadjutors. The Record 
 Office almost deserves to have a dictionary of 
 biography of its own. To widen the field of labour 
 here would be to destroy all hope of its ever being 
 brought into order. Centralization of our muni- 
 ments has well-nigh reached its utmost limits in the 
 unwieldy proportions of the collection now under 
 the charge of the Deputy Keeper. To extend those 
 limits and to bring together additional millions of 
 MSS. from distant depositories would be to convert 
 the great tabularium into a colossal cameterium, in 
 which they would be not so much preserved as buried 
 for all tiifle. 
 
1 88 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 Let it be conceded, then, that, as far as the 
 Record Office is concerned, it will be best to leave 
 well alone. The custodians of our archives in 
 Fetter Lane have quite enough to occupy their time 
 for many a long day. They are not the men to need 
 urging or to embarrass by loading them with new 
 accessions of work which they can never hope to get 
 through. On the other hand, the muniments of 
 such bodies as the great Inns, the chartered com- 
 panies, or the Corporation of London can hardly^— 
 at any rate hardly yet — be looked upon and dealt 
 with as public property. These corporations very 
 naturally cling to their own possessions; they are 
 jealous of throwing open their muniments to be 
 scrutinized and peeped into by prying eyes by no 
 means always looking with a kindly or benevolent 
 gaze. Why should the benchers of the Middle 
 Temple, for instance, lay out their early charters to 
 be copied by every chance grievance-monger, to be 
 printed with appropriate comments in the columns of 
 the Wapping Watchman, and enriched by learned notes 
 and illustrations full of love and sweetness ? Why 
 should the ancient Guild of the Girdlers court pub- 
 licity when there is a host of Grub Street raga- 
 muffins only too glad to make merchandise of their 
 " Curious Revelations " and to ferret out incon- 
 venient scraps of information to be used for the 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 189 
 
 destruction of the things that are? "Confound 
 that shabby old Dryasdust ! " we might hear the 
 warden growl out to his brethren of the craft. " If 
 the fellow goes on like that we shall have to ask him 
 to dinner, give him a bad one, and protest we could 
 not afford a better in the lamentable condition of our 
 finances." No ! Diligent explorers and omnivorous 
 antiquaries like my friend Mr. Cadaverous must be 
 patient and submissive. "The rights of property, 
 sir — the rights of property must be respected. 
 Make your approaches in a spirit of courtesy and 
 with becoming respect for the august body to which 
 we belong, and you may find us gracious and con- 
 descending; but come to us as a footpad grabbing at 
 our fobs, and you may find the consequences disas- 
 trous. We have been known to give pence to 
 beggars, but to submit to be plundered — never ! " 
 There is, however, one class of documents to be 
 found within the area that I have been dealing with 
 which may fairly be regarded as public property in a 
 different sense from that in which the civic and 
 corporate muniments can be considered such. I 
 refer to the registers and churchwardens* books, 
 which constitute an important collection of records 
 from which a great deal of our parochial and family 
 history may be gleaned. I know how contemptuously 
 some good folks affect to treat pedigree-hunting and 
 
igo CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 genealogy. I know how much ridicule has been 
 heaped upon the pompous pettiness of beadles and 
 vestrymen. Mr. Bumble in a Punch and Judy show 
 or in a Christmas pantomime is always greeted with 
 a welcome of convulsive merriment. And yet some- 
 how we all do feel some sly hankering to know how 
 they managed it in the parochial councils, say, two 
 or three hundred years ago j and few men are so 
 indifferent as some dull men pretend to be about the 
 mere bare births, deaths, and marriages of their 
 forefathers. It may be very profitless, very silly, 
 but so is playing at chess,' and smoking, and many 
 another harmless diversion. And is that all ? 
 
 I am not going to enter into the question of what 
 larger and wider fields of enquiry the humbler by- 
 paths of research may help us to pass through 
 without going helplessly astray ; but this is certain, 
 that there never has been a civilized nation since 
 nations grew into organized life — never has been, 
 never will be — in which something like a passion for 
 finding out the smaller secrets of the past has not 
 been strong, and in some minds absorbing. - Be that 
 as it may, there are, it may be estimated, some 
 hundreds of volumes scattered about in all sorts of 
 odd places, in the custody of all sorts of odd people, 
 within the metropolitan area which contain the 
 entries of the three most important events in thi 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 19 1 
 
 lives of millions of people who have been born, 
 wedded, and died within five miles of Temple Bar 
 during the last three centuries and a half. These 
 volumes are being consulted every week. Copies of 
 the entries made in them are produced as evidence 
 in courts of justice every month, and vast sums of 
 money change hands every year on the testimony 
 which those books afford, and almost upon that 
 alone. On that testimony again and again the title 
 to large estates, the right to seats in the House of 
 Lords, the legitimacy of son or daughter, has de- 
 pended. Fiction and fact have vied with each other 
 in emphasizmg the romantic incidents that our 
 parish registers have chronicled or concealed. All 
 the existing parish registers within the metropolitan 
 area, from the year 1538 (when parish registers first 
 began to be kept in England) to the beginning of the 
 present century, and all the churchwardens': books 
 besides, might easily be kiept in: a single room of 
 Somerset House, and be easily supplied with perfect 
 personal indices in five years. 
 
 • • • • - ' m • 
 
 One more class of ancient records remains to be 
 dealt with before we leave London and its purlieus. 
 Nothing has yet been said of that immense mass of 
 precious muniments which constitute the apparatus 
 from which the eccksiaitkal hi&toty of England may 
 
192 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 be compiled ; that is, the history of the part which 
 the Church has played in the political, religious, 
 and, I may add, the moral and intellectual training 
 and education of the nation. 
 
 There are within little more than a mile of our old 
 friend Temple Bar three great depositories of eccle- 
 siastical records of inestimable value and of un- 
 known richness — one at the Archiepiscopal Palace 
 of Lambeth, one at St. Paul's, one in the precincts 
 of Westminster Abbey, (i) The collection of MSS. 
 at Lambeth was very ably catalogued nearly eighty 
 years ago, and is readily accessible to all who are 
 desirous and competent to make an intelligent use 
 of the treasures it contains. (2) The archives of 
 St. Paul's comprehend not only the muniments of 
 the great Metropolitan Chapter, but those also of the 
 bishopric of London. The Chapter records have 
 been examined and reported upon by the present 
 Deputy Keeper in the Ninth Report of the Historic 
 MSS. Commission. Of course Mr. Lyte has done his 
 work in a masterly way, and to the wonder and 
 despair, of smaller men who have tried their 'prentice 
 hands at such employment ; but he warns us that 
 "the greater part of the collection has never yet been 
 examined for literary or historical purposes ; " and so 
 far from this important assemblage of original docu- 
 ments being accessible to research, Mri Lyte, when 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 193 
 
 he began his examination, found it stowed away in 
 boxes " in an octagonal chamber above the Dean's 
 vestry," and one box full of ancient documents had 
 been discovered by the Bishop of Oxford " in a loft 
 over the Chapter House." The extent, interest, and 
 importance of the capitular records to historical 
 students is in the present condition of our knowledge 
 quite incalculable. 
 
 But the archives of the diocese of London are also 
 said to be Icept in St. Paul's. Thirty years ago, 
 \yhen I was yery young at this kind of work, I 
 obtained permission to make a search among the 
 muniments of the Bishop of London for certain 
 small fragments of information which, in the glorious 
 hopefulness of youth, I was bent on discovering. 
 During three short December days I was privileged 
 to climb to a certain chamber in a certain tower of 
 .St. Paul's, and there to immure myself for five or six 
 hours at 9. time. There is a region where beings 
 who succeed in retaining their personality must 
 needs be the sport of the vortices that whirl and 
 eddy through the "vast inform," where "Chaos 
 umpire sits " and " next him high arbiter Chance 
 governs all." But in such a region none may hope 
 to find anything that he can carry away. I emerjged 
 from that threerdays' audacious voyage of discovery 
 with my intellect only a little disordered and my 
 
 14 
 
194 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 constitution only a trifle shattered, and I survive to 
 speak of that bewildering and horrible experience as 
 men speak of their confused recbllection of an 
 escape from drowning. From' that day to this I 
 have never met with a hunian being who hiad ever 
 been bold endilgh to search among the archives of 
 the bishopric of London or who could tell me any- 
 thing about them, good or bad. 
 
 (3) Somewhere— somewhere— within the precincts 
 of the great Abbey of Westminster there are said to 
 be' imprisoned in grim and forbidding seclusion un- 
 known multitudes of witnesses, voiceless, tongueless, 
 forgotten, whose testimony, if it could be extorted, 
 would strangely and powerfully affect our views 
 ppon hundreds of incidents and movements, hun- 
 dreds of crimes and errors and sacrifices and grand 
 endeavours that now are very imperfectly under- 
 stood',, often wholly misrepresented, and some of 
 them passed out of remembrance. Let tis take an 
 example. 
 
 ■We have all of us heard of" the Star Chamber. 
 Pray may I ask my accomplished readers if they 
 know anything about the Stars ? Nay 1, Be not rash 
 with thy lips. The name Star Chathber has not the 
 remotest connection with astronomy. The name 
 carries us back to a time when the children of Israel 
 were swarming in England and when they were the 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS, 195 
 
 great bankers or maney-lenders— almost the only 
 bankers and money-lenders — within: the four seas. 
 Impecunious scoundrels up and down the land 
 mortgaged their lands or pawned their valuables, 
 and the Jews advanced them money upon their 
 securities. The promises to pay, the agreements to 
 surrender property on non-payment, the bonds, the 
 bills,; the orders of court, and the documentary evi- 
 dence bearing upon all these transactions between 
 the creditors and the debtors, the borrowers and the 
 lenders, were drawn up in the Hebrew language, 
 and the records of these . multifarious transactions 
 between the Jews and the Christians, dating back to 
 an unknown antiquity (possibly to a time very little 
 after the Conquest) and ending about the year 1290, 
 when all Jews were banished from England with 
 unspeakable acts of cruelty and wrong — these 
 records, I say, are to be found in the archives of 
 "Westminster Abbey. These Hebrew records are 
 believed to count by thousands, and are known by 
 the name of stars among tjie few who even know 
 that there are such, things jn. existence. As to the 
 exact meajiing or derivation of the word, I d^re not 
 venture upon an ^explanation of it ; nor as to the 
 correct spelling of it am I qualiiied to express an 
 opinion. It is sufficient for me that the qourt in 
 which these suits between the Jews and theic 
 
196 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 victims, or their defrauders, were tried and decided 
 was in ancient times called the Star Chamber, 
 because the records of the proceedings which were 
 there adjudicated upon were popularly known as 
 Stan. Perhaps not six men in Britain have ever 
 looked intelligently at this mass of Hebrew MSS. 
 I believe only one man living — Mr. Davies — has 
 devoted any time to the study of them. And yet 
 with this immense and unique apparatus absolutely 
 untouched, with this virgin soil that has been neg'< 
 lected and unknown for six centuries, literary 
 empirics have more than once set themselves to 
 write the history of the Jews to the Middle Ages, 
 " resorting to their imagination for their facts " 
 when the facts were there at their elbows if they 
 had only known it. The history of the Jews in 
 England down to the time of their expulsion by 
 Edward the First remains to be written, because 
 the materials for that history have remained to the 
 present hour unread. 
 
 Take another instance. There have been many 
 very interesting books printed about Westminster 
 Abbey; about the sovereigns that were crowned 
 there, about sovereigns that were buried there, 
 about dramatic incidents that occurred within the 
 glorious church, about its architecture, about its 
 school, about its single bishop and its many illus" 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 197 
 
 trious deans. The magnificent and venerable in- 
 stitution is so spangled with golden memories 
 that the dryest handbook must needs prove attrac- 
 tive; to the dullest of risaders. The whole place 
 in its every stone and nook and corner is wrapped 
 in an atmosphere of romance and wonder and 
 mystery ; but anything that deserves to be called 
 by so grand a name as a History of 'NVe.stminster 
 Abbey, or anything approaching to it, can no more 
 be said to exist than can the History of Carthage 
 or Damascus. There may be, there is, some ex- 
 cuse for our ignorance in the one case, but in 
 the other case there is none. There, within the 
 very walls where the history was a-making through 
 the ages, in the very handwriting of the men whose 
 lives were passed within the precincts and who 
 were actors in the drama of which they left their 
 fragments of notes or scraps of illustrations or 
 briefest mementoes, there, huddled together in bunks 
 and trunks and sacks and boxes — no one can tell 
 you exactly where — there is such a wealth of 
 materials that when it comes to be methodized and 
 utilized, digested and studied, as it must be some 
 day, the result will inevitably be to make the men 
 of the future look with larger, other eyes than ours 
 upon the action of those forces and the character of 
 those movements, and the statesmanship of those 
 
198 CA THEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 leaders and commanders of the people which have 
 worked together in the evolution of a great nation 
 from its inchoate condition of a mere gathering of 
 peoples. Nevertheless, for any facilities thiat exist 
 for studying the records of Westminster Abbey they 
 might almost as well be kept in glass cases in the 
 moon as be where they are. Am I, theni going to 
 propose . . . ? My good sir, I am going to propose 
 nothing, nothing at any rate with regard to the 
 London records, lay or clerical. Only this \ 
 venture to remark, that before we have taken stock 
 of our metropolitan muniments and got them into 
 order, before we have provided suitable receptacles 
 for them and put them under the chai'ge of qualified 
 custodians, v/e shall be wiser if we learn a little 
 modesty in talking about other people and other 
 places, and what they ought to do and what' ought 
 to be done for them. 
 
 • • • • ' • 
 
 Once upon a time there was a grizzly monster 
 who sat himself down in the neighbourhood of the 
 ancient city of Thebes. He was a ravenous 
 monster with an insatiable appetite, and he de- 
 manded for his meals large supplies of Theban 
 youths and maidens. The monster conducted him- 
 self in a very exacting and insolent manner, and 
 somehow he contrived to make the unhappy 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 199 
 
 Thebans acquiesce in his bold assumption that 
 the gods had created Thebes and all that belonged 
 to it for no other purpose under heaven than for the 
 support and glorification of his own unwieldy self, 
 growing daily more corpulent, votaciousi and over- 
 bearing. At last one fine day the monster in a 
 sportive humour asked the Thebans a riddle, and 
 a sagacious gentleman guessed the riddle. The 
 answer was ■*' Man." It was a very curious 
 conundrum, and when the answer came it brought 
 with it an important and startling suggestion, " Ye 
 burghers of Thebes," one cried, " look to it ! Man 
 was not created for the monster ! That be far from 
 us ! Monsters peradventure there must be — some 
 beneficent, some malign, some to be proud of, some 
 to loathe. But be they what they may» let it be 
 ours to proclaim. Not man for the monsters, but 
 monsters for the behoof of man!" That wholly 
 novel and unexpected resolution, having been 
 carried unanimously and by acclamation, wrought 
 quite a revolution among the Theban folk. I am 
 sorry to say its effect upon the voracious creature 
 aforesaid was disastrous. They say he did not wait 
 to perish of famine, but died violently of a ruptured 
 heart. 
 
