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  THE TRIALS

  OF

  A COUNTRY PARSON


  BY
  AUGUSTUS JESSOPP, D.D.

  AUTHOR OF

  “ONE GENERATION OF A NORFOLK HOUSE,” “HISTORY OF THE DIOCESE OF
  NORWICH,” &c., &c.


  London
  T. FISHER UNWIN
  PATERNOSTER SQUARE
  MDCCCXC

[Illustration]




_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._


ARCADY:

FOR BETTER FOR WORSE.

_Fourth Edition. Cloth, 3s. 6d._

“A volume which is, to our minds, one of the most delightful ever
published in English.”--_Spectator._


The COMING of the FRIARS,

AND OTHER MEDIÆVAL SKETCHES.

_Fourth Edition. Cloth, 7s. 6d._

“The book is one to be read and enjoyed from its title-page to its
finish.”--_Morning Post._


LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN, PATERNOSTER SQUARE, E.C.




_Preface._


_In a volume which I published three years ago[1] I attempted to give a
faithful picture of the habits and ways of thinking, the superstitions,
prejudices and grounds for discontent, the grievances and the trials,
of the country folk among whom my 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 a country village after
long residence in a large town, I found things greatly changed, of
course; but I found that, though the country folk had not shared in
the general progress which had been going on in the condition of the
urban population, they still retained some of their sturdy virtues,
still had some love for their homes, still clung to some of their old
prejudices which reflected their attachment to their birthplace, and
that if they were inclined to surrender themselves to the leadership
of blatant demagogues, and to dwell upon some real or imagined wrongs
coarsely exaggerated by itinerant agitators with their living to get
by speechifying, it was not because there was no cause for discontent.
The rustics were right when they followed their instincts and these
told them that their lot might be easily--so very easily--made much
happier than it is, if philanthropists would only give themselves a
fair chance, set themselves patiently to study facts before committing
themselves to crude theories, try to make themselves really conversant
with the conditions which they vaguely desire to ameliorate, go to work
in the right way and learn to take things by the right handles._

_The circumstances under which I commenced residence in my country
parish were, unhappily, not conducive to my forming a favourable
judgment of my people. I was at starting brought face to face with the
worst side of their characters. They were and had for long been in
bad hands; they had surrendered themselves to the guidance of those
who had gone very far towards demoralizing them. I could not be blind
to the faults--the vices if you will--which were only too apparent.
I could not but grieve at the altered_ tone _which was observable in
their language and their manners, since the days when I had been a
country curate twenty years before. But while I lamented the noticeable
deterioration 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 surface may have some
depths unaffected by the turmoil. The charity which hopeth all things
suggested that it was the time 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 proud
    Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim
    Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies,
    Their prejudice, and fears, and 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._

_I was shocked when friendly critics told me I had drawn a melancholy
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 such view 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 volume I have
sketched the life of a country parson trying to do 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,
and he ought to try, at any rate, to be an intellectual force also.
It is because I am strongly convinced of this that I have brought so
much into prominence the daily intercourse which I have enjoyed with
my people on the footing of a mere friendly neighbour. I cannot think
that I have any right at all to lift the veil from those private
communings with penitents who are agonized by ghastly memories, with
poor weaklings torturing themselves with religious difficulties, or at
the bedside of the sick and dying. These seem to me to be most sacred
confidences which we are bound to conceal from others as if they had
been entrusted to us under a sacramental obligation of impenetrable
silence. We all have our share of miserable experiences of this kind.
We have no right to talk of them; they never can become common property
without some one alive or dead being betrayed. In the single instance
in which I may seem to have departed from this principle, it was the
expressed wish of the poor woman whose sad story I told that others
should learn the circumstances of the case which I made public._

_It may be thought, perhaps, that my surroundings have something
peculiar in them. But, No! they are of the ordinary type. For two
centuries or so East Anglia was indeed greatly cut off from union and
sympathy with the rest of England, and was a kingdom apart. The result
has been that there are certain characteristics which distinguish
the Norfolk character, and some of them are not pleasing. These are
survivals, and they present some difficulties to him who is not an East
Anglian born, when he is first brought face to face with them. But in
the main we are all pretty much alike, and let a man be placed where
he may, he will be sure to find something 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 performance of his duty according to his light,
and the joy will come. So far from repining at my own lot, I have
found it--I do find it--a 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 and annoyances, the “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 continuance
of that which is obviously working to the serious prejudice of the
community. While every other class is crying out for Reform and getting
it by simply raising the cry, it is a reproach upon us clergy--and I
fear we deserve the reproach--that we are a great deal too ready to
submit to the continuance of scandals and abuses rather than face the
risks which_ any _change is likely to bring upon our order. In no
other profession is a man more certain to be regarded as a dangerous
character, wanting in loyalty and wanting in humility, 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
interfere with the order of procedure that was good enough for our
grandfathers, and therefore must be good enough for ourselves. 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 Jove. To point a finger at the texture of the awful_
peplos, _and to hint that it was woven in the looms of this world, is
to bring upon oneself the charge of impiety. And yet these men are
wrong. Organic bodies grow because they are alive; when they 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, and certainly 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 dissolution from lack of inherent vitality,
but it may also be in peril because of the despairing supineness of its
pledged defenders_.

