phTEsStt??) hy \y THE RECREATIONS OF A COUNTRY PARSON. FIRST SERIES. LONDON PRINTED BY Sl'OTTISWOODE AND CO. NEW-STKEET S(JUAKE ^^(^lir\ ^j^ HaaAMP^^^ ^l e^ ^A^^^jL^U '^{^ LlCcA J 4j;^. -^^A\^ Cp\ D^^ Gin Mrs.Hervnen Jennings April 26. l©33 00 - s: CONTEXTS. CHAPTER I. Ctmceming the Ctnatiry Parsotis Life CHAPTER II. Concerning the Art of Putting Thittgi: being Tiutugiuson Represen- iatitm and ilirrtpresentation CHAPTER III. Concerning TsM) Blisters of Hstmaniiy : heing Thoughii on Petty Malignity and Petty Trickery 79 CHAPTER IV. Concerning Work and Play .... CHAPTER V. Concerning Country Houses and Country Life 171 VI Contents. CHAPTER VI. FACE Concertiing Tidiness : beitig Thoughts vpott an Overlooked Source of Humatt Content .......... 223 CHAPTER r//. How I Mused in the Raihuay Train : being Thoughts on Rising by Candle-light ; on Nervo^is Fears : and on Vapouring . . ifi-j CHAPTER VIII. Concerning tlie Moral Influences of the Dwelling 308 CHAPTER IX. Concerning Hurry and Leisure Conclusion 414 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. The Churchyard Gati !\Ia>isc Door . I illagcrs coming into Church R ivcr and Bridge . The A rt of Putting Things Manse from Churchyard Gate Putting the Stone . Baalhec . Egyptian W'oinau . At her Spinning- Wheel. Evening. Routing Brig . A Ipine Snow . •Shooting the Gun Ghent A rundel . Dumfries i6 26 51 58 78 79 108 116 118 131 151 16S viii L ist of Illustrations. PAGE Carnarvon Castle. ......■••■ 204 IVyndow's Cot 217 May-Day 222 Eagle's Nest .......••••• 223 Heather ' 232 Bothie 249 Hay-inakhig . . , 266 Kirk aiid Manse 267 The ' Victory ' 297 I Rest in Hope 3°? Barshatn ......■■■■■■ 3°° Abbotsford 329 Sketchhig ............ 343 Primroses 356 Churchyard .......•■■■• 357 Ferry 369 Manse frojti the Hill behind 3^5 Miss Limejuice 39^ Monk Missaling 4" Twilight 413 Old Boats 414 THE CHURCHYARD GATE. CHAPTER I. CONCERNING THE COUNTRY PARSON'S LIFE. THIS is Monday morning. It is a beautiful sun- shiny morning early in July. I am sitting on the steps that lead to my door, somewhat tired by the duty of yesterday, but feeling very restful and thankful. B TJic Cojtntry Parsoiis Life. Before me there is a little expanse of the brightest grass, too little to be called a lawn, very soft and mossy, and very carefully mown. It is shaded by three noble beeches, about two hundred years old. The sunshine around has a green tinge from the reflec- tion of the leaves. Double hedges, thick and tall, the inner one of gleaming beech, shut out all sight of a country lane that runs hard by : a lane into which this gravelled sweep of would-be avenue enters, after Avind- ing deftly through evergreens, rich and old, so as to make the utmost of its little length. On the side furthest from the lane, the miniature lawn opens into a garden of no great extent, and beyond the garden you see a green field sloping upwards to a wood which bounds the view. One-half of the front of the house is covered to the roof by a climbing rose-tree, so rich now with cluster roses that you see only the white soft masses of fragrance. Crimson roses and fuchsias cover half-way up the remainder of the front wall ; and the sides of the flight of steps are green with large-leaved ivy. If ever there was a dwelling embosomed in great trees and evergreens, it is here. Everything grows beautifully : oaks, horse-chestnuts, beeches ; laurels, yews, hollies ; lilacs and hawthorn trees. Off a little way on the right, graceful in stem, in branches, in the pale bark, in the light-green leaves, I see my especial pet, a fair acacia. This is the true country ; not the TJic Country Parson's Life. poor shadow of it which you have near great and smoky towns. That sapphire air is polluted by no factoiy chimney. Smoke is a beauty here, there is so little of it : rising thin and blue from the cottage ; hos- pitable and friendly-looking from the rare mansion. The town is five miles distant : there is not even a village near. Green fields are all about ; hawthorn hedges and rich hedge-rows ; great masses of wood everywhere. But this is Scotland : and there is no lack of hills and rocks, of little streams and waterfalls ; and two hundred yards off, winding round that churchyard whose white stones you see by glimpses through old oak branches, a large river glides swiftly by. It is a quiet and beautiful scene ; and it pleases me to think that Britain has thousands and thousands like it. But of course none, in my mind, equal this : for this has been my home for five years. I have been sitting here for an hour, with a book on my knee ; and upon that a piece of paper, whereon I have been noting down some thoughts for the ser- mon which I hope to write during this week, and to preach next Sunday in that little parish church of which you can see a comer of a gable through the oaks which surround the churchyard. I have not been able to think very connectedly, indeed : for two little feet have been pattering round me, two little hands pulling at me occasionally, and a little voice MANSE DOOR. entreating that I should come and have a race upon the green. Of course I went : for hke most men who are not very great or very bad, I have learned, for the sake of the little owner of the hands and the voice, to love every little child. Several times, too, I have been obliged to get up and make a dash at a veiy small weed which I discerned just appearing through the gravel ; and once or twice my man-servant has come to consult me about matters connected with the garden and the stable. My sermon will be the better for all these interruptions. I do not mean to say that it will be absolutely good, though it will be as good as I can make it : but it will be better for the TJic Country Parson's Life. 5 races with my little girl, and for