 There is among us a school of pundits, who live 
 and always have lived within the sound of Bow 
 
200 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 Bells, whose Dagon and Baal and Moloch and 
 Juggernaut combined is London, whose Gospel is 
 "Blessed are they whom the great city vouchsafes 
 to devour." Outside the five-miles circle, or the 
 ten-miles circle, these men think there are indeed 
 certain insignificant atoms, minute, nebulous, 
 meteoric, held in solution in that impalpable 
 medium which for convenience has been called by 
 idealists the realm of England, but that these pur- 
 poseless particles have no sort of cohesion, and 
 their continuance even as atoms can only be assured 
 in so far as they are destined to become integral 
 portions of that vast pleroma the all-embracing and 
 all-devouring London. No ! Let it be proclaimed 
 upon the housetops, let the protest go forth and 
 awake the echoes, " England does not exist for 
 London, but London for England 1 " Let men 
 ponder that profound and pregnant utterance of the 
 greatest of our historians-^" From the beginning 
 of its political importance London acts constantly 
 as the purse, sometimes as the brain, never perhaps 
 in its whole history as the heart of England." Is that 
 so ? Then let us beware how we give our monster 
 more than its due and more than it can manage, 
 lest it develop into a hydrocephalous monster with a 
 pulse that beats but feebly by reason of its life's 
 blood being scantily supplied. 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 201 
 
 Indeed, it is easy to exaggerate the value and 
 importance even of the metropohtan archives^ To 
 begin with, the records of the City of London will 
 be found of little or no use for investigating the 
 history of English agriculture. What will they 
 teach us about the complex questions of land tenure, 
 the life of the peasantry, the relations between the 
 lords and the tenants of the soil, about the condition 
 of the people, high and low, about those local courts 
 and franchises and customs, and disciplinary and 
 formative machinery, which " through oppression 
 prepared the way for order and by routine educated 
 men for the dominion of law " ? You must go a 
 long way. out of London to get anything like a grasp 
 of the constitution of a county palatine, and to 
 understand the working, if I may use the expression, 
 of such forms of local government as were once 
 active in the manor, the honour, or the hundred. 
 You must study such matters not only in the rolls 
 and charters that survive, but you must study them 
 too in the geographical areas with which they are 
 concerned. What ! gather together all the parish 
 registers, and all the wills and all the sessional 
 papers within the four seas and toss them all 
 together into a vast heap " somewhere " in London I 
 What for ? That a score or two of cockney dryas- 
 dusts may have the opportunity of getting at them 
 
202 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 by a short ride outside a " penny bus " ? Why, you 
 might just as well propose that all the parish 
 churches should be carted away bodily and set up 
 " somewhere " in battle array as a kind of eccle- 
 siastical wall round the metropolis, in order to give 
 adequate facilities of study to the Institute of British 
 Architects in Conduit Street. 
 
 The fact is that within the last few years more 
 has been done in the way of arranging, cataloguing, 
 and providing for the safe custody of ancient 
 docTjments in the provinces than has been even 
 attempted (outside the Record Office) by London 
 and the Londoners. We poor creatures in the wilds, 
 we don't go whining for subsidies from the Govern* 
 ment, we don't clamour for grants from the national 
 exchequer ; and there are some of us that can give 
 a very much better account of our muniments than 
 you Londoners can give of yours. Thirty years ago 
 the cofporatioh of Norwich had a catalogue of its 
 records drawn up by a local antiquary, which for 
 convenience of reference and the intimate and wide 
 knowledge it displays could bear comparison with 
 any similar undertaking then existing in the country. 
 The records of the borough of Ipswich, says Mr. J. 
 Cordy Jeaffreson, " are at present so perfectly ar- 
 ranged that with the helj) of the new catalogue and 
 index . . . the custodian can produce without dif- 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 203 
 
 ficulty any charter, roll, or paper account that it may 
 be needful to examine." The records of the cor- 
 poration of Leicester, says the same learned anti-r 
 quary, " will endure comparison with the rhuninlents 
 of any provincial borough in Great Britain." The 
 magnificent enthusiasm of two citizens of that same 
 borough- has brought this immense assemblage of 
 MSS. into a condition which may well arouse envy 
 and ought to stimulate rivalry ; while the example 
 set by the mayor and corporation in making their 
 treasures accessible to all comers proves that en- 
 thusiasm is contagious. 
 
 These instances are taken at random ; there is no 
 need to multiply them. It is well known to experts; 
 and to some who are much less than experts, that 
 the condition of our corporation records throughout 
 the land is very far more satisfactory than was 
 suspected a few years ago, and that every year more 
 and more attention is being bestowed upon themj 
 more vigilance displayed in fheir preservation, and 
 moire zeal and earnestness exhibited in the patient 
 study of their contents. Every year the number of 
 intelligent explorers of our municipal and other local 
 archives is steadily increasing, which means that 
 every year the study of our history is being more 
 laboriously pursued by specialists. For the rest, 
 the whole field is felt to be too vast to travel 
 
204 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 through in the present state of our knowledge. But 
 just as great laws and great generalizations in 
 physical science have been made, and could only 
 have been made, by the devotion of students con- 
 centrating their attention upon a single branch of 
 physiology, chemistry, or astronomy, and registering 
 the conclusions — that is, the certainties — which 
 their several researches have arrived at^ so must it 
 be with history ; there, too, research must be carried 
 on by men who will be content to labour in a limited 
 area and to deal with problems which cease to be 
 insignificant when their bearing upon larger ques- 
 tions is recognized and the results of one man's toil 
 are affiliated to those of another's. 
 
 But if this be so, if indeed the history of England 
 of the future will be the outcome of what may be 
 called the experimental and departmental method of 
 research, it is obvious that the examination of the 
 enormous body of evidence now at our command 
 must be carried on by local inquiries. Only so can 
 slight hints and faint clues be apprehended, the 
 local customs and dialects understood, and the 
 very names of places and persons detected in their 
 various disguises. But what we have found our- 
 selves led to suspect when we were dealing with the 
 various collections of records now dispersed in the 
 great hiding-places of London — namely,, that sooner 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 205 
 
 or later we shall have to group those records in 
 departmental archives — ^this we are irresistibly com- 
 pelled to believe we shall sooner or later have to do 
 with the large masses of historic MSS. which are 
 scattered broadcast over the island from Land's End 
 to John o' Groat's House. 
 
 In the smaller world of London — ^yes, Mr. Giga- 
 dibs, the smaller world — observe, it is a concession 
 to your stubborn prejudices to call it a world at all, 
 but if a world I protest that the qualifying epithet 
 must be resorted to — in the smaller world of 
 London we have seen that the existing collections 
 of records may be roughly associated in certain 
 groups or classes according as they are regarded as 
 belonging to the evidences bearing upon (i) the 
 history of the monarchy and the development of 
 the constitution ; (2) the history of English law and 
 all that concerns such matters as procedure, judi- 
 cature, and the like ; (3) the history of the City of 
 London — of its great guilds, its customs, privileges, 
 and commerce ; (4) personal and family history, and 
 (5) lastly, ecclesiastical history, including in that the 
 history of the religious houses. In the wider area 
 we should have to make a similar classification, but 
 in doing so we should have to add one class of 
 documents very inadequately represented in the 
 London collections ; I mean those which supply 
 
2o6 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 an apparatus for studying the history of the 
 land. 
 
 And here we are face to face with a serious diffi- 
 culty. The evidences, which until the present 
 century were so intimately associated with a landed 
 estate that they passed with the estate as an almost 
 necessary proof that possession had been conveyed, 
 had in the lapse of ages grown in many instances 
 to an aggregate: of documents whose bulk was pro- 
 digious and its mere stowage embarrassing. Where 
 the capital mansion of an extensive property was 
 proportionate to the acreage it was easy to set apart 
 one room as a muniment-room, in which thousands 
 of charters, court rolls, bailiffs' accounts, and other 
 records were deposited and sometimes arranged with 
 great care and precision ; but where a great estate 
 was broken up, or there was no longer any important 
 residence upon it, the evidences often found their 
 way into very strange depositories. The family 
 solicitor had to find a home for them, and to do so 
 was often extremely inconvenient ; or the capital 
 mansion became a farm-house, and the evidences 
 were packed in boxes and sent up to the garrets 
 under the roof, in some cases were bundled into 
 the hayloft. By the legislation which simplified 
 the conveyance of land and rendered it' no longer 
 necessary to go back to the beginning of time in 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. io? 
 
 order to prove a title, the ancient " evidences " 
 became at once valueless for all practical purposes. 
 They became not only useless but odious lumber, 
 and a process of quietly getting rid of them set in 
 and has been steadily carried on to the present 
 moment. The rolls of manor courts and courts leet, 
 which give an insight into the daily life of our fore- 
 fathers, and which may still be met with in large 
 numbers, dating back to the days of Heniy the 
 Third, were destroyed by tens of thousands. Docu- 
 ments which could have thrown light upon some of 
 the most interesting problems which are now being 
 worked at by the profoundest jurists and the most 
 acute students- of constitutional history have 
 perished in unknown multitudes. Others ' which 
 contained invaluable illustrations of local customs 
 — of tyrannous overstrainiftg of feudal authority on 
 the one hand or of crafty evasions of feudal services 
 on the other, of the rapacity of lords and stewards 
 bf manors here and of successful appropriations of 
 strips of land or rights of commonage or pasture 
 there — vanished from- the face of the earth, none 
 would tell how. The extent to which this de- 
 struction of ancient muniments has been carried on 
 cannot yet be even approximately estimated. , Never- 
 theless much^ remains. The. interest which such 
 writers as Mr. Seebohm, Mr. Maitland, Mr. Thorold 
 
2o8 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 Rogers, and others have aroused in the many imt 
 portant inquiries which they have severally pursued 
 is increasing day hy day, and there can be no doubt 
 that a desire to become better acquainted with the 
 contents of those documents which still survive and 
 may still be rescued and preserved is spreading 
 rapidly and widely. But " where are they to be 
 kept when we have got them ? " is the question that 
 presses. It is more than can be expected of the 
 civic authorities that they should charge the rates 
 of the town with providing 'house room for collections 
 of MSS. which are but remotely concerned with the 
 history of the boroughs themselves. The local 
 museums as a rule are overcrowded and can barely 
 keep their heads above water. The boxes and 
 bundles of rolls and parchments in the lawyers' 
 pffioes are provokingly in the way ; the country 
 houses are changing hands week by week, and 
 Philistines prefer dressing-rooms to muniments 
 rooms. Will no one suggest a way opt of cup 
 difficulties? 
 
 ; • • # , , • m i 
 
 I have passed veiy lightly over the condition of 
 affairs at Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's, and 
 that for more reasons than one, the chief reason, 
 but by no means the only one, beings that I know 
 nothing about the Abbey muninlents or of those of 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. ,209 
 
 the bishopric of London, and nobody seems able to 
 tell me anything. I have not even alluded to the 
 archdeaconries of the diocese of London. 
 
 Those lofty souls whose habit it is to dogmatize 
 most airily when they declaim most ignorantly, are 
 never more jocose than when they take a turn at the 
 archdeacons and their visitations. Well, it is very 
 funny to think of there being any grotesque survivals 
 of such an institution as an archdeacon's court still 
 existing among us. What a droll prelate Bishop 
 Remigius must have been that he actually divided 
 •his overgrown and unwieldy diocese of Lincoln into 
 seven archdeaconries about twelve years after the 
 Conquest ! How very odd that the successors of 
 those seven functionaries have been going on 
 merrily archdeaconizing down to the present day ! 
 How did they amuse themselves all this long time ? 
 How did they keep up their little game ? " Exer- 
 cising archidiaconal functions, of course." And of 
 course we are expected to receive that novel ex- 
 planation with shouts of laughter. Well, but 
 wouldn't you like to know how they really did 
 employ themselves ? Sxippose you were by chance 
 to hear that the action of the archdeacons' courts 
 had something to do \vith the emigration of the 
 rPilgrim Fathers and many hundreds of their friends 
 to New England, say, in the seventeenth century ; 
 
 15 
 
210 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 something perhaps to do with the death of Arch- 
 bishop Laud and the twenty years' imprisonment of 
 Bishop Wren. Wouldn't you like to know some- 
 thing about it all? What have become of the 
 records of the archdeaconries? I know where a 
 few of them are : but where the great mass of them 
 are to be found I know not, and it would take a 
 great deal of trouble to discover. Those that I 
 know of are in closets in lawyers' offices. A 
 blessing on those lawyers, say I, for they have at 
 any rate preserved some fragments of ancient 
 evidences which but for them would have gone to 
 make glue long ago. But if you want to find out 
 what the ecclesiastical discipline exercised by the 
 archdeacons upon gentle and simple in the old 6iay& 
 was like, you will have to fish up the records of the 
 archdeacons' courts out of their hiding-places, and 
 you will find them to contain some very, very funny 
 items of information, almost as droll as the buf- 
 foonery of those lofty souls. 
 
 If we are ever to arrive; at clearer and truer views 
 of the history of the slow growth of certain moral, 
 religious, and even political convictions among the 
 great body of the people— by the help of, or in 
 despite of, the inquisitorial, coercive, and repressive 
 machinery of the local ecclesiastical courts, which 
 for centuries were exercising a teal and terrible 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 21 1 
 
 power within a ride of every man's door through 
 the length and breadth of the land — we certainly 
 must not neglect that large body of evidence which 
 is to be found in the records of the archdeacons' 
 courts.' But it is obvious that such records must 
 be unified, must be made accessible to students, 
 which means, in other words, that they must be 
 collected into diocesan or provincial archives. 
 
 So with the parochial registers, churchwardens' 
 books, the wills and other MSS. which are more or 
 less concerned with the private and - family life of 
 our ancestors. We have a right to know what our 
 fathers thought and believed, and how they got to 
 break away from this or that superstition, arrived at 
 this or that new truth, were delivered from this or 
 that thraldom, rebelled against this or that wrong, 
 suffered for their errors as if they were crimes, learnt 
 to reverence even doubt when it dawned upon them 
 that doubters could be earnest, noble, and loving, 
 learnt to see that Christian charity could be tolerant 
 even of mistakes; how their horizon widened as 
 their vision became stronger; how as knowledge 
 grew from more to more the old bonds and shackles 
 that cramped the spirit of man became more and 
 more strained even to bursting ; how the old fetters 
 bit into the flesh of some, the old chains wore out 
 th6 hearts &nd brains of others ; how they spoke to 
 
212 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 their children in their last hours; what messages 
 they sent to friends and kindred when the end was 
 drawing very near ; what their hope and trust was 
 as they looked beyond the veil. Yes, we have a 
 right to know these thingsjf they are to be known. 
 You may sneer at the follies of pedigree hunters if 
 you will, and deride the harmless madness of genea- 
 logists ; but I do not envy the man who would not 
 give two straws to find out whether his grandfather's 
 grandfather was a hero or a blackleg, whether he 
 lived the life of a successful pickpocket, or died the 
 death of a martyr for his honest convictions. And if 
 any one is so little acquainted with the curiosities of 
 parish registers, or the contents of parish chests, or 
 the strange secrets often revealed or alluded to in 
 the wills of provincial probate courts, as to suppose 
 that these " rags of time " are wholly wanting in 
 any elements of pathos and romance, he certainly 
 has a great deal to learn, and he knows very little 
 indeed about the contents of documents which he so 
 tranquilly assumes to be " barren all." 
 
 From what has been said thus far I hope it will 
 be clear that I am as little inclined to advocate the 
 removal of the municipal records from their propel 
 homes, the muniment rooms of the provincial 
 boroughs, as I am to propose that the archives of 
 London should be transferred from the Guildhall to 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 213 
 
 any other repository. What is wanted is not 
 centralization but classification. Already it has 
 been found advisable to remove the natural history 
 Qollections from the British Museum and to find a 
 home for them in Kensington. The time may come, 
 and may not be far distant, when a further step will 
 have to be taken in the direction of relieving the 
 congested storehouses at Bloomsbury of some other 
 assemblage of precious objects. In London we 
 find ourselves more and more driven to specialize 
 our collections, if only to save ourselves from 
 bewilderment. 
 
 But as to any great collections of historical docu- 
 ments, except only that at the Record Office, they 
 do not exist; they have still to be made. Mean- 
 while one large class of records — the ecclesiastical, 
 parochial, and testamentary records — may be said to 
 be in great danger of gradually but certainly 
 perishing,, partly from mere disuse, partly from the 
 want of any adequate provision for their safe 
 keeping, partly from the actual uncertainty that 
 attaches to. their ownership. One and all they are 
 national records, the preservation of which ought to 
 be assured to the nation by very different precau- 
 tions from any which now are provided. Whom do 
 the parish registers belong to ? What guarantee 
 have we that X or Y or .Z may not sell "Hiis" 
 
2X4 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 registers to the highest bidder ? In point of fact, 
 parish registers have been bought and sold again 
 and again. Who are the owners of such a splendid 
 collection of historic MSS. as is to be found in the 
 archives of St. Lawrence's Church, Reading? 
 What is to prevent the churchwardens from selling 
 them to a " collector " and appropriating the pro- 
 ceeds towards the expense of a new organ ? Where 
 are the records of Barchester now that the Vener- 
 able Archdeacon Grantley has ceased to edify us 
 with his eloquent charges ? In how many instances 
 is there to be found anything remotely resembling a 
 catalogue of such archidiaconal records ? How many 
 living men have ever consulted such as there are or 
 would know where to look for them ? 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. I have received 
 so much kindness, hospitality^ and cordial assistance 
 at the hands of so many who have laid open their 
 muniments to my inspection, I have found and 
 made among these gentlemen such warm friends 
 that lean only think of them and speak of them 
 with gratitude and esteem. But who knows better 
 than the most learned and most entirely loyal 
 among the custodians of our ecclesiastical and 
 parochial muniments that the state of things as they 
 are is not the state of things that ought to be ? 
 