_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, after formal admission to it, he may retain it without fear of
being 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 cost a good deal to
abolish. The buying and selling of “places” and reversions or next
presentations 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
associations 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 themselves are less valuable
and less jealously kept in the patrons’ hands 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 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 tired 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 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 and more
picturesque and venerable, just as the old church tower does--but it is
not safe to ring the bells up there when so much restoration is wanted._

_I have dealt with this subject in some detail 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, in 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 with a kind
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?” Yes! By all means. But why only the_ beneficed _clergy?
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 and investing it in his name--much in the same way that
the Clive 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
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 it 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 time.
People seem to think that it is of the very essence of an endowment
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 written, or could write, I could exercise any
influence in the direction of leading thoughtful 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 press for an
answer, we may well be dismayed by the suspicion of how anomalous our
position is. The Society for the Preservation 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 Philistine with a long purse and
no more conscience 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 manipulation the
inhabitants in Vestry assembled 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 Parson’s “trials”; and yet it has.
There are some people who are never tired of declaiming against the
uselessness 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
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 surroundings, and without vulgarising them by
introducing associations out of harmony with the traditions that belong
to them and, the sentiment of reverence that they arouse? Who that has
seen the Cathedral Library at Ely, could doubt whether it is in the
right place or no? Or who that knows anything of what has been doing
of late among the Archives of Canterbury or Lincoln, can help wishing
that such work were doing elsewhere? But why should not our cathedrals
become the great storehouses for all our ancient muniments, in 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 appearance of the Sixth Paper in a
volume which professes to treat of a Country Parson’s “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 become 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._

_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 afforded 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
infirmities have set in--the contrast between 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._




CONTENTS.


    CHAP.                                                PAGE
     I.  THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON                     1

    II.  THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON (_continued_)      49

   III.  THE CHURCH AND THE VILLAGES                       97

    IV.  QUIS CUSTODIET                                   143

             _Note_                                       176

     V.  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 “Nineteenth
Century:” the seventh first saw the light in the “North American
Review.”_]




I.

_THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON._


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 _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 yourself 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 disappointment. 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 even at the cost of having to send for a fly to the nearest
market town. Sometimes, by a rare coincidence, a kindly being drops in
upon us even in the winter. 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; and
when he goes, as he shakes our hands and wraps himself up in his rugs
and furs, I notice that he has a sort of _conflate_ expression 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! 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
commiseration is truly admirable. It is hardly to be expected that the
country parson should escape the general appetite for shedding tears
over real or supposed 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! 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 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 exaggeration 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 preferment,” 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 receiving 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 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 évidence_. If a
man has only to minister to a paltry seven hundred, 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 _his_ partner, but
could not help hearing the scarcely whispered dialogue: “A country
parson, did you say? Why, he’s tall!”

  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 giving out of force, for ever
hungering for renewal 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 another 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 _suppressio
veri_ among sophisms; but would it not be better to call that artful
proceeding a fraud? “Drink fair, Betsy, whatever you do!” said Mrs.
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 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 incumbent. 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 £500, people assume that he does not get _less_ from his
living than that. The world at large does not 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 important concern lies. Whatever he may
receive from his cure, however numerous may be the defaulters among the
tithe-payers, however large the expense of collecting his dues, the
parson has _to pay rates_ 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 extraneous 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 him, 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?”

But a country parson and all that he has in the world, _qua_ country
parson, is rateable to his very last farthing, and beyond it: the
fiction being that he is a landed proprietor, and as such in the
enjoyment of an income from real property. It is in vain that he pleads
that his nominal income is of all property the most unreal:--he is told
that he has a claim upon the land, and the land cannot run away. It is
in vain that he plaintively protests that he would gladly live in a
smaller house if he were allowed--he _does_ live in it, chained to it
like a dangerous dog to his kennel. It is in vain that he urges that
he cannot let his glebe, and may not cut down the trees upon it--that
he is compelled to keep his house in tenantable repair, and maintain
the fences as he found them. The impassive functionary expresses a
well-feigned regret and some guarded commiseration; but he has his
duty to perform, and the rates have to be paid--Poor rates, County
rates, School Board rates, and all the rest of them; and paid upon
that parson’s gross income--such an income as never comes, and which
everybody knows never could be collected.

You may say in your graceful way that a parson does not pay a bit more
than he ought to pay, and that he may be thankful if he be allowed to
live at all. That may be quite true--I don’t think it is, but it _may
be_--but there are some things that are not true, and one of them is,
that the gross income awarded to the country parson on paper gives
anything approaching to a fair notion of the amount of income that
comes to his hands. And if you are going to pity the country parson,
do begin at the right end, and consider how you would like to pay such
rates as he pays on _your_ gross income.

iii. But when the country parson’s rates have been duly paid, the next
thing that he is answerable for is the Land-tax. The mysteries of the
Land-tax are quite beyond me. If I could afford to give up three years
of my life to the uninterrupted study of the history and incidence of
the Land-tax, I think, by what people tell me, I might get to know
something about it, and be in a position to enlighten mankind upon this
abstruse subject; but as I really have not three years of my life to
spare, I must needs acquiesce in my hopeless ignorance even to the end.
Only this I do know, that, whereas the country parson is called upon
to pay sixpence in the pound for Income-tax, he is called upon to pay
nearly ninepence in the pound for Land-tax: at any rate, I know one
country parson who has to do so.

Let the Land-tax pass--it is beyond me. But 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 fair 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 served. 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
included 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 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
assumed 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 churchyard, 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 surely is monstrous when everybody knows that
the churchyard, so far from bringing the parson any pecuniary benefit,
entails an annual expense upon him which is practically unavoidable--it
is monstrous, I say, that the parson should be assessed upon the value
of the crop which might be raised off dead men’s graves, and that he
should be taxed for showing an example of decency and right feeling to
those around him.

“Well! But why don’t you appeal?”