the thoughts about my horse, than it would have been if I had not been interrupted at all. The Roman Catholic Church meant it well : but it was far mistaken when it thought to make a man a better parish priest by cutting him off from domestic ties, and quite emancipating him from all the little worries of domestic life. That might be the way to get men who would preach an unprac- tical religion, not human in interest, not able to com- fort, direct, sustain through daily cares, temptations, and sorrows. But for preaching which will come home to men's business and bosoms, which will not appear to ignore those things which must of neces- sity occupy the greatest part of an ordinary mortal's thoughts, commend me to the preacher who has learned by experience what are human ties, and what is human worry. It is a characteristic of country life, that living in the country you have so many cares outside. In town, you have nothing to think of (I mean in the way of little material matters) beyond the walls of your dwelling. It is not your business to see to the paving of the street before your door ; and if you live in a square, you are not individually responsible for the tidiness of the shrubbery in its centre. Wlien you come home, after the absence of a week or a month, you have nothing to look round upon and see that it TJie Country Parsons Life. is right. The space within the house's walls is not a man's proper province. Your library-table and your books are all the domain which comes within the scope of your orderly spirit. But if you live in the country, in a house of your own with even a few acres of land attached to it, you have a host of things to think of when you come home from your week's or month's absence ; you have an endless number of little things worrying you to take a turn round and see that they are all as they should be. You can hardly sit down and rest for their tugging at you. Is the grass all trimly mown % Has the pruning been done that you ordered? Has that rose-tree been trained % Has that bit of fence been mended % Are all the walks perfectly free from weeds % Is there not a gap left in box-wood edgings'? and are the edges of all walks through grass sharp and clearly defined % Has that nettly corner of a field been made tidy? Has any one been stealing the fruit? Have the neighbouring cows been in your clover ? How about the stable? — any fractures of the harness? — any scratches on the carriage ? — anything amiss with the horse or horses ? All these, and innumerable ques- tions more, press on the man who looks after matters for himself, when he arrives at home. Still, there is good in all this. That which in a desponding mood you call a worry, in a cheerful mood TJic Country Parsoiis Life. you think a source of simple, healthful interest in life. And there is one case in particular, in which I doubt not tlie reader of simple and natural tastes (and such may all my readers be) has experienced, if he be a country parson not too rich or great, the benefit of these gentle counter-irritants. It is when you come home, leaving your wife and children for a little while behind you. It is autumn : you are having your holiday : you have all gone to the sea-side. You have been away two or three weeks ; and you begin to think that you ought to let your parishioners see that you have not forgotten them. You resolve to go home for ten days, which shall include two Sundays with their duty. You have to travel a hundred and thirty miles. So on a Friday morning you bid your little circle good-bye, and set off alone. It is not, per- haps, an extreme assumption that you are a man of sound sense and feeling, and not a selfish conceited humbug : and, the case being so, you are not ashamed to confess that you are somewhat saddened by even that short parting ; and that various thoughts obtrude themselves of possible accident and sorrow before you meet again. It is only ten days, indeed : but a wise man is recorded to have once advised his fellow-men in words which run as follows, ' Boast not thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.' And as you sail along in the steamer, and TJic Country Parson s Life. sweep along in the train, you are thinking of the Httle things that not without tears bade their governor farewell. It was early morning when you left : and as you proceed on your solitary journey, the sun ascends to noon, and declines towards evening. You have read your newspaper : there is no one else in that compartment of the carriage : and hour after hour you grow more and more dull and down-hearted. At length, as the sunset is gilding the swept harvest- fields, you reach the quiet little railway station among the hills. It is wonderful to see it. There is no village : hardly a dwelling in sight : there are rocky hills all round ; great trees ; and a fine river, by fol- lowing which the astute engineer led his railway to this seemingly inaccessible spot. You alight on that primitive platform, with several large trees growing out of it, and with a waterfall at one end of it : and beyond the little palisade, you see your trap, (let me not say carriage,) your man-servant, your horse, per- haps your pair. How kindly and pleasant the ex- pression even of the horse's back ! How unlike the bustle of a railway station in a large town ! The train goes, the brass of the engine red in the sunset ; and you are left in perfect stillness. Your baggage is stowed, and you drive away gently. It takes some piloting to get down the steep slope from this out-of- the-way place. What a change from the thunder of TJic Country Parsons Life. the train to this audible quiet ! You interrogate your servant first in the comprehensive question, if all is right. Relieved by his general affirmative answer, you