 And yet there can surely be no insuperable 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 215 
 
 difficulty in grouping together our ecclesiastical, 
 testamentary, and parochial muniments, forming 
 them into one homogeneous collection, and bringing 
 them together into a single provincial record office, 
 taking the geographical limits of the diocese as the 
 area within which the several aggregates of ancient 
 documents shall be deposited. 
 
 Few men can pay a visit to any of our cathedrals, 
 especially those within whose precincts there are 
 still to be found any considerable remains of the old 
 conventual buildings, without being struck by what 
 seems to be the waste of room in the church itself 
 and its outlying dependencies. Not to speak of the 
 side chapels, which some would have a sentimental 
 objection to utilizing— though I know instances 
 where they are mere store places for workmen's 
 tools and lumber — consider the immense areas at 
 our disposal in many a transept, triforium, or 
 chapter house. Consider how comparatively small 
 a chamber suffices, for the most part, to contain all 
 the existing records of a cathedral chapter or of the 
 bishop of a see. Consider how all the parochial 
 registers even of a large diocese from 1538 to 1800 
 Gould easily stand upon a dozen shelves of ten feet 
 long, and all the wills of two or three counties from 
 the earliest times to the beginning of this century 
 could be accommodated without difficulty in many a 
 
2i6 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 drawing-room. Consider all these things and more 
 that I forbear from dwelling on, and it will be 
 abundantly clear that the difficulty of providing 
 accommodation for one group of historic MSS. at 
 any rate will be found insignificant if we set our- 
 selves seriously to deal with it. Within the pre- 
 cincts of our cathedrals there is ample space and 
 verge enough for any such requirements as this 
 group of records may be supposed to make upon us. 
 But assuming that such an assemblage, such a 
 grouping, of historic MSS. were determined on, and 
 that the housing of it were found to be easy and 
 practicable, would it not be necessary that a duly, 
 qualified custodian should be appointed to take the 
 oversight of the collection and to act as the provincial 
 or diocesan keeper of the records ? Of course it 
 would ; and this is exactly what is very urgently 
 needed. I am told that a letter from Mr. Charles 
 Mason, which appeared in The Times not so very long 
 ago, and which gave an account of his experience 
 in trying to institute a search among the diocesan 
 records of Llandaff, " produced quite a sensation in 
 some quarters." I think it must be among those 
 who have had very little experience indeed of similar 
 adventures. The truth is that it is the exception 
 rather than the rule to find among the present 
 responsible keepers of parochial testamentary or 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 217 
 
 episcopal records a gentleman who even professes 
 to be able to decipher the more ancient and precious 
 MSS. which he has under his charge^ The registrar 
 of a diocese, of an archdeaconry, or of a prerogative 
 court, the parson of a parish, or the churchwarden, 
 each and all have something else to do than spend 
 the precious hours upon poring over their muni- 
 ments. 
 
 Such men as Dr. Bensley of Norwich are few and 
 far between. Gentlemen whose duties inyolve many 
 hours a day of arduous and exhausting labour can 
 only devote their leisure moments to research, and 
 when they do so they are in danger of getting 
 sornething less than thanks as their reward. The 
 chivalrous and splendid enthusiasm of the late Mr. 
 Wickenden at Lincoln, of Dr. Sheppard at Canter- 
 bury, of Canon Raine at York, has laid us under 
 profound obligation, but in each and all of these 
 instances the labour of long years has been a labour 
 of love, and the very permission to engage and 
 continue in it has been conceded as a privilege 
 conferred upon the toiler.. Or again, when the 
 fascination which " musty parchments " exercise 
 over some minds has irresistibly impelled such 
 generous students as Archdeacon. Chapman of Ely, 
 the late Canon Swainson of Chichester, or Mr. 
 Syinonds of Norwich, to make sacrifices of time and 
 
2i8 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 money in the preservation or deciphering or calen* 
 daring the precious documents to which their 
 position as members of the chapter gave them free 
 access, they have found some portion of their 
 recompense in the wonder and astonishment of the 
 Philistines that any human being could undertake 
 and carry on so much without being paid for it. 
 
 A registrar is a functionary whose duty it is to 
 keep a register of what is going on from day to day. 
 I suspect it is very seldom part of his duty to find 
 out what people were doing or recording long before 
 he was born. At any rate it is no part of his duty to 
 find that out for you, or to teach you where and how 
 to look for what yoii want to discover. So with 
 the parson of a parish. For the most part he is 
 possessed by a conviction that if he loses his 
 registers something dreadful will happen to him; 
 and accordingly when he goes away for a holiday 
 he leaves his cook in charge, with a solemn warning 
 that she is to let no one see "the books " except in 
 her presence and under her eye ; and a very awful 
 eye it sometimes is. But who of us has not been 
 kindly and frankly told by a genial brother that if 
 we want such or such an entry copied we must 
 come and copy it ourselves, for that our good- 
 natured correspondent cannot make out the old 
 writing? 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 219 
 
 As to the churchwardens, assuming that they are 
 to be looked upon as responsible for the custody of 
 the parochial evidences, to talk of them as keepers 
 of ancient MSS. is a little too ridiculous. It is true 
 that there are in my vestry two dilapidated parish 
 chests, which once presumably were full of wills 
 and deeds and conveyances and evidences, which if 
 they were now forthcoming, might considerably 
 disturb the equanimity of some personages here and 
 there ; but those old chests are used as coal-bins 
 now, and have been so used from times to which 
 the memory of man doth not extend. I could tell 
 some odd stories of my experience as a dryasdust in 
 days when I employed my leisure hours in peeping 
 into the dens and caves of the earth. 
 
 Assuredly if we resolve upon collecting together 
 any group of historic MSS. and making them avail- 
 able for students engaged in original research, it 
 will be necessary to put them under the custody of 
 a trained archmstet as the French call such a 
 functionary, and give him a recognized position as 
 provincial keeper of the records. Such an official, 
 with one or two subordinates under him, should be 
 required to give their time exclusively to the work 
 marked out for them. Let that work be organized 
 in the same way and on the same lines as those 
 laid down in the great London tabulariam. Let 
 
220 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR 
 
 there be the same system adopted of arranging, 
 indexing, and calendaring. Let there be issued 
 periodically reports addressed to the central authori- 
 ties, let the archives- be open to students and in- 
 quirers without fee or any payment. If any one 
 wishes to have a document transcribed or a search 
 made which, if he knew how to set about it, he 
 might carry on himself, let him pay for his " office 
 copy " or his search at a reasonable charge. As for 
 the details of such an arrangement let them settle 
 themselves, as they surely will ; in the meantime 
 let us trust to the golden principle " Solvitui 
 ambulando." 
 
 Can it be doubted that into such provincial 
 depositories there would flow, in the natural course 
 of things, a stream of contributions from the 
 possessors of documents illustrative of county and 
 provincial history, for which their owners have no 
 room in their houses, which they know not how 
 to make use of and are half inclined to burn ? Nay, 
 it will probably come to pass that collections of 
 great historic importance will be committed for safe 
 custody to such provincial archives on the under- 
 standing that they shall in due time be examined, 
 arranged, and reported on, and thus the work now 
 carried on by the Historic Manuscripts Commission 
 will be continued in a much more exhaustive way 
 
NEGLECTED RECORDS. 121 
 
 than is now attempted by the Commissioners, who 
 necessarily spend much of their time and much of 
 the public money in itinerating, and whose work can 
 only be by-work and subordinated to their daily 
 duties and the regular business of their lives. I 
 have known two instances of cartloads of MSS. of 
 great antiquity, and comprehending almost certainly 
 large numbers of charters, letters, rolls, and the like 
 of estimable value and interest, deliberately de- 
 stroyedjand in one of these instances destroyed with 
 some difficulty and at some expense, only because 
 they were " in the way." What I know, others 
 doubtless may find parallels for. Would such a 
 catastrophe have happened if there had been any 
 recognized depository for records of this kind, which, 
 by the very fact of their being guarded with care 
 and intelligence and treated with respect, men had 
 learnt to look upon as having an intrinsic value ? 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 It will be noticed that in the foregoing pages I 
 have said very little about any objections that may 
 be urged or difficulties that may be suggested in 
 carrying out a measure of this character. No 1 I 
 must leave that delightful duty to others. I offer 
 a suggestion. The draughting of a scheme must 
 come by-and-by. As to difficulties, sentimental, 
 professioiial^ or financial, we are sure to hear of 
 
222 CATHEDRAL SPACE FOR RECORDS. 
 
 them. Was there ever a proposal for any sort of 
 reform that had not to run the gauntlet of those 
 clamorous people who love nothing better, and are 
 good for nothing better, thian bawling out, " There's 
 a lion in the way ! " ? There is no need to suggest 
 difficulties to these people ; to do so would be only 
 to intrude into their domain. But this I am more 
 and more convinced of, namely, that there are no 
 difficulties in carrying out such a suggestion as is 
 here brought forward which will not disappear if they 
 are faced with a desire to overcome them, and I am 
 even more convinced that a feeling is growing up 
 in our midst against allowing the present condition 
 of affairs to continue. It is quite sufficiently scan- 
 dalous that we have submitted to it so long. 
 
VI. 
 
 SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 
 
 No truer saying was ever uttered than that "one 
 half the. world does not know, how the other half 
 lives." And yet I am continually contradicted by 
 wiseacres of the streets and- squares when I meekly 
 but firmly maintain that it is actually possible to 
 live a happy, intelligent, useful, and progressive 
 life in an out-of-the-way country parish — " far from 
 the madding crowd " — and literally (as I happen 
 to know at this moment) three miles frorn a 
 lemon. " Don't tell me ! " says one of my agnostic 
 friends who knows everything, as agnostics always 
 do, and who is absolutely certaiui as agnostics 
 always are, that they know a.\l about you — "don't 
 tell me! You may make the best of it as you 
 do, and you put a good face upon it, which I 
 dare say is all right; but to try and make me 
 believe you like being buried alive is more than 
 you can do. Stuff, man I You might as well try 
 kud persuade me you like being snowed up!" 
 
224 SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 
 
 Now it so happened that, a few days after my 
 bouncing and aggressive friend had delivered him- 
 self of this delicate little protest against any and 
 every assertion I might venture to make in the 
 conversation which had arisen between us, I was 
 awaked at the usual hour of 7 a.m. by Jemima 
 knocking at the door; and when Mr. Bob had 
 growled his usual growl, and I had declared myself 
 to be awake in a surly monosyllable, Jemima 
 cried aloud, saying, " It^s awful snow, sir — drifts 
 emendjous ! " I drew the curtains open, pulled 
 up the blinds, and lo! there was snow indeed. 
 Not on the trees — that was well, at any rate — but 
 all the air was full of snow. Not coming down 
 from the clouds, but driving across the fields in 
 billows of white dust — piling itself up against every 
 obstacle — pollard, stump or gatepost, hedgerow, 
 or wall, or farmstead — rolling, eddying, scudding 
 along before the cruel north-easter, that was lash- 
 ing the earth with his freezing scourge of bitterness. 
 At about the distance of a pistol-shot from my 
 window the high road runs straight as a ruler 
 between low banks and thin hedges, and we can 
 see it for half a mile or so till some rising ground 
 blocks the view. This morning there was no road ! 
 — only a loflg broad stripe of snow that seemed 
 a trifle higher than the ploughed lands that lay 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 225 
 
 to the northward, and which were almost swept 
 bare by the gale. To the southward there were 
 huge drifts packed up against every little copse 
 or plantation, and far as the eye could see not 
 a human, creature or sheep or head of cattle to 
 lessen the impression of utter desolation. 
 
 By the time we got down to breakfast the wind 
 had lulled, and fre^h snow was falling. That was, 
 at any rate, an improvement upon the accursed 
 north-easter'. But it was plain that there were 
 to be no ante-jentacular or post-prandial peregrinations, 
 as Jeremy Bentham used to phrase it, for us this 
 day. " My dear," I said, " I'm afraid we are 
 really snowed up ! " Now, what do you suppose 
 was the reply I received from her Royal Highness 
 the Lady Shepherd? Neither more nor less than 
 this — " What a jolly day we will have 1 We 
 needn't go out, need we ? " 
 
 Nathan, the wise youth — agnostic, as he calls 
 himself, which is only Greek for ignoratmis-r-'wovild 
 have sneered at the Lady Shepherd's chuckle, and 
 she^ — she would have chuckled at his sneer. But 
 as he was not there we only laughed, and some- 
 what gleefully set ourselves to map out the next 
 fifteen hours with plans of operation that would 
 have required at least fifty hours to execute. 
 
 "The only thing that can be said for your 
 16 
 
226 SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 
 
 pitiful life," said Nathan to us once, " is that you 
 have no interruptions. But there is not much 
 in that, where there's nothing to interrupt." 
 Nathan, the wise youth, is a type of his class. 
 He's so delicate in his little innuendos, so sym- 
 pathetically candid, so tender to "the things you 
 call your feelings, you know." Do these people 
 always wear hob-nailed boots, prepared at any 
 moment for a wrestling match, where kicking is 
 part of the game ? " No interruptions ! " Oh, Lady 
 Shepherd, think of that 1 " No interruptions ! " 
 
 You observe that our day begins at eight. When 
 we came, first to Arcady we said we would break- 
 fast at half-past eight. We tried the plan for 
 a month. It was a dead failure. Jemima never 
 kept true to the minutes. We found ourselves 
 slipping into nine o'clock ; that meant ruin. It 
 must either be eight o'clock, or the financial 
 bottom of the establishment would inevitably drop 
 out. So eight o'clock it is and shall be. 
 
 At eight o'clock, accordingly, on this particular 
 mdrning we went down as usual to the library— 
 and, I am bound to say, we were just a little 
 depressed, because we had made up our minds 
 that no postman in England could bring us our 
 bag this morning. To our immense surprise and 
 joy, there were the letters and papers lying on 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 227 
 
 the table as if it were Midsummer Day. The man 
 had left the road, tramped along the fields \yhich. 
 the howling wind had made passable. There 
 were nine letters. When I see what these country 
 postmen gO through, the pluck and endurance they 
 exhibit, the downright suffering («'.«., it would be 
 to you and me) which . they take all as a part 
 of the day's work; and how they go on at it, 
 and retire at last^ after years of stubborn jog- 
 trotting, to ienjoy a pension of ten shillings a 
 week and the repose of acute rheumatism conse- 
 quent upon: sudden fcessation from physical exertion, 
 I find myself frequently exclaiming with the .poet, — 
 
 Many the wonderful things, that be, but the woridier of 
 wonders is — ^Man ! ' 
 
 Now it will be a surprise, perhaps a very great 
 surprise, to some of my genuine town friends, to 
 learn that even a country parson — ^who after all 
 is a man and a brother — ^gets pretty much the 
 same sort of letterSf that other people do. He 
 gets offers to assign to him.shares in. gold mines; 
 offers; of three dozen and four, positively all that 
 is left, of that transcendental sherry; offers, to 
 make him a life governor of the new college for 
 criminals ; invitations to be a steward at a public 
 
228 SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 
 
 dinner of the Society for Diminishing Felony; 
 above all, he gets some very elegant letters from 
 gentlemen in very high positions in society offering 
 to lend him money. I do verily believe these 
 scoundrels, virho invariably write a good hand on 
 crested paper and express themselves in a style 
 which is above all praise, are in league with one 
 of my banker's clerks. How else does it happen 
 that, as sure as ever my account is very low 
 and that I am in mortal terror lest my last 
 cheque should be returned dishonoured, so sure 
 am I to hear from one of these diabolical tempters ? 
 There's one scarlet Mephistopheles who must know 
 all about my financial position. How else could 
 he have thought of sending me two of his gilt- 
 edged seductions in a single week just when my 
 banking account was overdrawn ? It is absurd to 
 pretend that he keeps a medium. 
 