My excellent sir, do you suppose that nobody ever has appealed? Do you
suppose that very original idea of yours has never occurred to any one
else before? Or do you suppose that we the shepherds of Arcady, find
appealing against an assessment, made by our neighbours to relieve
themselves, before the magistrates at Quarter Sessions, is a process
peculiarly pleasurable and particularly profitable when the costs are
defrayed? We grumble or fret, we count it among our trials, but we
say, “After all, it is only about five shillings a-year. Anything for
a quiet life. Let it go!” So the wrong gets to be established as a
right. But it is none the less a wrong because it continues to exist,
or because in coin of the realm it amounts to a trifle. Was it Mr.
Midshipman Easy’s nurse who urged in excuse of her moral turpitude in
having an infant of her very own, “Please, ma’am, it was _such_ a
little one?”

The grievance of having to pay rates on the churchyard may be in one
sense a little one. But when it comes to being charged rates upon
the premiums you pay upon your insurance policies, some of them--the
insurance of his church and other buildings--being compulsory payments,
and upon the mortgage of your benefice effected in your predecessor’s
time--even the sneerer at a sentimental grievance could hardly call
such charges as these not worth making a fuss about. In many a needy
country parson’s household the rates make all the difference whether
his children can have butter to their bread or not.

       *       *       *       *       *

It must be obvious to most people from what has been already said--and
much more might be said--that, unless a country parson have some
resources outside of any income derivable from his benefice, he must
needs be a very poor man. Our people know this better than any one
else, and it is often a very anxious question on the appointment of
a new incumbent whether he will live in the same style as that which
his predecessor maintained. Will he keep a carriage, or only a pony
chaise? Will he employ two men in the garden? Will he “put out his
washing?”[2] 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 embarrassment 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?

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 the
present writer is 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! 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, unworldly, and practically
efficient 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 sense, courage, and religious earnestness,
a man who never spares himself and will not suffer his subordinates to
sink into slovenly frivolity and idleness, 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
undemonstrative 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 main_?--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 sort of
puling visionaries.

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 thousands only with deep gratitude
that he has been permitted to spend them so--and with never a word of
brag or publicity, never a paragraph foisted into the newspapers. And
as we pass out of that quiet churchyard, trim as a queen’s parterre,
I will show 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
peradventure 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--[Greek: γέρων ἱππηλάτα Νέστωρ]--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 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 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 improvidence, and we
disturb the action of the beautiful laws of the universe, and where
we see the ponderous 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 by the scruff of the 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-complacent 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 and His law of love!

I, for one, hereby proclaim and declare that I intend to help the sick
and aged and struggling poor 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 be 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 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 implores 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 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 allotment, 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 my back door and asked to see “The Lady Shepherd.”
Mrs. Triplet was a Mormonite, at any rate her husband was; and it
was credibly believed that Mrs. Triplet herself had been baptized by
immersion in a horsepond 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 Cambridge 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 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 flat. 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, 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 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 manufacture; next
month came a third, though the price had dropped fifty per cent.,
which was accepted with exultant thankfulness. 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.

“Well, 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. Somehow, 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 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
of 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 up 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
you to your face, almost in so many words, that you certainly are a
fool--it really ceases to be monotonous 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
immeasurably 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 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 indignation 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
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 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 loneliness is not the simple
product of external circumstances--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 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 neighbourhood is shocked by his frailty; he must be
something 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, he is sure to be reported of as proud and haughty; if he
be not quite a gentleman, he will be snubbed and flouted outrageously.
The average country parson and his family has often to bear an amount
of patronizing impertinence which is sometimes very trying. Even the
squire and the parson do 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 unscrupulous 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 mansion 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 a family of gentle manners and culture and
accomplishments, and lo! it is as sunshine after rain. But sometimes
the new comers are a grievous infliction. 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 hospitalities 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 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 programme, 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 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
anomalous. He has a provoking 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 matters social and intellectual; 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 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
_read_ 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 don’t often use that tool I think, do you?” “Well, no. But then 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 volume of Littré’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.
Sometimes 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 emigration has brought us now and then some
entertaining 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 agricultural labourer’s cottage. But their
absolute ignorance of history amounts to an incapacity of conceiving
the 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 the 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_ 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, monosyllabic,
terse, and with a musical sibillation. Unfortunately 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, sometimes
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 hay 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. “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!

[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 reproachful, that if
you have forgotten your vocation your host has not; as thus:--

“Ever been to Tombland fair, Mrs. Cawl?” Mrs. Cawl has a perennial
flow of words, which come from 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 response
when he appeals to their consciences and affections. The East Anglian
is, of all the inhabitants of these islands, most wanting in native
courtesy, in delicacy of feeling, and in anything remotely resembling
romantic sentiment. The result is that it is extremely difficult,
almost impossible, 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 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 would 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 influence
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 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!”

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 replied; “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 I’ve 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 both 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!”

It is very shocking to a sensitive person to hear the way 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_!”[3] 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! But my third husband, he _was_ a man! I
don’t mix him up. He got killed, fighting--you’ve heerd tell o’ 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!”

Instances of this obtuseness to anything in the nature of poetic
sentiment among our rustics might be multiplied indefinitely. Norfolk
has never produced a single poet or romancer.[4] We have no 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 dozen 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.




II.

_THE TRIALS OF A COUNTRY PARSON._

    “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.

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 we 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, and 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! there they are for you
and me to dwell on when we will.” Then, and not till then, will that
lad of promise have 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. Educated! 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 compelled to relate things at second hand; for who can
help lying when he tries to bear evidence upon what others have seen
and heard and felt--and worst of all--have reasoned about?