descend into particulars. Any one sick in the parish % how was the church attended on the Sundays you were away? how is Jenny, who had the fever; and John, who had the paralytic stroke % How are the servants % how is the horse \ the cow ; the pig ; the dog ? How is the garden progressing ? how about fruit ] how about flowers % There was an awful thun- derstorm on Wednesday : the people thought it was the end of the world. Two bullocks were killed : and thirteen sheep. Widow Wiggins' son had de- serted from the army, and had come home. The harvest-home at such a farm is to-night : may Thomas go % What a little quiet world is the country parish : what a microcosm even the country parsonage ! You are interested and pleased : you are getting over your stupid feeling of depression. You are interested in all these little matters, not because you have grown a gossiping, little-minded man, but because you know it is fit and right and good for you to be interested in such things. You have five or six miles to drive : never less : the scene grows always more homely and familiar as you draw nearer home. And arrived at last, what a deal to look at ! What a welcome on the servants' faces : such a contrast to the indifferent lO TJie Country Parson's Life. looks of servants in a town. You hasten to your library-table to see what letters await you : country- folk are always a little nervous about their letters, as half expecting, half fearing, half hoping, some vague, great, undefined event. You see the snug fire : the chamber so precisely arranged, and so fresh-looking : you remark it and value it fifty times more amid country fields and trees than you would turning out of tlie manifest life and civilisation of the city street. You are growing cheerful and thankful now ; but before it grows dark, you must look round out of doors : and that makes you entirely thankful and cheerful. Surely the place has grown greener and prettier since you saw it last ! You walk about the garden and the shrubbery : the gravel is right, the grass is right, the trees are right, the hedges are right, everything is right. You go to the stable-yard : you pat your horse, and pull his ears, and enjoy seeing his snug resting-place for the night. You peep into the cow-house, now growing very dark : you glance into the abode of the pig : the dog has been capering about you all this while. You are not too great a man to take pleasure in these little things. And now when you enter your library again, where your soli- tary meal is spread, you sit down in the mellow lamp-light, and feel quite happy. How different it would have been to have walked out of a street-cab The Country Parson's Life. 1 1 into a town-house, with nothing beyond its walls to think of ! This is so sunshiny a day, and everything is looking so cheerful and beautiful, that I know my present testimony to the happiness of the country parson's life must be received with considerable reser- vation. Just at the present hour, I am willing to de- clare that I think the life of a country clergyman, in a pretty parish, with a well-conducted and well-to-do population, and with a fair living, is as happy, useful, and honourable as the life of man can be. Your work is all of a pleasant kind ; you have, generally speaking, not too much of it ; the fault is your own if you do not meet much esteem and regard among your parishioners of all degrees ; you feel you are of some service in your generation : you have intellectual labours and tastes which keep your mind from growing rusty, and which admit you into a wide field of pure enjoyment : you have pleasant country cares to divert your mind from head-work, and to keep you for hours daily in the open air, in a state of pleasurable interest ; your little children grow up with green fields about them, and pure air to breathe : and if your heart be in your sacred work, you feel, Sunday by Sunday, and day by day, a solid enjoyment in telling your fellow-creatures the Good News you are 12 TJie Country Parson s Life. commissioned to address to them, which it is hard to describe to another, but which you humbly and thankfully take and keep. You have not, indeed, the excitement and the exhilaration of commanding the attention of a large educated congregation : those are reserved for the popular clergyman of a city parish. But then, you are free from the temptation to attempt the unworthy arts of the clap-trap mob-orator, or to preach mainly to display your own talents and eloquence ; you have striven to exclude all personal ambition ; and, forgetting yourself or what people may think of yourself, to preach simply for the good of your fellow-sinners, and for the glory of that kind Master whom you serve. And around you there are none of those heart-breaking things which must crush the earnest clergyman in a large town: no destitution; poverty, indeed, but no starvation : and although evil will be wherever man is, nothing of the gross, daring, shocking vice which is matured in the dens of the great city. The cottage children breathe a confined atmosphere while within the cottage ; but they have only to go to the door, and the pure air of heaven is about them, and they live in it most of their waking hours. Very different with the pale children of a like class in the city, who do but exchange the infected chamber for the filthy lane, and whose eyes are hardly ever gladdened by the sight of a green field. And The Country Parson's Life. 13 when the diligent country parson walks or drives about his parish, not without a decided feeling of authority and ownership, he knows every man, woman, and child he meets, and all their concerns and cares. Still, even on this charming morning, I do not forget that it depends a good deal upon the parson's present