 Moreover, proof sheets come by post even in 
 this wilderness, and they have to be corrected, too ; 
 and real letters that are not begging letters come, 
 some kind and comforting, some stern and uncom- 
 promising, some with the oddest inquiries and 
 criticisms. Sometimes, too, anonymous letters 
 come. What a queer state of mind a man must 
 have got himself into before he can sit down to 
 write an anonymous letter! Does any man in 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARC AD Y. 229 
 
 his senses ever read an anonymous letter of four 
 pages ? If he does, the writer gets no fun out 
 of it. I am inclined to think that the practice 
 of writing anonymous letters is dying out now that 
 the schoolmaster is abroad ; and yet, they tell mcj 
 insanity is not decreasing^ Then, too, there are 
 the newspapers. I could live without butter — I 
 shouldn't like it, but I could submit to it ; or 
 without eggs, though I dislike snow pancakes; or 
 without sugar — and there are some solids and some 
 liquids that are insipid without that ; but thbre 
 is one thing I ;ould not do without — I could hot 
 do without tht Times. We have tried again iiiid 
 again to economize by having a penny paper, but 
 it has always ended in the same way. As entremets 
 they are all delightful, but for a square meal give 
 me the Times. Without it " the appetite is dis- 
 tracted by the variety ofbbjects, and tantalized 
 by the restlessness of perpetual solicitation," tillj 
 when the day is done, the mind wearies under 
 " a feeling of satiety without satisfaction, and of 
 repletion without sustenance." 
 
 On this particular morning we had adjourned from 
 the library to the breakfast-room, and were opening 
 our letters in high spirits, spite ' of Nathan the 
 
 ' Why will not the printers' readers let me use this word ? 
 I do use it every day of my life in talk ; why may I not write 
 
230 SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 
 
 wise, and notwithstanding the bitter wind and the 
 snow, when a hideous sound startled us. There, 
 under the window, the snow steadily falling, drawn 
 up in single file, were four human creatures, two 
 males and two females, arrayed in outlandish 
 attire* and every one of them playing hideously 
 out of tune. It was a German' band ! 
 
 A- more lugubrious spectacle than is presented 
 by a German band, droning forth "Herz, mein 
 Herz" in front of your window in a snowstorm 
 it, would be difficult to imagine. We suffer much 
 from Germaa bands, but we have only ourselves 
 to thank. I love music, and I am possessed by 
 the delusion that it is my duty to encourage the 
 practice of instrumental execution. Five or six 
 years ago there was a band, of eight or nine per- 
 formers who perambulated Norfolk, and they came 
 to me at least once a month. Whenever they 
 appeared I went out to them and gave them a 
 shilling, airing my small, modicum of German 
 periodically, and receiving flattering compliments 
 upon my pronunciation, which gratified me ex- 
 ceedingly. These people disappeared at last, but 
 
 it and print it? It, is very short, and it is perfectly harmless. 
 I am afraid it nciust mean something bad in Finnish or some 
 other strange tongue, for the reader always draws my attention 
 to it. 
 
SJVO WED UP IN ARC AD Y. 231 
 
 they were succeeded by another band, and a very 
 mferior one, and I took but little notice of them. 
 There were seven of these performers, a cornet 
 and two clarionets being prominent — ^very. How- 
 ever, they got their shilling, and vanished; Threes 
 days after their departure came another band : this 
 time there were only four, I thought that rather 
 shabby, but I was busy, did not take much notice 
 of them, and again gave them a shilling. The 
 cornet player was really quite respectable. Next 
 day came four more, and there was no cornet, 
 only the abominable clarionet. It was insufferable.. 
 I said I really must restrict myself to sixpence, 
 and that was fourpence more than they were worth. 
 Two days after their departure came a single 
 solitary performer ; he had a pan-pipe fastened 
 under his chin, a peal of bells on his head, which 
 he caused to tinkle by his nods, a pair of cymbals 
 attached to his elbows, a big drum which he beat 
 by the help of a crank that he worked with one 
 of his feet, and a powerful concertina which he 
 played with his hands. He led off with a dolo- 
 rous chorale in a minor key. It was really more 
 than flesh and blood could bear. " Send him 
 away, Jemima. Send him away ! — instantly 1 Tell 
 him I am sehr krank. Send him away I " The 
 fellow smiled with unctuous complacency. But 
 
232 SNOWED UP IN ARC AD Y. 
 
 when he got only twopence, his face fell. "Ach, 
 nein ! You plaize, ze professor, he geeve one 
 sheeling to ze band — I am ze band. He geeve 
 ze band only twopence. He do not understand 
 I am ze band ! You plaise tell him I am ze 
 band ! " " No ! You're to go away. Master's 
 sore and kranky 1 " Ze band loitered for half a 
 minute, then it took itself to pieces and went its 
 way. But the fellow's hint about the shilling 
 was significant, and led to an investigation. Then 
 it turned out that the band of seven or eight 
 which was going its rounds that year, split itself 
 up when it came into my neighbourhood, and^ 
 in view of my shilling, presented itself in two 
 detachments, each of which reckoned on my 
 shillings and several times carried it off. Now I 
 give one penny for each performer, and only 
 when there is a cornet do I send out coffee to 
 the instrumentalists. 
 
 It was, however, not in flesh and blood to with- 
 hold the shilling from the players of that quartette 
 on that bitter morning. It was heart-rending to 
 think of their having at the peril of their lives 
 staggered through three miles of snow-drifts. It 
 was inhuman to send them away without coffee. 
 And they had it accordingly. Poor things ! poor 
 things! Where were they going ? They were 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 233 
 
 going back to the " Red Lion," a stone's throw ofl, 
 where they had slept the night before, and where 
 they meant to spend this night in delighting the 
 hearts of the rustics by waltzes and polkas, and 
 gathering not such a bad harvest for the nonce. 
 " Lor, sir 1 " said Mr. Style, " to hear that there 
 trombone a so^eing ' Rule Britannia ' ! That made 
 you feel he was a real musician — 'that it did ! " 
 
 So you see we began the day witli a band of 
 music. That does not sound so bad. But the band 
 being dismissed, we finish our breakfast and retire 
 to the library. 
 
 We do not go empty-handed. Each of us carries 
 a plate piled up high with bread cut up for the 
 birds that are waiting to be fed. A space under the 
 window is swept clear from snow, and there the 
 birds are, ready for their breakfast. Sparrows by 
 the score, robins that will hardly wait till the 
 window is opened, chaffinches and tomtits, dun- 
 nocks, blackbirds and thrushes, linnets and-^jack- 
 daws, yes 1 and, watching very warily for a chance, 
 a dozen or so of rooks in the trees in yonder 
 plantation, very much excited, ver}' restless, very 
 shy, but ready to come down and gobble up the 
 morsels if we keep ourselves out of sight. As to 
 the robins, there is no mauvaise honte about them ; 
 they will almost fly on to the plate. Sometimes I 
 
234 SNOWED UP JN ARC AD Y. 
 
 send a shower of morsels quite over the robins, 
 and they greatly enjoy the fun. One saucy little 
 fellow last week laughed out loud at me. 
 "Laughed?" Yes, laughed! I've known a robin 
 laugh convulsively. But then it was not under a 
 street lamp. 
 
 It . is one of the laws of this palace that we do 
 not begin real work before half-past nine. And 
 before that time arrives there is usually a good 
 half-hour for reading aloud by the Lady Shepherd: 
 What is the Shepherd doing meanwhile? He is 
 not going to tell you anything more than this, that 
 he is devoting himself during that half-hour to 
 preventing the ravages of moths and bookworms. 
 You people who suppose we poor country folk must 
 be horribly dull and depressed inay as well under- 
 stand that this library in which I am sitting is an 
 apartment that for a country parsonage may be 
 regarded as palatial. Pray haven't I a right to 
 have one good room in my house? One thing I 
 know, and that is that I am rated as if I lived in 
 a house of £430 a year, and if I must pay rates on 
 that amount I may as well have something to show 
 for it. Also I would have you to know that the 
 walls of this library are lined with books from floor 
 to ceiling. Then there are flowers all about — 
 grown on the premises, mind you — none of your 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 235 
 
 bought blossoms stuck on to a bit of stick with a 
 bit of wire, but live flowers that turn and look at 
 you^-at any rate, they certainly do turn and look 
 out at the window if you give them a chance. 
 Moreover, they are not under the dominion of a 
 morose stipendiary, for the suificient reason that the 
 head gardener is the Lady Shepherd, and the under 
 gardener only conies three times a week, and Jabez 
 has his hands full, and Ishmael is no servant of 
 ours; but the servant of the maids in the kitchen ; 
 and when you're snowed up Ishmael must give his 
 life to the solemn duties of a stoker and filler of 
 coal-scuttles,, and to shovelling away the snow, and 
 to running errands. There is no doubt about the 
 seriousness of that boy. He is oppressed by the 
 sense of his responsibility, and convinced that he 
 occupies the position of the divine being in Plato's 
 Thecetetus. As long as to ov kept his hand upon the 
 world it went round all right ; when he took it off, 
 thie world straightway spun round the wrong way. 
 That being Ishmael's view, he is naturally grave. 
 When the maids shriek at him he exhibits a terror- 
 stricken alacrity, but when I tell him to do this or 
 that, he looks at me with a cunning expression as if 
 he would say, " Do you really mean that ? Well, 
 you must take the consequences." Then he glides 
 off. From Ishmael not much is to be expected in 
 
236 SNOWED UP IN ARCADV. 
 
 the greenhouse. But when half-past nine strikes I 
 roll my table into position and set to worki my head 
 gardener puts on her apron and gathers up her 
 skirts, and starts forth with her basket on her arm, 
 equipped for heir day's work. 
 
 Now, if a man has four good hours in the morning 
 which he may call his own, it's a great deal more 
 than most men have, and there's no saying what 
 may be done in such hours as these. But if you 
 allow morning callers to disturb you, then it's — I 
 was going to say a bad word I 
 
 I had just settled myself to work in earnest when 
 Jemima's head appeared, " Please, sir, Tinker 
 George wants to see you." "Tell your mistress." 
 And I thought no more about it, but went on with 
 what I was doing; If Tinker George had been one 
 of my parishioners I should have jumped up and 
 heard him patiently, but Tinker George does not 
 belong to me, but td the next parish, and as his 
 usual object in coming to see me is to show me his 
 poetry, I passed him on this time, knowing very 
 certainly that he would not be the worse for my 
 not seeing him. An hour later I got up to warm 
 myself. " May I speak ? " said the Lady Shepherd. 
 " I let Tinker George go away, but I'm afraid you'll 
 be sorry I did. 1 think you would have liked to 
 see him." "What's the matter?" "He's been 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 23^, 
 
 writing to the dear Queqn" (the Lady Shepherdr 
 always speaks of "the dear Queen ") "and he came 
 to show you the letter, and to ask what address he 
 should put on it." 
 
 Tinker — George — writing to — the — Queen ! 
 What did the man want ? He wanted to be 
 allowed to keep a dog vvithout paying tax for it, 
 George goes about with a wheel, and he calls for 
 broken pots and pans.. Sometimes he finds the boys 
 extremely annoying, they will persist in turning his 
 wheel when his back is turned and he has gone into^ 
 a house for orders. Now, you see, if he had a dog: 
 of spirit and ferocity chained to his wheel, George 
 might leave that wheel in charge of that dog ; but 
 then a dog is an expensive luxury when there is the 
 initial outlay of seven shillings and sixpence for the 
 tax. So he wrote to the Queen, and he put it into 
 the post, and I never saw it. This was just one of 
 those things which cause a man lifelong regret, all 
 the more poignant because so vain. The Lady 
 Shepherd is the most passionately loyal person in. 
 England, and she firmly believes, that there will 
 come a holograph reply from her Majesty in the; 
 course of a few days addressed to Tinker George^ 
 promptly and graciously granting him his very 
 reasonable request, " I've promised Tinker 
 George," she added, "to give him a sovereign for 
 
238 SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 
 
 the letter when it comes, and it shall have a box 
 all to itself among my autographs." 
 
 Be pleased to observe that it was only just noon, 
 and two events of some interest had happened^ 
 already, though we were snowed up. But at this 
 point I must needs inform you who we are. In the 
 first place there are the Shepherd and the Lady 
 Shepherd ; in the second place there are the Shep- 
 herd's dogs. No shepherd can live without dogs — 
 it would not be safe. No man ever pulled another 
 man out of the snow : it is perfectly well known 
 that men don't know how to do it. Till lately we 
 had three of these protectors. But — ehm fugaces ! 
 — we have only two now ; one a blue Skye, silky, 
 surly, and exceptionally stubborn ; and a big colley, 
 to whom his master is the Almighty and the All-wise. 
 I do not wish to claim more for my friends than is 
 due to them. Ours are only average dogs ; but they 
 are average dogs. And if any one will have the 
 hardihood to assert that he holds the average man 
 to be equal to the average dog in morals, manners, 
 and intelligence^ I will not condescend to argue with 
 that purblind personage. I will only say that he 
 knows no more about dogs than I do about moles, 
 and I never kept a tame mole. 
 
 Nothing perplexes some of my friends more than 
 to hear that I do not belong to a single London 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 239 
 
 club. Not belong to a club ? One man was struck 
 dumb at the intelligence ; he looked at me gravely — 
 suspicion in every wrinkle of his face, perplexity in 
 the very buttons of his waistcoat. He was working 
 out the problem mentally. I saw into his brain. 
 I almost heard him say to himself, " Not belong to 
 a club? Holloa! Ever been had up for larceny? 
 Been a bankrupt ? Wonder why they all black' 
 balled him ? — give it up 1 " He evidently wanted 
 to ask what it meant — there must be something 
 wrong which he did not like to pry into : a skeleton 
 in the cupboard, in fact. 
 
 " I said a London club ! " I added, to relieve his 
 embarrassment. " Of course I do belong to a club 
 here-r-the Arcadian Club. It's a very select club, 
 too, and we can introduce strangers, which is an 
 advantage, as you may perhaps yourself have felt if 
 you have ever been kept for ten minutes stamping 
 on the door-mat of. the Athenaeum with the porter 
 watching you while that arch boy was sauntering 
 about, pretending to carry your card to your friend 
 upstairs. We are rational beings in our club, and 
 I'll introduce you at once — Colonel Culpepper, 
 Toby I Colonel Culpepper, Mr, Bob." Neither 
 Toby nor Mr. Bob took the least notice of the 
 gallant colonel^ who seemed rather shy himself. 
 "They're dangerous dogs are GoUeyS) so I'm told. 
 
240 SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 
 
 In London it does not so much matter, because, 
 you see, they must go about with a muzzle. And 
 this is really all the club you belong to ? " 
 
 Yes. This and no other ; the peculiarities of our 
 club being that false witness, lying, and slandering 
 were never so much as known among the members. 
 There is a house dinner every day, music every 
 evening, no sneering, no spite, no gossip, no 
 entrance f«e, no annual subscription, no black- 
 balling, no gambling, no betting, and no dry 
 champagne or dry anything. Show me a club like 
 that, my dear colonel, and I'll join it to-morrow, 
 whether in Pall Mall or in the planet Jupiter. At 
 the present moment I know of only one such club, 
 and it is here — the Arcadian Club ! Enjoy its 
 privileges while you may, and be grateful. 
 
 Seriously, I defy any club in England or any- 
 where else to produce me iifty per cent, of its 
 members so entirely courteous, cordial, and club-, 
 bable — so graceful, intelligent, and generous — such 
 thorough gentlemen, and so entirely guiltless of 
 talking nonsense, as our friends Toby and Mr. Bob. 
 Of course there are the infirmities which all flesh 
 is heir to, and jealousy is one of these. But put 
 the case that you should say to a little man, " You 
 may sleep inside that door on a cushion by the fire," 
 and say to a big mem, " You're to sleep outside that 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 241 
 
 same door on the mat ! " and put the case that each 
 of those men knew he was a member of the same 
 club to which the fire, the cushion, and the mat 
 belonged :^and pray what modtts vivendi could be 
 found between the big man and the little man on 
 this side the grave ? 
 
 But to return. The snow had ceased falling, but 
 in the bleak distance as far as the eye could see, the 
 road was blocked by ugly-looking drifts, in which a 
 man on horseback might very easily be buried and 
 flounder hopelessly till he sank exhausted never to 
 rise again. There was nothing stirring exdept the 
 birds, looking fluffy, cold, and starving. So I turned 
 my chair to my table again and resumed my task. 
 
 Hark! Actually a ring at the front^door bell. 
 The dogs growled and sniffed, but there was no 
 fierce barking. Confound these tramps ! < T'hat 
 trombone has gone back to the " Red Lion," and 
 the rogues are oozing out to practise upon our 
 weakness. "That's not a tramp," said the Lady 
 Shepherd. "Toby didn't bark." She was right,' 
 as she always is. For Toby has quite an unerring 
 discernment of the proximity of a tramp. His gift 
 in this line is inexplicable. How the great Darwin 
 would have delighted to observe that dog ! If it 
 was not a tramp, who could it be ? "I believe it's 
 Polusl" said the Lady Shepherd. "Only Polus 
 
 17 
 
24? SNOWED UP IN ARC AD Y. 
 
 could have the ferocity to come here in defiance of 
 the snowdrifts." Right again. It was Polus. She 
 had given him the name because he was eager to 
 get into the County CQunciLi— Poor man ! He only 
 got three votes. — There was no reference to the 
 young gentleman in the Gorgiiis who bore that 
 name — only a desire to indicate that he was the 
 man who went to the Poll. 
 