       *       *       *       *       *

It may have been observed that when I began upon the subject of the
country parson’s trials, I dwelt first upon those annoyances and
positive wrongs which he is compelled to submit to at the hands of the
powers that be, and which may be classed under the head of Financial;
and, secondly, upon such as are inherent in his position as a personage
living a life apart from those among whom he has to discharge his
peculiar duties.

As far as regards the mere peasant, this isolation is only what any
one must expect who is brought into relations more or less intimate
with a class socially and intellectually below or above his own. But
there are villages and villages, and the differences between them
are as great as between the East End of London and the West, between
May Fair and Red Lion Square. The ideal village is a happy valley,
where a simple people are living sweetly under the paternal care of a
gracious landowner, benevolent, open-handed, large-hearted, devout, a
man of wealth and culture, his wife a Lady Bountiful; his daughters
the judicious dispensers of liberal charity; his house the home of all
that is refining, cheering, elevating. There the happy parson always
finds a cordial welcome, and all those social advantages which make
life pleasant and serene for himself and his family. Parson and squire
work together in perfect harmony, the rectory and the hall are but the
greater and the lesser parts of a well-adjusted piece of machinery
which moves on with no friction and never comes to a dead stop. This is
the ideal village.

How different are the real villages, and how various! Take the case of
my friend Burney’s parish. An oblong surface through which a high road
runs straight as a ruler--wide ditches dividing the fields, with never
a hedge and never a tree--nine square miles of land with a population
of 900 human beings, here and there collected into an ugly hamlet,
each with a central alehouse, and a few feeble poplars looking as if
they were ashamed of themselves. There is not a farmer in the parish
who occupies 300 acres of land. There is not a squire’s house within a
radius of eleven miles from the rectory door. The nearest market town
is six miles off, the nearest railway station five. Friend Burney has
his house and garden and perhaps £350 a year to spend--that is quite
the 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 overseer,
among all those 900 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 schoolmaster 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-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 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.

It is my privilege to know some who are notable exceptions to the all
but universal rule. I have not far to go from my own door to find
one whom I never pay a visit to without pleasure and 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 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 straightforward, 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 a gentleman farmer--looked 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 collapse was very rapid. But in
nine cases out of ten, whereas the farmer’s losses meant a disastrous
abatement which extended over his _whole_ 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 considerable
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
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 off 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 that 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 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 _en évidence_, the landlord is out of
the way--almost an abstraction, as the Government 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, then is the time for exercising a
wise and tender reserve.

So far I have dealt with those trials which the country parson is
exposed to from without; that is, such as arise from his intercourse
with the wicked world--the wicked world that puts its cruel claw into
his pocket, or growls at him, or glares at him, or frightens him, or
laughs at him, or tries to gobble him up. But his trials do not end
there. He has relations with another world--that professional world to
which he belongs in another sense than that by which he is regarded
as a citizen. As a clergyman he is a member of a class, a profession,
a clique if you will, which has a coherence and a homogeneity such as
no other profession can lay claim to, not even the profession of the
law. The lawyer may be half a dozen things at the same time--a trader,
a politician, a practical agriculturist, a land agent, a coroner, a
steeple-chase rider, a general Jack-pudding. Everything brings grist
to his mill, and the more irons he has in the fire the larger will be
the number and the more varied the character of his clients. But the
parson must be a clergyman, and a clergyman only; he is, so to speak,
confined within the four walls of his clerical associations, and if
he steps beyond them he is always regarded with a certain measure of
suspicion. Even literature, unless there be a distinctly theological
flavour about it, he embarks in at his peril; a clergyman who writes
books is looked askance at, as a person whose “heart isn’t in his
work.” Of course we get “narrow-minded.” We all go about with an iron
mask weighing upon us--hiding our handsome features, interfering with
our respiration, stunting our growth.

That is not all, though that is bad enough; we are all ticketed and
labelled in a way that no other class is. Of late years it appears that
the rising generation of clerics has begun to insist more and more
upon the necessity of this professional exclusiveness, and desires
to claim for itself the privileges of a _caste_. It shaves off its
nascent whiskers and glories in a stubby cheek; it dresses in a hideous
garment, half petticoat, half frock, for the most part abominably
ill made; above all, it rumples about its bullet head a slovenly
abomination called a _wide-awake_, as if _that_ would preserve it from
all suspicion of being sleepy and stupid, and it adopts a tone and a
vocabulary which shall be distinctive and as far as possible from the
speech of ordinary Englishmen. “We must close up our ranks,” said one
of them to me, “close up our ranks and present a united front, and
show the world that we are prepared to hang together, act together,
march together. We have 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 sporting 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!” 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, ἀνδρείως καὶ μύσαντα, 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 indifferent. “Which train are you going by, sir--up or
down?” “I’ll wait and see!” And both engines rush out and leave the
unhappy vacillator to his reveries, till by-and-by the platform 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, negligences, 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 upon my
clerical brethren of all ages and all opinions, I can honestly say I
do not know one of them 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 blame, and the churchwardens 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, is
avoided by giving an incumbent indefinite 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 parsons. The regular out-and-out bad ones usually retire
into holes 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 determined
to change the face of the world and revolutionize 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
everything. 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 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 much more serious
matter, and it is almost beyond belief what a brisk and bouncing young
fellow, with the best intentions, and an immeasurable fund of ignorance
to fall back upon, can do without any one interfering with him. You
tell him he’ll get into a scrape--that the bishop will be down upon
him--that there are such things as law courts. He smiles the benevolent
smile of superior wisdom, and dashes on with heroic valour. If he calls
himself a Ritualist, he gets rid of the Jacobean pulpit, or the royal
arms, or the ten commandments, and sets up a construction which he
calls a reredos, all tinsel and putty and _papier mâché_; hurls away
the old pews before you know where you are, nails the brasses to the
walls, sets up a lectern, and intones the service, keeping well within
the chancel, from which he firmly banishes all worshippers who are not
males. As for that gallery at the west end where the singers used to
sit for a couple of centuries, and never failed to take their part with
conscious pride in their own performances, that is abomination in his
eyes--that must go of course, “to throw out the belfry arch, you see,
and to bring the ringers into closer connection with the worship of
the sanctuary.” “I love to see the bell ropes,” said one of these dear
well-meaning young clergymen to me. “They are a constant lesson and
reminder to us, my friend. Did you ever read Durandus on Symbolism?
That is a very precious observation of his, that a bell rope symbolises
humility--it always hangs down.”