mood, what sort of account he may give of his country parish and his parochial life. If he have been recently cheated by a well-to-do farmer in the price of some farm produce ; if he have seen a humble neighbour deliberately forcing his cow through a weak part of the hedge into a rich pasture-field of the glebe, and then have found him ready to swear that the cow trespassed entirely without his know- ledge or will ; if he meet a hulking fellow carrying in the twilight various rails from a fence to be used as firewood ; if, on a warm summer day, the whole congregation falls fast asleep during the sermon ; if a farmer tells him what a bad and dishonest man a discharged man-servant was, some weeks after the parson had found that out for himself and packed off the dishonest man ; if certain of the cottagers near appear disposed to live entirely, instead of only par- tially, of the parsonage larder ; the poor parson may sometimes be found ready to wish himself in town, compact within a house in a street with no back- door ; and not spreading out such a surface as in 14 The Country Par soil's Life. the country he must, for petty fraud and peculation. But, after all, the country parson's great worldly cross lies for the most part in his poverty, and in the cares which arise out of that. It is not always so, indeed. In the lot of some the happy medium has been reached ; they have found the ' neither poverty nor riches' of the wise man's prayer. Would that it were so with all ! For how it must cripple a clergy- man's usefulness, how abate his energies, how destroy his eloquence, how sicken his heart, how narrow and degrade his mind, how tempt (as it has sometimes done) to unfair and dishonest shifts and expedients, to go about not knowing how to make the ends meet, not seeing how to pay what he owes ! If I were a rich man, how it would gladden me to send a fifty- pound note to certain houses I have seen ! What a dead weight it would lift from the poor wife's heart ! Ah ! I can think of the country parson, like poor Sydney Smith, adding his accounts, calculating his little means, wondering where he can pinch or pare any closer, till the poor fellow bends down his stupi- fied head and throbbing temples on his hands, and wishes he could creep into a quiet grave. God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb ; or I should wonder how it does not drive some country parsons mad, to think what would become of their children if they were taken away. It is the warm nest upon TJic Country Parsoiis Life. 15 the rotten bough. They need abundant faith ; let us trust they get it. But in a desponding mood, I can well imagine such a one resolving that no child of his shall ever enter upon a course in life which has brought himself such misery as he has known. I have been writing down some thoughts, as I have said, for the sermon of next Sunday. To-morrow morning I shall begin to write it fully out. Some individuals, I am aware, have maintained that listen- ing to a sermon is irksome work ; but to a man whose tastes lie in that way, the writing of sermons is most pleasant occupation. It does you good. Unless you are a mere false pretender, you cannot try to impress any truth forcibly upon the hearts of others, without impressing it forcibly upon your own. All that you will ever make other men feel, will be only a subdued reflection of what you yourself have felt. And sermon- writing is a task that is divided into many stages. You begin afresh every week : you come to an end every week. If you are writing a book, the end appears very far away. If you find that although you do your best, you yet treat some part of your subject badly, you know that the bad passage remains as a permanent blot : and you work on under the cross-influence of that recollection. But if, with all your pains, this week's sermon is poor, why, you hope to do better next week. You seek a fresh field : you VILLAGERS COMING INTO CHURCH. try again. No doubt, in preaching your sermons you are somewhat annoyed by rustic boorishness and want of thought. Various bumpkins will forget to close the door behind them when they enter church too late, as they not unfrequently do. Various men with great hob-nailed shoes, entering late, instead of quietly slip- ping into a pew close to the door, will stamp noisily up the passage to the further extremity of the church. Various faces will look up at you week by week, hopelessly blank of all interest or intelligence. Some The Country Parson's Life. 17 human beings will not merely sleep, but loudly evince that they are sleeping. Well, you gradually cease to be worried by these little things. At first, tliey jarred through every nerve ; but you grow accustomed to them. And if you be a man of principle and of sense, you know better than to fancy that amid a rustic people your powers are thrown away. Even if you have in past days been able to interest congregations of the refined and cultivated class, you will now show your talent and your principle at once by accom- modating your instructions to the comprehension of the simple souls committed to your care. I confess I have no patience with men who profess to preach sermons carelessly prepared, because they have an uneducated congregation. Nowhere is more careful preparation needed ; but of course it must be pre- paration of the right sort. Let it be received as an axiom, that the very first aim of the preacher should be to interest. He must interest, before he can hope to instruct or improve. And no matter how filled with orthodox doctrine and good advice a sermon may be, if it put the congregation to sleep, it is an abominably bad sermon. Surely, I go on to think, this kind of life must affect all the productions of the mind of the man who leads it. There