 It was hardly more than noon ; we were snowed 
 up, and yet already we had had music ; poetry as 
 represented by Tinker George; a flood of literature; 
 and now there was discussion imminent on the pro- 
 foundest questions of politics, philosophy, and law. 
 
 Enter Polus ! What in the world had brought 
 him hither this dreadful day?. What had he been 
 doing ? whither was he going ? Should we put 
 himto bed? To send for a doctor was out of the 
 question. But we could soon get liim a mustard 
 poultice and a hot bath. Polus laughed the hearty 
 laugh of rude health and youth. "lYou,. dear old 
 people, you forget I'm only thirty-five.' I've had a 
 pleasant walk from Tegea-^greased my boots well 
 — only Tolled over twice. I'v? come for a talk. 
 Dearme! dear meJ Didn't I see a moth thereon 
 the curtains ? Curious that they should come out 
 in such numbers when you're snowed up I May I 
 help you to get rid of the pests ? " 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 243 
 
 The man had come to show his defiance of the 
 laws of nature and ordinary prudence. In fact, he 
 had come for mere eussedness ! Also he had come 
 for a conference. What was the subject to be this 
 time ? " Anything but the education question," 
 said I ; " we must draw the line somewhere. 
 Woman's rights, Man's wrongs. Agricultural de- 
 pression. The People's Palace. The Feudal 
 System. , The Bacon-Shakespeare— fanything yoo' 
 please in- reason — but Education ! No ! Not for 
 world's." It was not long before the cat jumped 
 out of the bag. Polus was bent on floating a most 
 magnificent new International League. His ideas 
 were a trifle mixed, but so are those of many men 
 in our times. Polus makes the mistake .of bottling 
 his grand schemes and laying them . down, as it 
 were, when they ought to be kept on draught. The 
 result is that there's always a superabundance of 
 froth — or shall we call it foam? — that we have to 
 plunge into before we can taste of that pleasant 
 draught ; and when you have drunk about half your 
 fill, there's a wholly unnecessary and somewhat dis-; 
 agreeable- sediment at the bottom, which interferes! 
 with your enjoyment. Thus the new League was 
 to be so comprehensive a League, for effecting so 
 many desirable objects, that it was diificult to dis* 
 cover what the main object was— or, in fact, if the 
 
244 SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 
 
 main object did not resolve itself into an assemblage 
 of objects, each of which was struggling with the 
 rest for prominence and supremacy. 
 
 On this occasion Polus had the effrontery to begin 
 by assuring me that I was in honour and conscience 
 bound to join the League, for the idea of it had 
 been first suggested to him by a pregnant and 
 suggestive saying of mine some months before. 
 " What ! when you were so hot for the abolition of 
 the punishment by death ? " Oh dear no. He'd, 
 changed his mind about that long ago. " Was it 
 when you were advocating the desirability of-the 
 labourers having the cows and the landlords keeping- 
 the land ? " " No, no ! I've improved greatly 
 upon that. Haven't you heard ? I'm for letting 
 the landlord keep the cows, but giving the labourers 
 the calves only ; that appears to me the equitable 
 adjustment of a complex question." I thought a 
 little, and Polus gave me time. What was it? 
 What could it have been that we had been talking 
 about? Enfantin's hullucinations and the dual 
 priesthood (couple-prStre) ? Fourrier's Phalanstery ? 
 It must have been an obiter dictum which dropped 
 from me as he laid down the law about Proudhon. 
 I shook my head. " Don't you remember ? En- 
 tails ! " 
 
 Then it appeared that the great League was to be 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARC AD Y. 245 
 
 started for the abolition of everything in the shape 
 of entails. In our last conference I had let fall the 
 remark that for every acre of land tied up in strict 
 entail there was a thousand pounds sterling tied up 
 in much stricter entail. If you are going to deal 
 with the one, why not with the other ? Polus was 
 putting on his hat when I gave him that parting dig, 
 and I thought I had sflenced him for ever. So far 
 from it, I had but sown a new seed in his soul, and 
 now he came to show me the baby. 
 
 Polus meanwhile had plunged into the heaving 
 billows of statistics. He had discovered, to his 
 own satisfaction, that 500 millions of the National 
 Debt was strictly entailed ; that 217 millions be- 
 longed prospectively to babes unborn ; that the 
 British people were paying " enormous taxes, sir ! " 
 not only for the sins and extravagances of their 
 forefathers, but for enriching of their hypothetical 
 progeny. That it was a state of things altogether 
 outrageous, irrational, monstrous, and a great many 
 other epithets. Would I join the League ? Of 
 course I'd join a league for the extinction of nasal 
 catarrh or the annihilation of stupidity^ — gladly, but 
 upon conditions. I must first know how the thing 
 is to be effected. Your object may be heroic, but 
 the means for carrying out this glorious reform ? 
 the machinery, my dear Polus ? Let me Hear 
 
246 SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 
 
 more about that. A new voyage en Icarie implies 
 that you are going to embark upon some safe 
 vessel. By the way, how did Cabet get to his en- 
 chanting island ? 
 
 Hereupon ensued an elaborate monologue, admir- 
 ably expressed, closely reasoned, carrsang not so 
 much conviction as demonstration along with it. 
 Granting the premises, the conclusion was inevi- 
 table. It was as good as Bishop Blougram. The 
 scheme was this: Property — even in the funds^s 
 a fact. There is no denying that. Therefore face 
 the facts first, and deal with them as such. Timid 
 reformers go only halfway towards building up the 
 ideal social fabric. They say meekly, nationalize 
 the land. The true reformer says, abolish all per- 
 Ihanent financial obligations, But hardships would 
 ensue upon any sudden and violent extinction of 
 private debts. Prudence suggests that you should 
 begin by a gradual extinction of public debts — in 
 other words, the National Debt. The living holders 
 of stock shall be fairly dealt with, and during their 
 lifetime they shall enjoy their abominable dividends 
 wrenched from the pockets of the people. As they 
 drop off — and the sooner they go the better — their 
 several claims upon the tax-payer shall perish with 
 them. -None shall succeed to their privileges of 
 robbing the teeming millions. All stock standing 
 
SNOWED UP 2N ARC AD Y, 247 
 
 in the name of trustees shall be transferred to the 
 names of the present beneficiaries, and shall be ex- 
 tinguished by the death of the several holders. All 
 powers of bequest in regard of such stock shall be 
 taken away. In the case of infants — and there are 
 147,623 of such cases — ^who are only prospective 
 owners of stock — being only prospective owners, and 
 therefore having never actually tasted the joys of 
 unrighteous possession — they shall continue to be 
 prospective owners, and never be allowed to become 
 anything else. They will have nothing to complain 
 of; you takejfrom them nothing that they eyer had. 
 All that will happen to them will be that they will 
 be saved from cherishing delusive hopes, such as 
 should never have been aroused in them. The 
 scales will drop from their eyes; they will no longer 
 be the victims of treacherous phantasni& The 
 sooner they learn their glorious lesson the, better, 
 ^hey will speedily rise to a true conception of the 
 dignity of citizenship, and grow to the stature of a 
 loftier humanity, whose destiny who shall fore- 
 shadow? "Now, my dear Doctor," said Polus, 
 pausing fpr a moment in his harangue, " I ask you 
 as a Christian and a philosopher, is. not ours a 
 magnificent League^ and is not the vision that opens 
 before us sublime ? " 
 " Place aux dames ! Place aux dames ! " I 
 
248 SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 
 
 answered. " Ask the Lady Shepherd. Let her 
 speak." 
 
 • •■•••■ 
 It is a curious physiological fact that I have been 
 puzzled by for several years past, and which I am 
 only half able to explain or account for, that flashing 
 eyes have almost disappeared from off the face of 
 the earth. You may see many sorts of eyes — eyes 
 of various shades of colour and various shapes — 
 eyes that glitter, that gleam, that sparkle, that 
 shine, that stare, that blink ; even eyes that are 
 guilty of the vulgarity of winking ; but eyes that 
 flash with the fire and flame of wrath, and scorn, 
 and scorching indignation — such as once or twice 
 I have cowered and trembled under when I was 
 young — such eyes have passed away ; the passion 
 in them has been absorbed in something, it may be 
 better or it may be worse — absorbed in utter tender- 
 ness. The last time I saw eyes flash was when a 
 certain college don came to pay his respects to a 
 teftain little lady^ — she was a little lady then — a 
 week after she was married. The old blunderer 
 boasted that he had been on Lord Fowis's committee 
 on a certain memorable occasion. "Ah, my dear 
 madam, you are too young to know anything about 
 that, and your husband of course was an under- 
 graduate. But- " The man almost jumped 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 249 
 
 from his chair ; he turned pale as an oyster. The 
 little lady sprang up a pillar of flame. " Do you 
 mean, sir, that you voted against the Prince Con- 
 sort ? You will oblige me by not referring to the 
 subject." I rang the bell again and again ; I 
 called for buckets of water — the whole room seemed 
 to be, the whole house seemed likely to be on fire. 
 
 Ah! there were real live Tories (spelt with a 
 capital T) then. We were blue or yellow, not a 
 pale green made up by smudging the two together. 
 We didn't stand upon legs that were not a pair'. 
 None of your Conservative Liberals or Liberal 
 Conservatives going about hat in hand and timidly 
 asking, " What will you be good enough to wish to 
 have conserved ? " It was " Church and Queen, 
 sir, or salt and water. No shilly-shallying." Hesi- 
 tate, and nothing remained for you but pistols for 
 two in the back yard. Argument ? Nay ! We 
 dealt with that as Uncle Sammy's second wife did, 
 and everyone knows that 
 
 She with the heel of assertion 
 Stampt all his arguments down I 
 
 If I could have looked forward in those days, 
 what a monster would my future self have appeared ! 
 Tempora mutantur nos et mutamur in illis. 
 
350 SNO WED UP IN ARCAD V. 
 
 Somethitig in the look of the Lady Shepherd's 
 eyes this snowy morning reminded me of the old 
 terrible flash ; but it all passed, and only merriment 
 shone out. " Sublime, my good Polus ? How can 
 a vision be sublime ? A visionary is at best a 
 dreamer, and a vision is a sham. A sublime sham 
 is a contradiction in terms. Why don't you try and 
 talk sense sometimes? You're not a bit better 
 than that chit of a girl with a mop on her head 
 that came gabjsling here last week. But it's like 
 you men — you've no more common sense than this 
 trowel I Visions indeed ! 
 
 I gladly live amid the real, 
 And I seek a worthier ideal. 
 Courage, brdChers ; God is overhead 1 
 
 Ah ! you may laugh. But it's all on my side." 
 
 Away she swept, basket and trowel and all. Stop 
 to listen to that gibberisb^-not she ! 
 
 When her Royal Highness came back to us [in 
 these moods she is the Princess, in her gentler and 
 more pastoral moods she is the Lady Shepherd] she 
 found us deep in another part of the discussion. 
 The business of the Great International League 
 having extinguished the National Debt by a very 
 simple process, the next stall in the Augean stable 
 of existing abomination, as he expressed it, must be 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 251 
 
 dealt with. " Suppose we change the metaphor, my 
 dear Polus, and say the next plank in your platform 
 must be pulled up." " Pulled up ? Quite the con- 
 trary. Fixed, firmly fixed, nailed down ! " " Be it 
 so ! Let us look at the plank. A stall in the stable 
 of abominations suggests dirty work, you know ! " 
 
 The next great problem which the Great Inter- 
 national League sets before itself to solve is this : 
 the National Debt being annihilated, how is the 
 accumulation of property to be prevented in the 
 future ? I observed that at this point Polus was 
 not so inclined for the monologue form of discussion 
 as before* It was not the Socratic speaking ex 
 cathedrd, as in the Laws ; there was a quite unusual 
 glad-of-a-hint attitude, as in the Lysis or the Meno. 
 
 " Come," I said, " I see through you ; you haven't 
 thought it out,' and you want me to give you a hint. 
 Which is it to be ? Am I to serve as whetstone, or 
 do you conie in trouble and pain crying out for rijv 
 fiaieiav? " He threw up his hands : " Speak, and I 
 will listen." Then said I, "0 Polus, you're just 
 the man I want. Everybody knows I am a dull 
 old dog, slow of thought and slow of speech as a 
 country' bumpkin must be; feeling after my words, 
 and as often as not choosfng the wrong ones. But 
 I have been excogitating of late a theory which will 
 supply your next plank to perfection, and in fact 
 
2S3 SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 
 
 would make your fortune as a politician, if indeed 
 the Great League will allow you to have any 
 property, even in your brains. Forty years ago — 
 for there were thinkers, my dear Polus, in the waste 
 places of the earth even before you were born — I 
 came across quite a " sublime " scheme of some 
 French financier, propounded, I think, during the 
 Great Revolution, for which the world was not yet 
 ready. The man was before his age, and his own 
 generation pooh-poohed him. I quite forget his 
 name. I quite forget the title of his book if he ever 
 wrote one ; and I shall be very much obliged to you 
 if you can find out something about the great man, 
 for a great man he was. When I heard of this 
 scheme I was little more than a lad, and now, after 
 much cogitation, I cannot honestly tell you how 
 much of the plan is his and how much my own. 
 But I'll give him all the credit for it." 
 
 The scheme was a scheme for automatically 
 adjusting all incomes and reducing them to some- 
 thing like equilibrium — that is, the operation of the 
 process set in motion would tend in that direction. 
 All incomes, no matter from what sources derived, 
 were to be fixed according to an algebraic formula, 
 and the formula was this : 
 
 •0001 {x — w)= = The income tax levied upon each 
 citizen. 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARC ADV. 253 
 
 Here x = the actual income earned by the citizen ; 
 
 m = 1,000 pounds sterling, or an equivalent 
 
 in francs or dollars, if you prefer it. 
 
 When x=m, then of course there could be nothing 
 
 to pay ; which is only another way of saying that a 
 
 man with ;f 1,000 a year was free from all taxation. 
 
 When X was greater than m, then taxation upon 
 the income in excess of £i,OQO came into operation 
 with rather alarming rapidity : until when a man 
 was convicted of having in any single year made 
 £"10,000 his taxation amounted to £8,100 for that 
 year, and if he were ever found guilty of having 
 made an income of £'12,000 the State claimed the 
 whole in obedience to this great and beneiicent law. 
 
 But what happens in the case of those who have 
 an income below the £1,000 a year — ^that is, when x 
 is less than m ? 
 
 In tlM^ case the grandeur and sagacity, not to 
 speak of the paternal character of the scheme, 
 become apparent. The moment a man begins to 
 earn more than the normal £"i,ooo a year, that 
 moment he begins to pay his beautifully adjusted 
 quota of taxation to the State ; but the moment that 
 his income falls below the £"1,000, that moment the 
 State begins to pay him. Of course you will not 
 forget that minus into minus gives plus, therefore the 
 square of the n,inus quantity represented by x-^mt 
 
2S4 SNOWED UP IN ARC ADV. 
 
 where m is greater than x, offers no difficulty. The 
 two poles of this perfect sphere, if I may so speak, 
 this financial orb — ter.es atque roiundm— -are reached, 
 first when «=o, last when a; = £'ii,ooo. In the 
 first case the State comes to the help of the pauper 
 who has earned or can earn nothing, and gives him 
 a ten-thousandth part of a hypothetical million, 
 which amounts to exactly :^ioo a year ; in the other 
 case the State deprives the bloated plutocrat of a 
 ten-thousandth part of the same million, and relieves 
 the dangerous citizen of ten thousand out of the 
 eleven, saying to him^ "Citizen, be grateful that you 
 still have your thousand, and beware how you persist 
 in piling up riches, for the State knows how to 
 gather them," 
 
 " Now, my dear Folus, next time you come, do 
 bring me tidings of my Frenchman, an4 do work the 
 thing out on paper, for I never was much of a 
 mathematician* , and now my decimals are scan- 
 dalously vague ! " So Polus went his way ^with a 
 dainty rosebud in a dainty paper box for Mrs. Polus, 
 and a saucy message from the Lady Shepherd, 
 " Tell her, with my love, I'm very sorry her hus- 
 band's such a goose 1 " We watched him flounder- 
 ing through the snowdrifts ; and I verily believe 
 he was working out my problem with his stick, 
 •oooi {x-^m)'^. 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY, 25$ 
 
 I don't think that man went away much impressed 
 with the darkness and desolation of our Arcadian 
 life. Nay, I'm inclined to think the other side had 
 something to say, and I'm afraid this is what it 
 said : " Oh yes, it's all very fine — intellectual inter- 
 course, and so on. Freshens you up? Glad to see 
 people ? Of course I am. But I did hope we were 
 going to have a long day together, and there ! it's all 
 broken into. It's always the way. How was I to 
 do my autographs with him extinguishing my 
 ;f 1,000 in the funds all the while ? " 
 
 • ••«•» 
 
 Here I may as well explain that the Shepherd and 
 his lady are th& objects of some wonder and per- 
 plexity to their great friends on the one hand and 
 their little friends on the other. The first pronounce 
 them to be poor as rats ; the second declare that 
 they are rollihg in richest This conflict of opinion 
 is easily accounted for. When the great and noble 
 Asnapper comes to smile at us he has to take pot- 
 luck. Come when he may, there is all due pro- 
 vision — 
 
 Ne turpe toral, ne sordida mappa 
 Corruget hares, ne non et cantharus et lanx 
 Ostendat tibi te. 
 