But if an energetic young reformer calls himself an Evangelical, he is,
if possible, a more dangerous innovator than the other. Then the axes
and hammers come in with a vengeance. None of your pagan inscriptions
for him, teaching false doctrine and popery. None of your _Orate pro
anima_, none of your crosses and remains of frescoes on his walls; St.
Christopher with the Child upon his shoulder wading through the stream,
St. Sebastian stuck all over with arrows, or St. Peter with those very
objectionable keys. As for the rood screen, away with it! Are we not
all kings and priests? If you must have a division between the chancel
and the nave, set up the pulpit there, tall, prominent, significant;
and if the preacher can’t be heard, then learn the lesson which our
grandfathers taught us, and let there be a sounding-board.

The serious part of all this passionate meddling with the _status quo
ante_ is that any young incumbent can come in and play the wildest
havoc with our old churches without any one interfering with him. The
beneficed cleric is master of the situation, and is frightfully more so
now that Church rates have been abolished than he was before. It is no
one’s interest to open his mouth; is he not _inducted_ into possession
of the sacred building, and is he not therefore tenant for life 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 windows 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
striving after a higher ideal and painful groping 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 comminuted 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 affection for, our old
churches; but here again people, with every desire to be reverential
and to do the 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 sometimes, and does not the bishop sometimes
come 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 thousand evil-doers have
been hanged for crimes incomparably 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 recommended to one
of his visitors, but to turn into cash; for they grow fast, and the
manufacturers of cricket bats are hard put to it to supply the demand
for their wares.

What we want is to make it at least a misdemeanour punishable by
imprisonment for the parson to touch the fabric of the church under any
circumstances 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 are 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 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 sententiousness
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 _Anabata_; tells you he always goes
about with a _Totum_ under his arm, and a _Virge_ in his right hand.
When he 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 should assist me in my ministrations. So
much the worse for me, and so much the worse for my parish. 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 cannot 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--no 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, affectionate, simple-minded and childlike, they learn the
hard lessons of life all too late, and their experience comes to them,
as Coleridge 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 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 preferment 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
them 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, _he_ 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 associated
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 underbred 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 gentleman, sensitive,
fastidious, and just a trifle, a little trifle, distant in his
demeanour. His curate, the Rev. Giles Goggs, was a worthy young fellow
enough, 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 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
have 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 considerable 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 accession of fortune and gave out that he intended
to marry. He furnished his house anew at a great 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 married 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 railway 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 University.” Mrs. Connor kept no female servants. 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 menacing 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 out 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 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 himself;
all their indiscretions, their untidiness, their careless reading,
their bad preaching, their irreverence 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 find 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 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 transported 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 he
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--_Once a country parson always a country parson_; where he
finds himself there he has to stay.

As long as the patronage of ecclesiastical preferment 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 _fainéant_ 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 _carrière
manqué_. 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 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 hundreds--there are
to be found those who have never had, and never will have, any chance
at all of showing 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 surroundings, or fail to be dwarfed and
cramped by 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! 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, 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 _pied à 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! 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 never calculated upon six or eight children who have
to be educated; the real dreariness of the prospect, its crushing
unchangeableness only gradually 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 stop there, there and there only. For such as you there shall
be no change, your resting place shall inevitably 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
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 congregation; 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 aforesaid 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 resources
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 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 bliss 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 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 discover too
late that you are out of harmony with your surroundings, that you are
fretting against 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 impressed 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 exaggerated
estimates 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.

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
said is the property of the Church--the Church? _Nos numerus sumus!_

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, freeholders and practically irremovable;
they were expected to perform certain duties which, as a rule, they
performed 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 were kept in
efficiency, and their masters furnished with a maintenance--sometimes
with much more than a mere maintenance--to whom did this property
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 posterity 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 reconsider 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 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 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 politics. Such
creatures live by inventing grievances 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 proclaiming that the parsons have robbed _the 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 parish or to the glebe, who, it may be asked, are _the
poor_? The 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
Mudborough 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 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 _bonus_?

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 _some_thing--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 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.

But, 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!” A more monstrous assertion
it would be difficult to invent! Far 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 the 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 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 be 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 Commissioners, 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 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 constituting 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.

As a preliminary, as a _sine quâ 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 obliterate.

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 meeting 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, viewed as a going concern in possession
of property, has nothing that can be called a constitution.

       *       *       *       *       *

If the glaring anomalies and the wholly unjustifiable 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 readjustment should proceed?