must be a smack of the country, its scenes and its cares, about them all. You walk in c 1 8 TJic Country Parsons Life. shady lanes : you stand and look at the rugged bark of old trees : you help to prune evergreens : you devise flower-gardens and winding walks. You talk to pigs^ and smooth down the legs of horses. You sit on mossy walls, and saunter by the river side, and through woodland paths. You grow familiar with the internal arrangements of poor men's dwellings: you see much of men and women in those solemn seasons when all pretences are laid aside ; and they speak with confidence to you of their little cares and fears, for this world and the other. You kneel down and pray by the bedside of many sick ; and you know the look of the dying face well. Young children, whom you have humbly sought to instruct in the best of knowledge, have passed away from this life in your presence, telling you in interrupted sentences whither they trusted they were going, and bidding you not forget to meet them there. You feel the touch of the weak fingers still ; the parting request is not forgotten. You mark the spring blossoms come back ; and you walk among the harvest sheaves in the autumn even- ing. And when you ride up the parish on your duty, you feel the influence of bare and lonely tracts, where, ten miles from home, you sometimes dismount from your horse^ and sit down on a grey stone by the way- side, and look for an hour at the heather at your feet, and at the sweeps of purple moorland far away. You TJic Country Parsoiis Life. 19 go down to the churchyard frequently : you sit on the gravestone of your predecessor who died two hundred years since ; and you count five, six, seven spots where those who served the cure before you sleep. Then, leaning your head upon your hand, you look thirty years into the future, and wonder whether you are to grow old. You read, through moss-covered letters, how a former incumbent of the parish died in the last century, aged twenty-eight. That afternoon, coming from a cottage where you had been seeing a frail old woman, you took a flying leap over a brook near, with precipitous sides ; and you thought that some day, if you lived, you would have to creep quietly round by a smoother -way. And now you think you see an aged man, tottering and grey, feebly walking down to the churchyard as of old, and seating himself hard by where you sit. The garden will have grown weedy and untidy : it will not be the trim, precise dwelling which youthful energy and hopefulness keep it now. Let it be hoped that the old man's hat is not seedy, nor his coat threadbare : it makes one's heart sore to see that. And let it be hoped that he is not alone. But you go home, I think, with a quieter and kindlier heart. You live in a region, mental and material, that is very entirely out of the track of worldly ambition. You do not blame it in others : you have learnt to 20 TJic Co?nitry Parson's Life. blame few things in others severely, except cruelty and falsehood : but you have outgrown it for yourself. You hear, now and then, of this and the other school or college friend becoming a great man. One is an Indian hero : one is attorney -general : one is a cabinet minister. You like to see their names in the news- papers. You remember how in college competitions with them, you did not come off second-best. You are struck at finding that such a man, whom you recollect as a fearful dunce, is getting respectably on through life : you remember how at school you used to wonder whether the difference between the clever boy and the booby would be in after days the same great gulf that it was then. Your life goes on very regularly, each week much like the last. And, on the whole, it is very happy. You saunter for a little in the open air after breakfast : you do so when the evergreens are beautiful with snow as well as when the warm sunshine makes the grass white with widely- opened daisies. Your children go with you wdierever you go. You are growing subdued and sobered ; but they are not : and when one sits on your knee, and lays upon your shoulder a little head with golden ringlets, you do not mind very much though your own hair (what is left of it) is getting shot with gray. You sit down in your quiet study to your work : what thousands of pages you have written at that table ! TJic Country Parsoiis L ife. 2 1 You cease your task at one o'clock : you read your Tunes: you get on horseback and canter up the parish to see your sick : or you take the ribbons and tool into the county town. You feel the stir of even its quiet existence : you drop into the bookseller's : you grumble at the venerable age of the Reviews that come to you from the club. Generally, you cannot be bothered with calls upon your tattling acquaintances : you leave these to your wife. You drive home again, through the shady lanes, away into the green country : your man-servant in his sober livery tells you with pride, when you go to the stable-yard for a few minutes before dinner, that Mr. Snooks, the great judge of horse-flesh, had declared that afternoon in the inn stable in town, that he had not seen a better- kept carriage and harness anywhere, and that your plump steed was a noble creature. It is well when a servant is proud of his belongings : he will be a happier man, and a more faithful and useful. When you next drive out, you will see the silver blazing in the sun with increased brightness. And now you have the pleasant evening before you. Do not, like some slovenly men in remote places, sit down to dinner an unwashed and untidy object : living so quietly as you do, it is especially needful, if you would avoid an encroaching rudeness, to pay careful attention to the little refinements of life. And the great event of the