 But the forks are all electro-plate, and the dishes 
 
2S6 SNO WED UP IN ARC AD Y. 
 
 are all of the willow pattern. When meek little Mr. 
 Crumb brings Mrs. Crumb and two of the eight 
 daughters to enjoy one hearty meal at afternoon tea, 
 he is awe-struck by the sight of the books and the 
 splendour of half a dozen good engravings hanging 
 upon the walls. As the old grey pony trots home in 
 high spirits — for Jabez has a standing order always 
 to give that poor little beast a double feed of corn — 
 Mr. Crumb remarks to Mrs. Crumb, " Those people 
 must be extremely affluent. I wonder he does not 
 restore his church ! " 
 
 The great and noble Asnapper, on the contrary, 
 observes, " All the signs of deep poverty, my dear. 
 Keeps his pluck up, though. Quite out of character 
 with the general appearance of the establishment to 
 have those books and collections and what not. I 
 suppose some uncle left him the things. Cooking ? 
 I forgot to notice that ; but the point of one's knife 
 went all sorts of ways, and the earthenware was 
 most irritating. Eccentric people. The Lady 
 Shepherd, as they call her, has actually got near a 
 thousand autographs. Why in the world doesn't 
 she send them up to Sotheby's and buy some new 
 stair carpets ? " Ah ! why indeed ? Because such 
 as she and the Shepherd have a way of their own 
 which is not exactly your way, my noble Asnapper ; 
 because they have made their choice, and they dc 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 257 
 
 not repent it. Some things they have, and take 
 delight in them; some things they have not, and 
 they do without them. 
 
 But not even in Arcady is it all cakes and ale. 
 Thank God we have our duties as well as our enjoy- 
 ments ; pursuits and tastes we have, and the serious 
 blessed duties which call us from excess in self- 
 indulgence. When the roads are blocked for man 
 and beast we chuckle because there can be no obli- 
 gation to trudge down to the school a mile and a 
 half off, or to go and pay that wedding call upon the 
 little bride who was married last week, or to inquire 
 about the health of Mrs. Thingoe on the common, 
 whose twins are ten days old. 
 
 But snow or no snow, as long as old Biddy lives, 
 one of us positively must go and look after " the old 
 lady." Every man, woman, and child in the parish 
 calls her " the old lady," and a real old lady she is. 
 Biddy was ninety-three last November. She persists 
 she's ninety-four — " leastways in my ninety-four. 
 That Register only said when I was christened, you 
 know, and who's a-going to say how long I was born 
 before I was christened ? " 
 
 Biddy has been married three times,'and she avers 
 that she wouldn't mind marrying again if she could 
 get another partner equal to her second. Every one 
 of her husbands had had one or more wives before 
 
 18 
 
258 SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 
 
 he wedded Biddy, We make out that Biddy and 
 her tjiree spouses committed an aggregate of twelve 
 acts of matrimony. If you think that old Biddy is a 
 feeble old dotard, drivelling and maundering, you 
 never made a greater mistake in your life. She is 
 as bright as a star of the first magnitude, and as 
 shrewd as the canniest Scotchman that ever carried a 
 pack. She is almost the only genuine child of 
 Arcady I ever knew who has a keen sense of 
 humour, and is always on the look-out for a joke. 
 She is quite the only one in whom I have noticed 
 any tender pity for the fallen, not because of the 
 consequences that followed the lapse, but simply and 
 only because it was a fall. Biddy lives by herself in 
 a house very little bigger than an enlarged dog- 
 kennel, and much smaller than an average cow-house. 
 Till she was eighty-three she went about the country 
 with a donkey and cart, ha,wking ; since then she 
 has managed to exist, and pay her rent too, on 
 eighteen pence a week and a stone of flour. She is 
 always neat and clean, and more than cheerful. 
 She has been knitting socks for me for eight years 
 past, and I am provided with sufficient hosiery now 
 to last me even to the age of the patriarchs. Of 
 course we demoralise old Biddy ; her little home is 
 hardly too yards off the parsonage, and every now 
 and then the old lady comes to tea in the kitchen. 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 259 
 
 One of the servants goes to fetch her, and another 
 takes her home ; and, as I have said, most days one 
 of us goes to sit with her, and I make it a rule never 
 to leave her without making her laugh. You may 
 think what you like, but I hold that innocent merri- 
 ment keeps people healthy in mind and body, 
 improves the digestion, clears the intellect, brightens 
 the conscience, prepares the soul for adoration — ^for 
 is not gaiety the anticipation of that which in the 
 spiritual world will, be known as fulness of joy ? 
 
 On this day of snow I found Biddy sitting before 
 the fire, half expecting me and half doubting whether 
 I could get there. " 'Cause, you know, you ain't as 
 young as you was when you came here first." " Is 
 any one, Biddy?" She looked up in her sly- way. 
 " Dash it, I ain't ! " By her side on the little table 
 was a Book of Common Prayer in very large print, 
 and her spectacles on it. " I've begun to read that 
 book through," she said, " and I've got as far as 
 where it's turned down, but there's some on it as 
 I've got to be very particular with. That there 
 slanting print, that's hard, that is; that ain't so 
 easy as the rest on it. But I'm going to read it all 
 through for all that. You see I've done it all before, 
 and. some of it comes easy." " Well, Biddy, you 
 ought to know the marriage service by this time." 
 "And so I do," said Biddy, grinning. "But I never 
 
26o SNOWED UP IN ARC AD Y. 
 
 had no churchings, and I don't hold wi' that there 
 Combination. Dash it ! I never did like cussing and 
 swearing ! " » It turned out that Biddy had set her- 
 self the task of reading the Prayer Book through, 
 rubrics and all. Very funny, wasn't it ? Pray, my 
 reverend brethren of the clergy, have you all of you 
 set yourselves the same task and carried it out ? 
 
 A little later the Lady Shepherd dropped in to 
 look at Biddy. She found the old woman chuckling 
 over some very mild pleasantry of mine, which she 
 repeated in her own odd way. Suddenly she stopped. 
 " Our doctor won't live to ninety-four ! " " Oh, 
 Biddy, that's more than you can tell. One thing 
 is quite certain ; if he does, you won't be here to see 
 him." " Why sha'n't I ? " answers Biddy. " He's 
 nigh upon threescore, ain't he? and I'm in my 
 ninety-four. You can't tell, neither, as I shan't be 
 here. The Lord knows." 
 
 • •.••• 
 
 Dear old Biddy ! Who does know anything ? It 
 seems to me that we can none of us know anything 
 about anything but the past. I hardly know 
 whether .we are most ignorant of the things that 
 shall be or the things that are. Old Biddy is the 
 last of the old-world folk that fascinated me so much 
 
 ,' Fact 1 Old Biddy's habit of dashing «V is so cpnfirmjed that 
 there's no hope of her outgrowing it. 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARC AD Y 261 
 
 with their legends and traditions and reminiscences 
 when first I settled among them — it seems but 
 yesterday. Old Biddy has told me all she has to 
 tell, the gossip and the experiences of, days that 
 were not as our days. With her will pass away all 
 that is left of a generation that was the generation 
 of our fathers. If I leave her ^yith a smile upon the 
 wrinkled old face there is more often a shade of 
 sadness that passes over my own. Other faces rise 
 up before me ; other voices seem to sound ; the 
 touch of the vanished^ hand — gone — gone! , As, I 
 turn homeward with bowed head in thjC grey twi- 
 light, and muse upon those ten years that have 
 rushed by so peacefully, and yet which have remorse- 
 lessly levied their tribute and left me beggared of 
 some who were dearer than all the jewels of the 
 mine — 
 
 The farm-smokes, sweetest sight on earth, 
 Slow through the winter air a-shrinking, 
 
 Seem kind o' sad, and round the hearth 
 Of empty places set me thinking. 
 
 That, however, is not because Arcady is Arcady, but 
 because life is life. 
 
 Such as we have long ago found the secret of 
 contentment, and something more. Shall I tell you 
 what that secret is? Will you promise to take it 
 as the rule of your own life if I do? Here it 
 
262 SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 
 
 is, then, wrapped up in a very short and pithy 
 aphorism — " The man who does not like the place 
 he has to live in is a fool." Ponder it well, you 
 people who are never tired of prescribing " a change " 
 as absolutely necessary to endurable existence. 
 Banished to the sweetest village in England, how 
 dazed and forlorn you'd be ! We could accommodate 
 ourselves to your life as easily as we could put on a 
 new suit of clothes. You could never accommodate 
 yourselves to ours. You would mope and pine. 
 Your only solace would be in droning forth a new 
 version of the Tristia, which would not be half as 
 melodious as Ovid's. 
 
 This poor Shepherd and his Lady Shepherd will 
 never see the Alps again — never take a boat on 
 Lugano's lake in the summer evening, never see 
 Rome or Florence, never again stand before the 
 Sistine Madonna, hearing their hearts beat. Ravenna 
 will remain for them unvisited, and Munich will be 
 welcome to keep its acres of splashes, which Britain's 
 young men and maidens are told with some insis- 
 tence are genuine works of Rubens, every one of 
 them. These are joys of the past. But if you 
 assume that two old fogies like us must be longing 
 for a change, fidgeting and hankering after it, and 
 that we must be getting rusty, dull, and morose for 
 lack of it, that we are eating our hearts out with a 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARC AD Y. 263 
 
 querulous whimpering, instead of brimming over 
 with thankfulness all day and every day — then you 
 do us grievous wrong. What, sir! Do you take 
 us for a couple of babies floundering in a tub, and 
 puling for a cake of Pears' Soap ? Arcady or Athens 
 is much the same to us. Where our home must be, 
 there are our hearts. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 THE AUTOMATIC ADJUSTMENT OF INCOMES. 
 
 This — the great financial measure of the future — 
 can hardly be expected to commend itself to the 
 philosophic economists of the present day. It is the 
 penalty which every man who is before his time must 
 expect to pay for his excessive sagacity, that his con- 
 temporaries neglect or deride him. Accordingly the 
 very name of the French thinker who suggested this 
 beautiful scheme for ensuring Liberty, Equality, and 
 Fraternity has been forgotten and — will it be be- 
 lieved? — the number of those who have ever taken 
 the trouble to work out his formula is quite dis- 
 gracefully small. 
 
 The Formula ai the great unknown stands thus : — 
 
 •oooi (x — iii)°= ' The amount which the state deals with 
 in all incomes above ;£ioo a year. 
 Here x = the income, m = ;£i,ooo. 
 
 ' Inasmuch as the general reader has a strong objection to the use of 
 Decimals, it will be a comfort to him to be assured that multiplying by 
 'OOOI is the same thing as dividing by 10,000 ; and so 'oooi (x — m) * is 
 only another way of writing (^ — m) ' 
 10,000 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 263 
 
 In working out this Formula, the Rule may be stated aa 
 follows : — 
 
 1. From the number of pounds of income (x) deduct 1,000. 
 
 2. Multiply the remainder into itself, i.e., square it. 
 
 3. Divide the product by 10,000. 
 
 The result will give — 
 
 (i) The amount paid by the State to the owners of income 
 
 under £,1,000 a year, 
 (ii) The amount paid to the State by owners of income 
 
 above ;£ 1,000 a year. 
 
 Examples : — 
 (a) Income of {/2.0a a year ; i.e., x = 200. 
 200 — 1,000 = -800. 
 -800 squared ; \i.e., -800 multiplied by -800] = 640,000. 
 
 „ , ,640,000 
 Result of -r——- = 64. 
 10,000 ^ 
 
 Consolation income to all possessors of ;£ 200 a year. . . £,()\, 
 
 ifi) Income of ;^soo a year ; »'.«., z = 500. 
 500 — 1,000 = -500. 
 -500 squared ; [*.«., -joo multiplied by -500]'= 250,000. 
 
 „ , , 250,000 
 Result of -~T- = 25. 
 10,000 ' 
 
 Consolation income to all possessors of ;^5oo a year. . . {fl^. 
 
 {£) Income of £fpa a year ; i.e., z = goo. 
 900 — 1,000 = -100. 
 -100 squared ; \i.e., -100 multiplied by -100] = io,ooa 
 
 „ , , 10,000 
 Result of ^„' = I. 
 10,000 
 
 Consolation income to all possessors of ;£9oo a year. , . £,\. 
 
266 SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 
 
 (d) Income of ;^i,ooo a year ; i.e., x = r,ooo, 
 1,000 — 1,000 = o. 
 o multiplied by o = a 
 
 Consolation income to all possessors of j£i,ooo a year. • o. 
 
 («) Income of ;£2,ooo a year ; ?'.«., x = 2,000. 
 2,000 — 1,000 = 1,000. 
 1,000 squared [i.e., 1,000 multiplied by 1,000]= 1,000,000. 
 
 „ , , 1,000,000 
 Result of ' ' = 100. 
 10,000 
 
 Income tax f aid by all possessors of ;£'2,ooo a year. . . ;£ioo. 
 
 Reduced to a tabulated form it becomes evident that the con- 
 solation paid by the State to all owners of income below £\,<xa 
 will decrease as the incomes increase ; until, when a prosperous 
 gentleman attains to ;£i,ooo a year, the consolation will dis- 
 appear, and instead of receiving anything he will begin to pay 
 tax upon his income, such tax becoming greater and greater as 
 his income grows — until, if he be so rash as to attain an income 
 of ;£ 1 1,000 a year, he will pay ;£ 10,000 a year income tax, and if 
 he does not take this warning and rises to ;^i2,ooo a year the 
 State will not only claim all his ^12,000 but demand ;£ioo a 
 year more. 
 That is to say, 
 
 A. 
 Incomes of 
 
 £200 will receive from the State the Consolation of £ft\ 
 300 » » i> 49 
 
 400 n » »« 36 
 
 500 » » »i 25 
 
 600 „ „ II 16 
 
 700 „ „ I, 9 
 
 800 „ „ „ 4 
 
 900 » )) II I 
 
 1,000 „ „ ,1 Nil 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY, 267 
 
 B. 
 Incomes of 
 
 £flflao will pay to the State a Tax of ;£ioo 
 
 3,000 „ „ „ 400 
 
 4,000 „ „ „ 900 
 
 5,006 „ „ „ 1,600 
 
 6,000 „ „ „ 2,500 
 
 7,000 „ „ „ 3,600 
 
 8,000 „ „ „ 4.9°o 
 
 9,000 „ „ „ 6,4Do 
 
 10,000 „ „ „ 8,100 
 
 11,000 „ „ f, 10,000 
 
 12,000 „ „ „ 12,100 
 
 The richest man in the community will thus be he who has 
 an income of ;£6,ooo a year ; on this he will have to pay ^£2,500 
 income tax, leaving him with an available balance of ;£3,50o a 
 year to spend I Now was not this anonymous Frenchman a 
 man of real genius 7 And is he not a signal example of the 
 truth that 
 
 " The world knows notbing of its greatest men " t 
 
 The assumptions on which this lofty attempt to reconstruct 
 the social fabric are based are obvious. They are these : — 
 
 I. That the earners of daily or weekly wages are not owners 
 of property, nor can they be classed among the pos- 
 sessors of a secure annual income. De minimis non 
 curat lex. 
 