First and foremost, let all obsolete and antiquated privileges, which
are survivals of a long extinct condition 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 disqualified 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 corporation,
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 historical aspect of
the question I decline to enter now. 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 reasonably 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 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
office, 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 outrageous 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 captain 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 paid 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, receiving the arrears of pay which had accrued during the time
he was in gaol, and quietly settling down 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 nonresident 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 office. 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 to 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 parishioners
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 sinecures while we reside upon them, or of leaving them to the
veriest hireling to serve while we are disporting 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, therefore, that, in
spite of legal safeguards which in their tendency are corrupting and
demoralizing, as a class they are incomparably _better than they need
be_. The clergy of the Church of England constitute the one protected
interest in the universe that does not languish. Nevertheless, _C’est
magnifique, mais 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 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 _régime_. 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 of the educational reserve fund, learning experience by their
blunders, their failures or their _fads_.

And when we do so, where shall we find ourselves?

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--responsible, 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 trustees 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 of Brentwood, Kirkleatham,
and Bosworth schools has passed out of the hands of _private patrons_
into those of the newly-constituted governing bodies.

4. The governors in presenting to a benefice 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 circumstances 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 expended 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 a reform as
that proposed would work.

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 denounced 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 too. 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 lifeholders of the freehold. 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 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 vicar.

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 Liverpool 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.

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 find ourselves face to face with the problem
which has been found so difficult of solution--viz., how to deal with
Ecclesiastical 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 _ad libitum_, build stables for a dozen horses, and lay
out acres of the glebe in ornamental gardens; and he too may die in
difficulties. 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 £300 a year. In either case--that of finding himself with
a tumble-down rectory, or that of finding himself with an entirely
unsuitable one--the incoming 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
_régime_ finds it desirable to add to his parsonage-house for any
reason or for none. What follows? Is he to be allowed to do as he
pleases? Certainly 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 _official
residence_ provided 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 something 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 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 functionary 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 conscientious 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 tell 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 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 proposal 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 the 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. 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. Moreover, it must never
be forgotten that the circumstances of every parish or district in
England vary to an extent which they who have never thought much upon
the subject could hardly bring themselves 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:--

1. The governing body should not be too large, 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 body 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-_payers_; 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, none appears to me more mischievous or
indefensible, none has done more to make the tillers of the soil
discontented, or led them more passionately to set themselves 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 tenant to cry out, “Away with this
payment, 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
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!” 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
landlord’s _tax_, and no tenant should be allowed to pay it 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 remembering that in the past there was a very
close connection 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 instituted, I think there are good reasons why
the owners of the soil liable to pay tithe should be 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 representative. Where there were many
landlords, they could elect their representatives--one or more, as the
case might be--in the ordinary way.

(ii) As the owners of land subject to the payment of tithes should
be represented, so should the ratepayers of the parish have their
representative upon the board of governors. And here I confess I
cannot 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 chance of extorting
from the Legislature anything in the shape of a conscience clause?
But, when I speak of ratepayers, I mean _bonâ fide_ payers of rates.
I exclude from this category the compound householder: I by no means
exclude unmarried women who pay their own rates and taxes, who are
often among the most sagacious, high-minded, and exemplary 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.

(iii) But, if the owners of the soil and the ratepayers 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 membership, and quite aware, too, that at this point one
is sorely tempted to do that which I protested against above--viz.,
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!

(iv) 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.

(v) It is conceivable, nay it is probable, that in addition to these
representative governors it might 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 benefices, whether 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 discussion, 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
undesirable to have a board of governors for each of these tiny
units, let alone the absurd 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 freehold of that benefice
and its appurtenances, together with the patronage thereof, should be
handed over.

(vi) 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 disqualified from presenting
a clergyman to any benefice in 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?

But would the functions of the governing body be confined to the
management of the estate of a benefice 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 ministrations of the parson. These
should be matters of arrangement between the congregation and their
minister. Let the powers and the duties of churchwardens 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 _parish_ reserve fund; but in matters
with which only the congregation worshipping habitually in the church
are concerned, let no outsider have any _locus standi_. If in his
administrations a clergyman insists on doing 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 ruin a foolish, obstinate, and ignorantly
conscientious clergyman. The congregation--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 claim that their parson should be dismissed, on grounds which
should be, of course, properly formulated.

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
his 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 Jambres 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 “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 appointed 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
preposterous that all the money collected by and through the voluntary
contributions and the voluntary exertions 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 congregation as a congregation must in
all reason be allowed to manage its own affairs. But, inasmuch 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 appointment 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 circumstances, cases might occur where a
reluctant congregation 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
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 discussion of matters of ritual and theology among the
representatives of a population which sometimes counts by tens, usually
by a few hundreds, and 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 comprehensive 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 questions, 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 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 _open
competition_ will be distasteful to some, but will result in changes
which I am convinced will be, on the whole, of immense 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 expression, and the general
supervision and periodical inspection of the benefices which has
now become the emptiest of 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 willingly 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 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 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 of 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 unapproachably inimitable in the architectural
remains of our country.