day 22 The Coimtry Parson s Life. over, you have music, books, and children ; you have the summer saunter in the twihght ; you have the winter evening fireside ; you take perhaps another turn at your sermon for an hour or two. The day has brought its work and its recreation ; you can look back each even- ing upon something done ; save when you give yourself a holiday which you feel has been fairly toiled for. And what a wonderful amount of work, such as it is, you may, by exertion regular but not excessive, turn off in the course of the ten months and a-half of the working year ! And thus, day by day, and month by month, the life of the country parson passes quietly away. It will be briefly comprehended on his tombstone, in the assurance that he did his duty, simply and faith- fully, through so many years. It is somewhat mono ■ tonous, but he is too busy to weary of it : it is varied by not much society, in the sense of conversation with educated men with whom the clergyman has many common feelings. But it is inexpressibly pleas- ing when, either to his own house or to a dwelling near, there comes a visitor with whom an entire sym- pathy is felt, though probably holding very antagon- istic views : then come the ' good talks ' with delighted Johnson ; genial evenings, and long walks of after- noons. The daily post is a daily strong sensation, sometimes pleasing, sometimes painful, as he brings The Co2intry Parsotis Life. 23 tidings of the outer world. You have your daily Times ; each Monday morning brings your Saturday jRa'iew ; and the Illustrated London Nezvs comes not merely for the children's sake. You read all the quarterlies, of course ; you skim the monthlies ; but it is with tenfold interest and pleasure that month by month you receive that magazine which is edited by a dear friend who sends it to you, and in which some- times certain pages have the familiar look of a friend's face. You draw it wet from its big envelope : you cut its leaves Avith care : you enjoy the fragrance of its steam as it dries at the study fire : you glance at the shining backs of that long row of volumes into Avhich the pleasant monthly visitants have accumu- lated : you think you will have another volume soon. Then there is a great delight in occasionally receiving a large bundle of books which have been ordered from your bookseller in the city a hundred miles off : in reading the address in such big letters that they must have been made with a brush : in stripping off the successive layers of immensely thick brown paper: in reaching the precious hoard within, all such fresh copies (who are they that buy the copies you turn over in the shop, but wliich you would not on any account take X) : such fresh copies, with their bran- new bindings and their leaves so pure in a material sense : in cuttina: the leaves at the rate of two or 24 The Country Parson's Life. three volumes an evening, and in seeing the entire accession of Hterature lying about the other table (not the one you write on) for a few days ere they are given to the shelves. You are not in the least ashamed to confess that you are pleased by all these little things. You regard it as not necessarily proving any special pettiness of mind or heart. You regard it as no proof of greatness in any man, that he should ap- pear to care nothing for anything. Your private belief is that it shows him to be either a humbug or a fool. In this little volume, the indulgent reader will find certain of those Essays which the writer discovered on cutting the leaves of the magazine which comes to him on the last day of every month. They were written as something which might afford variety of work, which often proves the most restful of all recrea- tion. They are nothing more than that which they are called — a country clergyman's Recreations. My solid work, and my first thoughts, are given to that which is the business and the happiness of my life. But these Essays have led me into a field which to myself was fresh and pleasant. And I have always returned from them, with increased interest, to graver themes and trains of thought. I have not forgot, as I wrote them, a certain time, when my little children must go away from their early home ; when these evergreens I have planted and these walks I have The Country Parsons Life. 25 made shall pass to my successor (may he be a better man !) ; and when I shall perhaps find my resting-place under those ancient oaks. Nor have I wholly failed to remember a coming day, when bishops and arch- bishops shall be called to render an account of the fashion in which they exercised their solemn and dig- nified trusts ; and when I, who am no more than the minister of a Scotch country parish, must answer for the diligence with which I served my little cure. RIVER AND BRIDGE. CHAPTER 11. CONCERNING THE ART OF PUTTING THINGS : BEING THOUGHTS ON REPRESENTATION AND MISREPRESENTATION. LET the reader be assured that the word Rcprcscn- -/ tatioii, which has caught his eye on glancing at the title of this essay, has nothing earthly to do The Art of Putting Things. 