268 . SJVO WED UP IN ARC AD Y. 
 
 II. That it is to the advantage of the community to increase 
 the number of small capitalists, and to assist them with 
 State aid — though in a diminishing ratio as their pro- 
 perty or incomes increase, and they need less and less 
 encouragement 
 III. That it is equally for the advantage of the community to 
 decrease the number of large capitalists and to dis- 
 courage the accumulation of wealth in few hands ; and 
 therefore it is necessary to fix a limit of wealth which 
 men shall not be permitted to exceed. 
 
 Oh ! ye Astors and Vanderbilts ! Ye Roths- 
 childs and Barings ! Ye kings of railroads and 
 bacon and nitre ! Aye ! and such as thoii citizen 
 Labouchere — thou of the morbidly sensitive con- 
 science. Tremble, for your day is coming ! 
 The age of hap-hazard and empirical finance is 
 passing — the age of scientific and philosophic re- 
 adjustment is about to dawn. There are those 
 whose mission it will be to set all things straight, 
 and to bring peace on earth and goodwill to men by 
 the exquisitely simple machinery of Fiscal Reform. 
 When that time comes Mammon's Kingdom will 
 sink to be a mere tributary to the great pantisocracy 
 of the future. Hoarding and accumulating will pass 
 away and die — brought to an end by the phlebotomy 
 of the scientists. Money-grubbing will be an incident 
 
SNOWED UP IN ARCADY. 269 
 
 in the historic romances of that happy time, and the 
 tutored youth, young men and maidens, will smile at 
 the darkness and fumbling stupidity of those un- 
 taught generations who only chattered of a golden 
 age, with never a dream that a better age than that 
 would come with the revolving years — to wit, the 
 age of — 
 
 •0001 (X — m)". 
 
VII. 
 
 WHY I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 
 
 Many more years than I like to acknowledge, have 
 passed away since a day when my father caught me 
 slinking out of his library with Mrs. Trollope's 
 " Travels in the United States " under my arm. 
 He laughed at my absurd precocity, for I was little 
 more than a child, and as he took the book away 
 from me, he said, " My boy, that is not a book for 
 you to read. It is not even true. You shall go 
 to America yourself one day, when you're a man, 
 and you'll know better than to write that kind of 
 stuff." It was a great hope that was stirred by 
 that promise that I should go to America myself 
 some day. I used to think about it, and wonder 
 when I might look forward to being a man, and 
 how it could be managed, and who would help me, 
 and whether I should settle there and own a slave. 
 A hundred times I have dreamt of Boston, and of 
 Richmond, for somehow I never thought of New 
 York, and there was no Chicago then, and no San 
 
WIIV I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. vj\ 
 
 Francisco. Perhaps, too, the United States might 
 collapse before I ever grew to be a man, and that 
 was a prospect that made my heart sick to think 
 of. I have been told, indeed, that one night I 
 awoke with a cry, and was heard to exclaim, " Pray, 
 God, keep America till I've been and seen it ! " 
 
 And yet I never have seen America, and I am 
 afraid I never shall see it now, though my youthful 
 prayer has been answered, and America has been 
 kept and seems in small danger of collapsing yet 
 awhile. I have reatl a great many books a,bout 
 America since those days; but |t am bound to 
 say they have not made me much in love with the 
 writers, and I am also bound to say that they have 
 given me very, very little information upon exactly 
 those points that I most wished to inquire into. 
 Of late years I have altogether given up this kind 
 of literature. I believe the last time I looked into 
 any one of these so-called "Travels," or "Tours," 
 or " Reminiscences," was when Mr. Anthony Trol- 
 lope's volumes appeared, and I could not get 
 through them. Somehow my father's words on 
 the mother's book seemed to apply to the son's, 
 and spite of myself his voice seemed to be saying 
 to me, " It is not even true ! " 
 
 But though I have ceased to read books about 
 America, the strong desire to see the New World 
 
272 IVIiy I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 
 
 has never faded ; nay, it has increased in intensity 
 as the years have gone on, and what was at first 
 but a vague hankering after something merely 
 visionary, has gradually become a definite longing' 
 to see and know an attainable reality. My friends 
 laugh at me and assure me I should be very' 
 much disappointed ; that I should not like it ; 
 that no man ought to go to the States after thirty ; 
 that at Cincinnati there are only hogs to see, and at 
 Chicago only monstrous corn warehouses, at New 
 York only monster hotels, and at Boston — oh, 
 dear! such arrogant prigs; finally, that it would 
 be quite impossible for me to continue wearing a 
 white cravat over there, for the washing of my 
 linen would simply ruin me. I hold my peace, 
 but I am not convinced, and I still wish to visit 
 America. And why is this wish so strong in me ?' 
 I will try to answer that question as briefly as I 
 can, but I must needs answer it in a disorderly 
 kind of way, and give my reasons as they occur 
 to me, without any attempt at systematic arrange- 
 ment. 
 
 First and foremost, let it be understood that I 
 wish to visit America because I am so very ignorant 
 about the real life of a great nation that has sprung 
 into magnificent maturity in a single century. 
 History has nothing like a parallel to produce, 
 
IP'HY I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 273 
 
 which can for a moment be compared with the 
 growth of this nationality. I use that word ad- 
 visedly. As to the mere progress in wealth and 
 numbers, that does not impress me much. From 
 anything I have heard or read, it does not seem 
 to me inconceivable that a horde of Chinamen, 
 urged on by avarice and selfishness, might have 
 done quite as much as has been done in the 
 United States in the same time, if John Chinaman 
 had happened to get the start; but if they had 
 done so, they would, I am convinced, have remained 
 a horde of Chinamen still. There would have been 
 no new nation; there would have been nothing 
 like the sublime patriotism that, to my mind, 
 characterizes the great American nation ; none of 
 that incomparable chivalry that animated a whole 
 people during the war of secession ; none of that 
 proud sensitiveness that surprises cosmopolitan 
 philosophers when they hear Americans speak of 
 "the flag." This is what I should like to look 
 into, like to ask about, like to study on the spot, 
 namely, What is the amazing cohesive force so 
 infinitely potent to bind together into one corporate, 
 living nationality, atoms so dissimilar as the popula- 
 tion that makes up the great American people ; 
 which, as I understand it does, seems to give a 
 new focus to whatever old love of home warms 
 
 iq 
 
274 WJiy I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 
 
 the breast of German, or Dane, or Swiss, or 
 Englishman; which makes them, one and all, 
 forget their old country and their father's house, 
 and lose all desire to return ; which, extinguishing 
 the old love of fatherland, replaces it by a new 
 love, a passion for the glory of the present, with 
 its boundless hopes and ambitions, and an almost 
 haughty contempt for traditions ; this exulting con- 
 fidence in a great destiny which disdains the lessons 
 of experience, and does not ask from them guidance 
 or instruction or warning? Am I wrong? or is 
 it not the fact that Americans have incomparably 
 more faith in the solvitur ambulando principle than 
 in any other, and that, whenever it is a question 
 between looking back to see what others have done, 
 and looking forward regardless of all precedent, 
 they always prefer striking out a new line rather 
 than following another's lead ? Above all men 
 upon earth, Americans are self-reliant, self-assert- 
 ing. Yet, was there ever a people so much at 
 unity with itself? Selfishness never seems to 
 diminish the intense national pride ; the fierce 
 war of parties in politics never seems to affect 
 patriotism. A whisper of disrespect to " our 
 country," or the semblance of a sneer at it, and 
 woe to you ! Is not this so ? I should like to see 
 the Working of this mysterious and, to my mind, 
 
WHY I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 275 
 
 awful force, a force that acts upon the new-comer 
 with exceeding rapidity. How soon does the immi- 
 grant feel its operation? By what processes does 
 it exercise its prodigious sway ? How is it that the 
 Dutchman, who has spent all his life in Java, 
 looks to lay his bones with his father's at Amster- 
 dam or the Hague ; that our own Australian 
 colonists, when they have " made their pile," 
 come back to us and call England still their home ; 
 that the Frenchman is always a Frenchman, with 
 an astonishing faculty of producing a bad copy of 
 French fashions wherever he settles, and no power 
 of assimilating himself to the manners and customs 
 of the people among whom he sojourns ; but that, 
 when people go to America, it is only a question 
 of time when they will become Americans — become 
 absorbed, that is, into a new nationality ? These 
 are questions I should like to ask on the spot, and, 
 if possible, test the truth of the answers suggested. 
 
 As there are these problems that present them- 
 selves in what I may call the national life of 
 America, so there are others in the political life 
 of the America^ people that I have never been 
 fortunate enough to find discussed adequately." 
 
 We in England have been spending fifty years 
 in timidly feeling our way toward giving our masses 
 a voice in the election of members of Parliament. 
 
276 IVHY I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 
 
 We are on the eve of a great change, when some- 
 thing very like manhood suffrage will he ushered 
 in among us. It is undeniable that among the 
 upper and middle classes there is a feeling of great 
 uneasiness at the prospect, amounting in some 
 quarters to absolute terror and despair, of what 
 may be coming in the not very distant future. 
 Yet America has prospered in spite of universal 
 suffrage, and, as far as I know, seems to be by 
 no means afraid of it. One hears, indeed, of 
 numbers of dainty people, who are sometimes 
 spoken of as "the upper classes" in American 
 society, affecting to hold aloof from "political life 
 and taking no part in the strife of parties. It 
 may be so; but do not these citizens of the great 
 commonwealth who give themselves such airs — 
 these a'Xpit<rrot iroXirai, as somebody calls them, 
 who, like naughty children, won't play because 
 they can't always be on the in side — constitute a 
 very insignificant number ? The fact remains that 
 the enormous majority of Americans are not only 
 earnest and, if I am rightly informed, passionate 
 politicians, but they go to the polls in shoals. 
 That fact alone strikes some of us here with 
 wonder ; and the wonder increases upon us enor- 
 mously when we are assured that this deep interest 
 in political questions appears to be wholly distinct 
 
way I WISH TO visit America. 277 
 
 from the political excitement that intermittently 
 rouses the masses in Europe to outbreaks of frenzied 
 hate against established institutions. In France 
 men get wild with panic lest the ouvriers should 
 turn upon the bourgeoisie. In Germany the 
 socialists have their own ends in view, and do not 
 disguise them. In Ireland the wretched peasantry 
 avow their designs to confiscate the land. The 
 war of politics with us is eminently selfish, and 
 in proportion as it is carried on with more and 
 more passion the less there seems to be of real 
 patriotism. On our side of the Atlantic it is be- 
 coming increasingly apparent that the character- 
 istic of our political warfare may be described as 
 
 Each man lusting for all that is not his own. 
 
 Mr. Lowell has summed it all up in one of those 
 stinging antitheses that are so stinging they can 
 hardly be true, when, speaking from the American 
 point of view, he says : 
 
 Their people's turned to mob — our mob's turned people. 
 
 How is it that in America the masses can be 
 disciplined so readily to take their side, and to 
 engage so heartily in the fray, moving together as 
 mysteriously as the swallows that with scarce 
 
278 IVHY I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 
 
 audible twitterings gather in thousands, plume 
 their wings for flight, seem to hesitate for a brief 
 hour, and the next are gone ? We, indeed, have 
 of late been aping some American practices, and 
 trying our hands at the caucus, and the three 
 hundred, and what not. I suspect it is a very 
 feeble imitation, and I suspect that one of my 
 American friends was right when he said with a 
 laugh: "Your fellows don't know their business; 
 they don't understand what they are talking about. 
 They're first-rate at turning out steel pens and such 
 small ware, but they'd better leave our political 
 machinery alone. You're too crowded up in your 
 little island to find room for one of our big fly- 
 wheels ! " But how is all this enthusiasm for 
 politics kept up with comparatively so little appeal 
 to the lowest selfishness ? and how are these . 
 immense numbers manipulated, the vast armies 
 handled as skilfully as if they were soldiers on 
 parade ? It is all inexplicable to large numbers of 
 wiseacres in England, who will persist in talking 
 of petty "motives" and "reason" as if they were 
 the prime factors in every social problem. 
 
 And this leads me to touch upon another matter, 
 on which I feel myself profoundly ignorant, and 
 which I am sure that others here are quite as 
 ignorant about as I am. We are told that in 
 
WHY I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 279 
 
 America there is a recognized profession of politics, 
 just as here there is a medical profession or a 
 legal profession, or, if this is putting the case 
 too strongly, just as here there is the profession 
 of journalism. How in the world do the members 
 of this profession get along? A new President is 
 elected, and we are told that all the old officials 
 are turned out. Where do they go ? What be- 
 comes of them? What is the effect upon the 
 executive ? With us the patronage of the govern- 
 ment, at any rate in the civil service, has been 
 reduced to a minimum. Our executive is to a very 
 great extent, indeed, independent of the govern- 
 ment of the day. " Men may come and men 
 may go," but permanent secretaries " go on for 
 ever." So do commissioners and their clerks, 
 and the thousands of stipendiaries to whom it 
 matters not one straw whether the Radicals are 
 in or the Tories. With us, when a man has gained 
 an appointment by passing a good examination at 
 eighteen or nineteen years old, it is his own fault 
 if he ever loses it. Practically, there is no getting 
 rid of him as long as he can do his work; he is 
 as safe as a judge, and irremovable. But in 
 America, we hear, every four years they shuffle 
 the cards, and away they go ! What results from 
 this ? Am I wrongly informed ? or is there more 
 
28o IV/iy I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 
 
 absolute patronage, patronage pur et simple, in the 
 hands of the President of the United States than 
 in any other hands on the face of the earth? 
 Assuming that it is so, what, I ask, must be the 
 effect upon the moral sentiments of the people at 
 large, inevitably brought day by day and hour by 
 hour into relations with a class of eager office- 
 seekers, hungry, alert, jealous, disappointed, un- 
 priiicipled, or vindictive, according to their success 
 or failure, in getting what they consider their due. 
 Do the " outs " accept the logic of facts without 
 demur, and forthwith betake themselves to other 
 callings ? 
 
 That in every change in the chief magistracy of 
 a nation every stipendiary of the executive, from 
 the postman to the judge of the supreme court, 
 should get his dismissal, and the Democrat clerk 
 in the custom-house who was behindhand with his 
 work on Monday evening should leave his arrears 
 to be made up by his Republican successor on 
 Tuesday morning; that when President A enters 
 upon his office, a new game should be begun, and 
 the pieces be all set up again, regardless of the 
 position in which the knights or the pawns were 
 when President B was checkmated, — all this seems 
 to us, from our point of view, not only difficult to 
 understand, but difficult to imagine. Surely, theory 
 
IVHY I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 281 
 
 and fact in this matter must differ very widely. 
 Am I only exposing my ignorance ? 
 
 I have used the terms " upper and middle 
 classes " on a previous page. When I have 
 asked Americans what the subtle barriers are that 
 in American society separate class from class, they 
 have replied more than once, " In America there 
 are no classes! We have no differences of rank 
 with us." Strange ! And yet we hear of colonels 
 and generals and senators often enough, and I am 
 much mistaken if such titles are at all less esteemed 
 on that side of the water than on this. Be it as 
 it may, however, rank and title may be shadows, 
 but class differences are substantial things. With 
 us the titular aristocracy constitute a class, an 
 inner circle, that at one time united in itself shadow 
 and substance, and now tends to become less 
 exclusive and less influential, however loudly some 
 may complain that 
 
 ... in these British islands 
 'Tis the substance that wanes ever, 'tis the symbol that exceeds : 
 
 We love rank, because we have a lingering sus- 
 picion that it somehow symbolizes wealth, or 
 power, or brilliant intellectual gifts, or great public 
 services,, that have forced their possessors into the 
 front rank at some time or other, and received 
 
182 IVffy I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 
 
 their due recognition in the shape of titular dis- 
 tinction conferred either recently or in days gone 
 by. But if a title is found to be dissociated from 
 any nobleness of character, and is unsupported by 
 brain power or purse power, it will not save a man 
 from humiliating snubs, or give him the entree to 
 the drawing-rooms of the upper classes. For we 
 have more than one upper class among us, as other 
 nations have had and will continue to have while 
 the world lasts. In that social world where Mrs. 
 Grundy bears sway, our titular aristocracy un- 
 doubtedly are the acknowledged leaders, and to 
 them great homage is paid. But it is not only 
 because a man is an earl, or a lady is a duchess, 
 that the one or the other is surrounded by a little 
 court, approached with deference and treated with 
 studied respect, but because both the one and the 
 other are rich enough to " support the title," as 
 we say. Yes, it is true that in some sense or 
 other 
 
 Our nobles wear their ermine on the outside, or walk blackly 
 In presence of the social law, as most ignoble men. 
 