Undeterred by the clamour of incompetent impostors, 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 drums and without any flourish of
trumpets--to save what remained from the devastation that had been
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! all this was very terrible, especially that 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 confederates 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, recriminations,
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
pestiferous 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 and ingenious and captivating manner by another set of
people, and which unhappily has met with immense favour at the hands of
the moneyed public, and which seems to me to find its exact parallel
in the proposal of a certain unfortunate lady who suffered martyrdom
for her faith, or at any rate her profession, 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 loveliness 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 rejuvenescence, there is a
whole world of difference, and between the stupid do-nothingism 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 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 building 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 rebuilt, 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 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 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 condition 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 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 imagination 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 sixteenth 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.[5] Well! We all 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 wholly unexpected 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 conviction 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 of my most gifted acquaintances are sharing with myself--I
really do not know to whom these thousands 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 tenantable
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 conscientious
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 protests 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 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 fine 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
_restoring_ 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
only responsible owner of the fabric. It is remembered 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 fact, 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 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
knowledge 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 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! 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 every one of them, and all these holes
imperatively demand to be filled up with concrete. But mercifully, most
mercifully and providentially, a professional 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 restored. 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 mutilations, 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!” Now, I know that with some folk it
is quite sufficient to condemn any men or any opinions to pronounce
them _vague_. Why! Since the beginning of the world no great forward
movement, no great social religious or political reform, has ever
achieved its object and gone on its victorious course conquering and to
conquer which did not pass through its early stage of vagueness--that
stage when the leaders were profoundly conscious 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! save us from cut-and-dried schemes, 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: “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 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 proposition, 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, degrading,
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 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 impulse 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
mutilate, 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 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 possible 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 know 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 neither; you can murder both if you are a heartless
assassin. Was it in the 1851 Exhibition that they 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 perpetrated 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 supplied in the eighteenth, and
therefore that nothing but a clean sweep is to be made of it all, as
a preliminary 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 Norman masonry.
You can’t copy Roman brickwork; 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 somehow 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,
sprawling, 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 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
instincts. 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?

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 Thomas Peynton
of Ely, who, having 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 better 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 forbear 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
quâ non_, what is wanted is to stop all unlicensed meddling with all
ancient buildings throughout the land. This can only be 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 difficulty. 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 individuals, 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 untouched
by profane hands for centuries, its very vastness has frightened the
most audacious adventurers, and it still stands in its majesty as the
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 Crœsus 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
committing 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 for
their preservation? Is it not time that 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 outbreaks of enthusiastic iconoclasm 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 comfort and warmth
and light. Put all these into your new temples as lavishly as you
will, and then peradventure 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 plastered 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 constituted authority,
shall be adjudged guilty of a misdemeanour 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 presume to 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 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 edifices 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, so far from the cost of such a survey and
such a publication of reports as those contemplated deserving 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 Archæological
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 ecclesiastical 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 of 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--nay, necessary though it be--that some
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
ecclesiastical edifices must be placed upon a different footing 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 principle 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 upon 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 community, 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 supineness, and awaken them
to see the necessity for concerted action; and then the thing that
needs doing will be done.

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 Turner, 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:--

  The parish of Sotterley, in the county of Suffolk, lies about
  five miles from the town of Beccles, and is one of those _close_
  parishes which they who live in the _opens_ are 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 in
  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 wonderfully
  good preservation, four at least of the figures in its panels still
  retaining a great deal of the old brilliancy 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 Sotterley 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 population who
  delude themselves with the preposterous belief that they have a
  right to worship there.

  Moreover, Sotterley Church stands in a churchyard of unusually
  large dimensions. It must cover at least an acre of ground, and
  not half 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 Sotterley
  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--was 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 graveyard and laying them where they themselves hoped to
  lie some day. But was not this a little too bad, to have a funeral
  procession of tearful clodhoppers 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 something
  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 that it was desirable that Sotterley
  churchyard should be closed, and, the legal document being duly
  drawn up, an order was obtained from the Privy Council, and the
  churchyard was closed accordingly. 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 forbidding
  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 chapel, 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 one point scored; but it was
  but a beginning. On Easter 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 present site for the best
  part of a thousand years, and that it only remains 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 perpetrated under our
  eyes without ever lifting 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, whatever 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 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 æstiva recreatur aura,

I murmured to myself--I could not waste my Horace upon Cabby.

I am in the habit of assuring my lowly congregation 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 thinking 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 prodigious
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 Keeper of
the Public Records_, presenting us with an elaborate summary of work
carried on by the functionaries employed in examining our national
archives; and so far are we from getting to the end of the work of
men cataloguing and 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 difficult 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 consultation, I find a brief
calendar of the Patent Rolls of the seventh year of Edward the First,
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, my estimable reader--during the single
year ending the 20th of November, 1279. 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 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 news that there
are hundreds of rolls averaging 200 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 concerned with the civil and political history of the
nation; that is, they deal with the development of our institutions,
with the government of our sovereigns through their ministers, with
the changes in our laws and their administration, with the complex
questions of the tenure of land and the changes in its ownership, with
the rise and growth of our commerce, 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 _tabularium_, as the Romans called their Public Record
Office, is situated, as I have said, within a bow-shot of Temple Bar,
and to the northeast 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 centuries 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 uninitiated.
They, too, probably count by millions, and I have known one gentleman
who estimated the number which he himself had looked at and examined
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 here we are dealing with a single class of documents,
which present no difficulties of arrangement, and which have been
carefully preserved and habitually 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 somewhere 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 half a million documents; and,
in addition to all these, there are probably many other important
collections subsidiary to these larger ones, the very existence 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 _tabularium_, is inpracticable.
A Public Record Office which should not only be a monster warehouse
for the safe custody of our ancient muniments, but should be a
library of reference open to all duly qualified persons desirous of
pursuing historical research among our unprinted sources, would be
a building that would more than fill Trafalgar Square. Obviously
such a collection, to be practically accessible, would require to be
methodized, 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.

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 officials, one and
all, high and low. From the days of that cross-grained, combative,
and overwhelmingly 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 muniments 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 _tabulariumn_ into a
colossal _cæmeterium_, in which they would be not so much preserved as
buried for all time.