27 with the Elective Franchise, whether in boroughs or counties. Not a syllable will be found upon the following pages bearing directly or indirectly upon any New Refomi Bill. I do not care a rush who is member for this county. I have no doubt that all members of Parliament are very much alike. Every- body knows that each individual legislator who pushes his way into the House is actuated solely by a pure patriotic love for his country. No briefless barrister ever got into Parliament in the hope of getting a place of twelve hundred a-year. No barrister in fair practice ever did so in the hope of getting a silk gown, or the Solicitor-Generalship, or a seat on the bench. No merchant or country-gentleman ever did so in the hope of gaining a little accession of dignity and influence in the town or county in which he lives. All these things are universally understood ; and they are mentioned here merely to enable it to be said, that this treatise has nothing to do with them. Edgar Allan Poe, the miserable genius who died in America a few years ago, declared that he never had the least difiiculty in tracing the logical steps by which he chose any subject on which he had ever written, and matured his plan for treating it. And some readers may remember a curious essay, con- tained in his collected works, in which he gives a minute account of the genesis of his extraordinary 28 TJlc Art of Putting Tilings. poem, The Raven. But Poe was a humbug ; and it is impossible to place the least faith in anything said by him upon any subject whatever. In his writings we find him repeatedly avowing that he would assert any falsehood, provided it were likely to excite inter- est and 'create a sensation.' I believe that most authors could tell us that very frequently the concep- tion and the treatment of their subject have darted on them all at once, they could not tell how. Many clergymen know how strangely texts and topics of discourse have been suggested to them, while it was impossible to trace any link of association with what had occupied their minds the instant before. The late Douglas Jerrold relates how he first conceived the idea of one of his most popular productions. Walk- ing on a winter day, he passed a large enclosure full of romping boys at play. He paused for a minute ; and as he looked and mused, a thought flashed upon him. It was not so beautiful, and you would say not so natural, as the reflections of Gray, as he looked from a distance at Eton College. As Jerrold gazed at the schoolboys, and listened to their merry shouts, there burst upon him the conception of Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures! There seems httle enough con- nexion with what he was looking at ; and although Jerrold declared that the sight suggested the idea, he could not pretend to trace the link of association. It TJic Art of Pjittmg Tilings. 29 would be very interesting if we could accurately know the process by which authors, small or great, piece together their grander characters. How did Milton pile up his Satan % how did Shakspeare put together Hamlet or Lady Macbeth ? how did Charlotte Bronte imagine Rochester? Writers generally keep their secrets, and do not let us see behind the scenes. We can trace, indeed, in successive pieces by Sheridan, the step-by-step development of his most brilliant jests, and of his most gushing bursts of the feeling of the moment. No doubt Lord Brougham had tried the woolsack to see how it would do, before he fell on his knees upon it (on the impulse of the instant) at the end of his great speech on the Reform Bill. But of course Lord Brougham would not tell us ; and Sheridan did not intend us to know. Even Mr. Dickens, when, in his preface to the cheap edition of Pickwick, he avows his purpose of telling us all about the origin of that amazingly successful serial, gives us no inkling of the process by which he produced the character which we all know so well. He tells us a great deal about the mere details of the work : the pages of letter-press, the number of illustrations, the price and times of publication. But the process of actual authorship re- mains a mystery. The great painters would not tell where they got their colours. The effort which gives a new character to the acquaintance of hundreds of 30 The Art of Putting Things. thousands of Englishmen, shall be concealed beneath a decorous vale. All that Mr. Dickens tells us is this : ' I thought of Mr. Pickwick, and wrote the first num- ber.' And to the natural question of curiosity, ' How on earth did you think of Mr. Pickwick?' the author's silence replies, ' I don't choose to tell you that l' And now, courteous reader, you are humbly asked to suffer the Avriter's discursive fashion, as he records how the idea of the present discourse, treatise, disser- tation, or essay flashed upon his mind. Yesterday was a most beautiful frosty day. The air was indescribably exhilarating : the cold was no more than bracing • and as I fared forth for a walk of some miles, I saw the tower of the ancient church, green with centuries of ivy, looking through the trees which surround it, the green ivy silvered over with hoar-frost. The hedges on either hand, powdered with rime, were shining in the cold sunshine of the winter afternoon. First, I passed through a thick pine-wood, bordering the road on both sides. The stems of the fir-trees had that warm rich colour which is always pleasant to look at ; and the green branches were just touched with frost. One undervalues the evergreens in summer : their colour is dull when compared with the fresher and brighter green of the deciduous trees ; but now, when these gay transients have changed to shivering skele- tons, the hearty firs, hollies, and yews warm and cheer TJic A rt of Putting Tilings. the wintry landscape. Not the wintry, I should say, but the winter landscape, which conveys quite a differ- ent impression. The word wintry wakens associations of bleakness, bareness, and bitterness ; a hearty ever- green tree never looks wintry, nor does a landscape to which such trees give the tone. Then emerging from the wood, I was in an open country. A great hill rises just ahead, which the road will skirt by and by : on the right, at the foot of a little cliff hard by, runs a shallow, broad, rapid river. Looking across the river, I see a large range of nearly level park, which at a mile's distance rises into upland ; the park shews broad green glades, broken and