 You may protest that society in England is under 
 the dominion of a plutocracy, then. Yes! and 
 No ! Yes ! in so far as it is true and always must 
 be true, that no man or woman can live on familiar 
 
WHY I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 383 
 
 terms, and keep up the habitual intercourse with 
 the leisure classes, without a certain amount of 
 money. No ! in so far as it is also true that money 
 alone, however abundant it may be, will never, 
 among us, give any one an introduction to what 
 we call society. I have heard of cases, and I 
 know of one, where a millionaire from our colonies 
 took a palace in London, and lived en prince; 
 was visited by no one, failed to get into any 
 but a third-rate club, found no one to entertain 
 and but few people to speak to ; and finally has 
 gone back from whence he came, astonished, dis- 
 appointed, and soured. They tell me that wealth 
 in America will gain admission to any society for 
 any one. I have been repeatedly assured by in- 
 telligent Americans that this is so ; yet I cannot 
 understand that it should be so. 1 can quite under- 
 stand that, whatever a man's rank, or gifts, or 
 prospects may be, he would find it very painful to 
 mix with the upper ten thousand if he could not 
 afford to pay for cab-hire, or keep up his subscrip- 
 tion at the club, every day finding it hard to get 
 his dinner, and every night perplexed de lodice 
 paranda; but I can no more understand how a 
 mere expenditure of cash could get X, Y, or Z 
 into the best society, than I can understand how 
 a payment of, say £10,000, would get an average 
 
284 f^^y / WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 
 
 cricketer into the All-England eleven, or a second- 
 rate oar into the University crew. The Corporation 
 of London is a plutocracy; but society, while 
 accepting his lavish hospitality, treats even the 
 Lord Mayor of London Ae haut en bas. The Lady 
 Mayoress receives ambassadors with condescen- 
 sion; next year some young attache stares at Mrs. 
 Tomkins, and wonders where he has met that 
 woman. 
 
 Who are the upper classes in America ? It is 
 nonsense to say there are none. Not to speak of 
 those states in pre-Christian times that tended 
 more or less to become dominated over by an 
 oligarchy, Athens was at least as pure a republic 
 as America is ; her people were as proud, as self- 
 asserting, as audaciously enterprising, as ambitious, 
 as shrewd in commercial ventures, as greedy for 
 money, and as lavish in spending it, as the 
 Americans are ; yet the " first families " among 
 the Athenians were as haughty as Spaniards, as 
 exclusive as the old French noblesse, and bragged 
 of their ancestry as absurdly as Scotchmen do. 
 If a loud-voiced, bawling demagogue came to the 
 front by sheer force of will and impudence, his 
 political opponents never allowed the populace 
 to forget that he was brought up in a tan-yard. 
 Demosthenes gives point to his most withering 
 
tvffy I WISH TO visn America. 285 
 
 sarcasms against iiEschines by reminding his audi- 
 ence that he was the son of a school-mistress, and 
 had to scrub the ink off the desks at which his 
 mother taught the dirty little urchins ; and who 
 that has read the " Clouds " can forget Strepsiades's 
 doleful lamentation over his fatal mistake in marry- 
 ing a fine lady with a pedigree, and begetting a son 
 who did not take after his father ? There must be 
 an aristocracy in America who stand upon their 
 birth rather than their mere wealth, yet how little 
 we hear of them. What recognition do they re- 
 ceive ? How is it they so seldom come to be 
 leaders ? How is it that Hyperbolus seems to 
 push aside Cimon, and Cleon is quite too much 
 for Alcibiades ? 
 
 It used to be said that no two Englishmen could 
 be found to maintain a conversation together for 
 five minutes without one asking the other what 
 he thought of the weather. It is true still; but 
 there is another question that of late years has 
 become the stock question when two people meet 
 one another, and that is, "When are you going 
 away?" If a man replies boldly that he is not 
 going away at all, he is looked upon as the very 
 impersonation of eccentricity. " Not going away ! 
 Why, vvhat are you going to do ? " This " going 
 away " means leaving our country-houses when 
 
286 WHY I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 
 
 the flowers are in their splendour and all nature 
 bids us stay where we are, and starting off for 
 Norway or Switzerland to spend our money among 
 strange people, drink bad wine, get in late for 
 table-d'hdte when we are faint and weary, or find 
 ourselves five flights of stairs from our pocket 
 handkerchief in a towering edifice without a lift. 
 But go where we will, we are sure to find ourselves 
 not two chairs away from American tourists ; they 
 are everywhere. Sir James Ross used to say that 
 if ever he reached the North Pole he would be 
 sure to find a Scotchman sitting upon it. I don't 
 know what has become of all the Scotchmen ; they 
 and the gypsies have grown rarer since I was a 
 boy; but you can never escape from Americans. 
 Of course there are Americans and Americans; 
 they differ from one another as much as any other 
 people do, as much and no more ; but this is true 
 of all the transatlantic totirists, they are abundantly 
 supplied with money, and they do not grudge 
 spending it; in fact, if we were to judge by the 
 Americans we meet with in Europe, we should be 
 forced to the conclusion that all Americans are 
 rich, even very rich. But when I have asked them 
 how clergymen and doctors and lawyers and elderly 
 people with strictly limited incomes live in the 
 United States,— such people as among us live in 
 
IVffY I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 287 
 
 comfort with a couple of female servants, or even 
 keep a pony chaise, — I have found my tourist 
 acquaintances very much amused at my supposing 
 that in America helps could be got to stay in such 
 a household. "Are there, then, no small people 
 in America?" I have asked. The answer has 
 been more often than not, " If there are, we don't 
 know them." 
 
 It is obvious that quiet, domestic people of small 
 means are not to be met with among tourists at 
 luxurious hotels, and equally obvious that such 
 people are hard to get at by travellers who are 
 themselves birds of passage. When a householder 
 is living very near the wind, he does not like to 
 expose his small economies and humble ways to a 
 stranger ; and because he is living a quiet, unosten- 
 tatious life, he has little to offer to those whose 
 occupation is seeing sights. But any man or woman 
 who wishes to gain some insight into our domestic 
 life may easily obtain it if he will but take the 
 trouble to read our works of fiction. Our novelists 
 come from the middle classes, not from the rich or 
 leisure classes, and they speak as they do know 
 They tell us all about the habits and sentiments and 
 ways of talking among clergymen and doctors and 
 farmers and millers and clerks and shopkeepers in 
 England ; they show us the good and the bad side 
 
288 IVHY I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 
 
 with equal impartiality; and no more faithful delinea* 
 tions have ever been made of the inner and outer life 
 of the lowest struggling classes than are to be found 
 in English literature. But if we want to get an 
 insight into the morale of such people in America, 
 we do not know where to look for it. Such ; a 
 character as Kitty Ellison in Mr. Howell's " Chance 
 Aquaintance," whose heart is with Uncle Jack and 
 his anxieties and troubles while she is enjoying all 
 the gaieties and luxuries that wealth can bestow, is 
 a rarity in America ; and, moreover, all the people 
 one meets with in Mr. Howell's stories are away 
 from home. In the " Biglow Papers " one does 
 now and then get a hint that there are shrewd 
 farmers and hard-headed country folk somewhere in 
 the States, who do not wander very far, but one 
 never gets to know them. That exquisite story of 
 Mr. Stockton's, " Rudder Grange," as far as I know, 
 occupies a unique position in American literature, 
 and has for many of us lifted the veil from a whole 
 world of little people across the Atlantic, of whose 
 very existence some on our side the water had 
 almost begun to entertain doubts. Yet we are in 
 the habit of thinking that it is precisely among 
 these people that we must look for the real heart of 
 a great nation, and that the pulse of every great 
 nation h to be felt among them, if at all. 
 
fVHV I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 289 
 
 But of all subjects of inquiry that a thoughtful 
 Englishman could set himself to work at, the most 
 instructive, the most suggestive, would be the effect 
 of perfect equality between the various religious 
 bodies upon the philosophic speculations, religious 
 sentiments, and ethical convictions of the American 
 people. In England there is one Church by law 
 established, and they who separate from the com- 
 munion of that Church are all classed together as 
 dissenters. That there should be anywhere on the 
 face of the earth a condition of society where there 
 can be no such thing as a dissenter, is a thought 
 extremely difficult for some good folks here to grasp. 
 But much harder is the other notion, which I pre- 
 sume is familiar enough to Americans, that there 
 should be anywhere no sects. No dissenters, 
 because no predominant or paramount Christian 
 organization that rejoices in the " most-favoured- 
 nation " clause. No sects, because no church recog- 
 nized as the, Church from which the other religious 
 bodies have cut themselves off. That there should 
 be no bigotry and exclusiveness, no odium theologicum, 
 no fierce rivalry, no proselytizing, in America, as 
 everywhere else, is inconceivable. Theological dis- 
 putants will cease to wrangle when lawyers learn to 
 love one another as brethren and doctors differ 
 without asperity; but among us the situation is 
 
 20 
 
2go WffY I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 
 
 extremely embarrassing as between the Church — 
 for with us it is the Church — and the non-conformist, 
 that is, with those who will not subscribe to our 
 Church doctrine, accept our formularies, or conform 
 to our liturgy. Here we have a standard by which 
 we try all other Christian bodies, and we pronounce 
 them more or less orthodox or denounce them as 
 absolutely unorthodox, in proportion as they ap- 
 proach or depart from this standard which is tacitly 
 accepted among us as the established standard. If 
 there were no Church of England by law established, 
 I believe that a vast number of people would find 
 themselves quite dazed, quite lost. To them it 
 would be practically pretty much as if we were all 
 to awake some fine morning to find that the Home 
 Secretary had shut up Greenwich observatory and 
 run away with the key, having previously taken 
 measures to stop all the great clocks in the land. 
 We should all of us be going by our own 
 watches. 
 
 Yet somehow in America every man goes by his 
 own watch ; and if nobody is right, nobody else is 
 likely to consider himself hopelessly wrong. Here 
 the social position of the clergy of the established 
 Church is something quite peculiar. There is no 
 need to dwell upon the fact, but that it is a fact 
 there can be no doubt. The result is, that the 
 
IVJ/y I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 291 
 
 attitude of the clergy' toward all the religious 
 teachers has always been exclusive ; there has never 
 been any cordiality, and very little cooperation. I 
 do not say this is not deplorable ; I am concerned 
 with facts only. A supercilious tone is so habitually 
 natural to the clergyman when speaking or dealing 
 with the dissenting minister, and a tone of soreness, 
 jealousy, and suspicion on the part of the minister 
 towards the clergyman seems to us so inseparable 
 from their relations one to the other, that we. in 
 England can hardly bring ourselves to believe that 
 the Episcopalian and the Independent, the Wesleyan 
 and the Primitive Methodist, could meet on abso- 
 lutely equal terms, just as officers of two regiments 
 in the same army can meet at mess and fight 
 valiantly side by side against the common foe. 
 Every now and then we get one of those necessary 
 evils, the religious newspapers, sent us by kind 
 friends from America, or we catch a glimpse of an 
 American bishop or Episcopalian popular preacher. 
 Was it only a dream, or have I really, actually, in 
 
 ' It has been only of late years that any Christian ministers 
 other than those ordained by the bishops of the Church of 
 England have been called " clergymen " among us. The non- 
 conformists were always called " ministers " or " preachers." I 
 find myself driven to use the words " clergy " and " minister " 
 in the old way, to avoid conveying a wrong impression to my 
 readers. 
 
292 WHY J WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 
 
 the flesh, once met with an American archdeacon ? 
 But from these exalted personages and their organs 
 surprisingly little is to be learned; and I observe 
 that an ecclesiastic, let him come from where he 
 may, is a shy creature, ready enough to listen, but 
 not to talk. He puts himself on the defensive, and 
 is so very much afraid of committing himself, that 
 you are apt to retire into your interior, too ; just as 
 I have observed two snails meeting on their evening 
 walk ; one at the approach of his brother shuts 
 himself up in his shell, and the other tickles at him 
 with his horns for a little while, but ends by accept- 
 ing the situation, and shutting himself up also. 
 Result, to all appearance, nothing but two unoc- 
 cupied snail-shells, inhabitants having retired from 
 publicity. 
 
 I cannot believe that even in America the priests 
 of the Roman Church would ever assume any other 
 than a haughty bearing toward all other Christian 
 teachers. Theirs is either the Church, or it is 
 nothing. But how do all the rest behave to one 
 another? Are they all, in point of fact, merely 
 ministers of their respective congregations ? How 
 about proselytizing ? It is comparatively easy to 
 draw up a constitution that shall keep up a certain 
 amount of discipline among the officers of any force ; 
 but it is quite another thing to keep control over 
 
tVI/Y I WISH TO VISn AMERICA. 293 
 
 the rank and file when they are all volunteers. 
 Such a regiment as that famous one of Artemus 
 Ward's, " composed exclusively of commanders-in- 
 chief," would hardly be found a successful organiza- 
 tion in the church militant. Are the clergy of all 
 denominations held by all denominations in equal 
 esteem ? Do they " love as brethren," or do they 
 " bite and devour one another ? " 
 
 These are some of the questions I find myself 
 continually asking when I turn my thoughts toward 
 the magnificent country and the great nation on the 
 other side of the ocean. I do not believe a man 
 could get any answer to them, satisfactory to his 
 own mind, except by personal observation. He 
 must for a time live among living men, and see 
 them at their daily tasks, to understand their life 
 even a very little. It is too much the habit of 
 travellers to take their theories with them. I, for 
 my part, have none. If I ever carry out the wish 
 of my life, I shall start as a naturalist does who 
 goes to make collections — with empty cases, note- 
 books, and apparatus — not too ready to generalize, 
 but very anxious to learn. The probability is, I 
 shall never go at all. But others more fortunate 
 than I may, perhaps, be able to enlighten my dark- 
 ness and inform my ignorance, and it may happen 
 
294 fi^HV I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 
 
 that the hints I have thrown out may be suggestive 
 to them. 
 
 As to the big cities, with their colossal ware- 
 houses and enormous trade, their gigantic hotels 
 and prodigious growth, they possess for me no 
 attraction. There is something dreadful to my mind 
 in losing my personality in a surging multitude and 
 being ' absorbed in a crowd. To find myself unable 
 to hear my own voice because steam-hammers are 
 pounding all round me, and iron wheels are keeping 
 up a ceaseless din, annihilating articulate speech — 
 that seems to me horrible. I shrink from these 
 things. I should be found creeping into out-of-the- 
 way places, prying into schools and colleges and 
 universities, begging that nobody would notice me, 
 while I might be permitted to notice everybody. 
 Sometimes I should put very impertinent questions 
 about the wonderful endowments that I hear 
 Americans believe in firmly, just when we are 
 beginning to lose our faith in their value. Some- 
 times I should even venture to inquire about the 
 war — ihi war — the one war that reflected only 
 imperishable glory upon both sides — the one civil 
 war in the world's history that ended with the 
 grandest of all triumphs, freedom to the oppressed, 
 without one single act of vengeance inflicted upon 
 the beaten side. Sometimes — but I am in danger of 
 
IVUY I WISH TO VISIT AMERICA. 295 
 
 treading upon perilous ground, in danger of saying 
 too much, in danger of making some one growl out 
 suspiciously, " When you do come, if ever you do, 
 you'd better keep out of my way ! " 
 
 A few days ago, I was turning over an old volume 
 of " Punch," when I was attracted by a cartoon that 
 may be familiar to some of my readers. A mighty 
 coal-heaver, his day's work done, is leaning against 
 one of the many posts to be found in the region 
 of the Seven Dials, his hands in his pockets, his 
 lips pipeless, his eyes staring at vacancy. By 
 him stands an exquisitely dressed clergyman, tall, 
 slim, gentle, refined, who has blandly laid his ex- 
 tended hand upon the other's brawny shoulder. 
 Says the clergyman, " My friend, I want to go to 
 Exeter Hall." Says the coal-heaver, "Then why 
 the dooce don't you go ? " Was it that the good 
 man did not know his way ? or was he suffering 
 from a little tightness in the chest ? 
 
Zbe Ocesbam press, 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMlTBDk 
 WOKING AND LONDONL