bounded by fine trees, in clumps and in avenues. In summer- time you would see only the green leaves : but now, peering through the branches, you can make out the outline of the gray turrets of the baronial dwelling which has stood there — added to, taken from, patched, and altered, but still the same dwelling — for the last four hundred years. And on the left, I am just pass- ing the rustic gateway through which you approach that quaint cottage on the knoll two hundred yards off — one story high, with deep thatch, steep gables, overhanging eaves, and veranda of rough oak — a sweet little place, where Izaak Walton might success- fully have carried out the spirit of his favourite text, and ' studied to be quiet.' All this way, three miles 32 TJie Art of Putting Tilings. and more, I did not meet a human being. There was not a breath of air through the spines of the firs, and not a sound except the ripple of the river. I leant upon a gate, and looked into a field. Something was grazing in the field ; but I cannot remember whether it was cows, sheep, oxen, elephants, or camels ; for as I was looking, and thinking how I should begin a sermon on a certain subject much thought upon for the last fortnight, my mind resolutely turned away from it, and said, as plainly as mind could express it. For several days to come I shall produce material upon no subject but one, — and that shall be the com- prehensive, practical, suggestive, and most important subject of the Art of Putting Things ! And, indeed, there is hardly a larger subject, in re- lation to the social life of the nineteenth century in England ; and there is hardly a practical problem to the solution of which so great an amount of ingenuity and industry, honest and dishonest, is daily brought, as the grand problem of setting forth yourself, your goods, your horses, your case, your plans, your thoughts and arguments — all your belongings, in short — to the best advantage. From the Prime Minister, who exerts all his wonderful skill and eloquence to put his policy before Parliament and the country in the most favour- able light, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who does his very best to cast a rosy hue even upon an The Art of Putting T Jungs. 33 income-tax, down to the shopman who arranges his draperies in the window against market-day in that fashion which he thinks will prove most fascinating to the maid-servant with her newly-paid wages in her pocket, and the nurse who in a most lively and jovial manner assures a young lady of three years old that she will never feel the taste of her castor-oil, — yea, even to the dentist who with a joke and a smiling face approaches you with his forceps in his hand : — from the great Attorney-General seeking to place his view of his case with convincing force before a bewil- dered jury, (that view being flatly opposed to common sense,) down to the schoolboy found out in some mis- chievous trick and trying to throw the blame upon somebody else : almost all civilised beings in Great Britain are from morning to night labouring hard to put things in general or something in particular in the way that they think will lead to the result which best suits their views ; — are, in short, practising the art of representing or misrepresenting things for their own advantage. Great skill, you would say, must result from this constant practice : and indeed it probably does. But then, people are so much in the habit of trying to //// things themselves, that they are uncom- monly sharp at seeing through the devices of others. ' Set a thief to catch a thief,' says the ancient adage : and so, set a man who can himself tell a very plausible D 34 The Art of Putting Tilings. story without saying anything positively untrue, to dis- cover the real truth under the rainbow tints of the plausible story told by another. But do not fancy, my kind reader, that I have any purpose of making a misanthropical onslaught upon poor humanity. I am very far from desiring to imply that there is anything essentially wrong or dishonest in trying to put things in the most favourable light for our views and plans. The contrary is the case. It is a noble gift, when a man is able to put great truths or momentous facts before our minds with that vivid- ness and force which shall make us feel these facts and truths in their grand reality. A great evil, to which human beings are by their make subject, is, that they can talk of things, know things, and understand things, without yi"^/?)/^ them in their true importance — without, in short, realising them. There appears to be a certain numbness about the mental organs of per- ception ; and the man who is able to put things so strikingly, clearly, pithily, forcibly, glaringly, whether these things are religious, social, or political truths, as to get through that numbness, that crust of insensi- bility, to the quick of the mind and heart, must be a great man, an earnest man, an honest man, a good man. I believe that any great reformer will find less practical discouragement in the opposition of bad people than in the inertia of good people. You cannot TJie A rt of Putting Things. 3 5 get them to feel that the need and the danger are so imminent and urgent ; you cannot get them to bestir themselves with the activity and energy which the case demands. You cannot get them to take it in that the open sewer and the airless home of the working man are such a very serious matter ; you cannot get them to feel that the vast uneducated masses of the British population form a mine beneath our feet which may explode any day, with God knows what devas- tation. I think that not all the wonderful eloquence, freshness, and pith of Mr. Kingsley form a talent so valuable as his power of compelling people toy?