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 companies, 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 publicity when there is a host of Grub
Street ragamuffins only too glad to make merchandise of their “Curious
Revelations” and to ferret out inconvenient scraps of information to be
used for the 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 condescending; but come to us as a footpad
grabbing at our fobs, and you may find the consequences disastrous.
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 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 somehow we all
do feel some sly hankering to know how they managed it in the parochial
councils, say, two or three hundred years ago; 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 the 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
depended. Fiction and fact have vied with each other in emphasizing
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 kept in a single room of
Somerset House, and be easily supplied with perfect personal indices in
five years.

       *       *       *       *       *

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 _ecclesiastical_ history of England may 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 ecclesiastical records of inestimable
value and of unknown richness--one at the Archiepiscopal Palace of
Lambeth, one at St. Paul’s, one in the precincts of Westminster Abbey.
(1) 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 documents being accessible to research, Mr. Lyte, when 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 kept
in St. Paul’s. Thirty years ago, when I was very 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 a 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 emerged from that three-days’ audacious voyage of discovery with my
intellect only a little disordered and my constitution only a trifle
shattered, and I survive to speak of that bewildering and horrible
experience as men speak of their confused recollection of an escape
from drowning. From that day to this I have never met with a human
being who had ever been bold enough to search among the archives of the
bishopric of London or who could tell me anything 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 unknown multitudes of witnesses, voiceless, tongueless,
forgotten, whose testimony, if it could be extorted, would strangely
and powerfully affect our views upon hundreds of incidents and
movements, hundreds of crimes and errors and sacrifices and grand
endeavours that now are very imperfectly understood, often wholly
misrepresented, and some of them passed out of remembrance. Let us 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! Be
not rash with thy lips. The name Star Chamber 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 great bankers or money-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 evidence 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 the few who even
know that there are such things in existence. As to the exact meaning
or derivation of the word, I dare not venture upon an explanation of
it; nor as to the correct spelling of it am I qualified to express an
opinion. It is sufficient for me that the court in which these suits
between the Jews and their 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 _stars_. 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 neglected 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 illustrious deans. The magnificent and venerable institution is
so spangled with golden memories that the dryest handbook must needs
prove attractive to the dullest of readers. 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 Westminster 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 excuse 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
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 that 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, then,
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 I 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 charge of
qualified custodians, we 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 demanded for his meals
large supplies of Theban youths and maidens. The monster conducted
himself in a very exacting and insolent manner, and somehow he
contrived to make the unhappy 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, voracious, and
overbearing. 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 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 purposeless 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!” 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 pulse, 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.

Indeed, it is easy to exaggerate the value and importance even of
the metropolitan 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! What for? That a score or two of cockney dryasdusts may have
the opportunity of getting at them 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 ecclesiastical 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 documents 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
Government, _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 corporation 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 arranged that with the help of the new catalogue and index
... the custodian can produce without difficulty any charter, roll,
or paper account that it may be needful to examine.” The records of
the corporation of Leicester, says the same learned antiquary, “will
endure comparison with the muniments 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 enthusiasm 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
them, more vigilance displayed in their preservation, and more 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 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 concentrating 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 questions 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 ourselves 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 or later we shall have to group those
records in departmental archives--this we are irresistibly compelled 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. Gigadibs, 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 (1) 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, judicature, 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 an apparatus for studying the history of the
land.

And here we are face to face with a serious difficulty. 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
prodigious 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 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 forefathers, and which may still
be met with in large numbers, dating back to the days of Henry the
Third, were destroyed by tens of thousands. Documents 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 overstraining of feudal authority on the one hand or of
crafty evasions of feudal services on the other, of the rapacity of
lords and stewards of 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
destruction of ancient muniments has been carried on cannot yet be even
approximately estimated. Nevertheless much remains. The interest which
such writers as Mr. Seebohm, Mr. Maitland, Mr. Thorold Rogers, and
others have aroused in the many important inquiries which they have
severally pursued is increasing day by 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’ offices are provokingly in the way; the country houses are
changing hands week by week, and Philistines prefer dressing-rooms to
muniment rooms. Will no one suggest a way out of our difficulties?

       *       *       *       *       *

I have passed very 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, being that I know nothing about
the Abbey muniments or of those of 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? “Exercising archidiaconal
functions, of course.” And of course we are expected to receive that
novel explanation with shouts of laughter. Well, but wouldn’t you
like to know how they really _did_ employ themselves? Suppose you
were by chance to hear that the action of the archdeacons’ courts had
_something_ to do with the emigration of the Pilgrim Fathers and many
hundreds of their friends to New England, say, in the seventeenth
century; 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 something 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 days 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 buffoonery 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 real and terrible 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 the hearts and brains of others; how they spoke
to 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 things if they are to be known. You may sneer at
the follies of pedigree hunters if you will, and deride the harmless
madness of genealogists; 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 proper 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 any other repository. What is wanted is not
centralization but classification. Already it has been found advisable
to remove the natural history collections 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 documents, except only
that at the Record Office, they do not exist; they have still to
be made. Meanwhile 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 precautions 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 “his” 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 proceeds towards the expense of
a new organ? Where are the records of Barchester now that the Venerable
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 I can 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 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 could 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 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 ourselves seriously to deal with it. Within the precincts
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 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 muniments.

Such men as Dr. Bensley of Norwich are few and far between. Gentlemen
whose duties involve 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 something less than thanks as
their reward. The chivalrous and splendid enthusiasm of the late Mr.
Wickenden at Lincoln, of Dr. Sheppard at Canterbury, 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. Symonds of Norwich, to make
sacrifices of time and money in the preservation or deciphering or
calendaring 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 you 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?

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 available for students engaged in original
research, it will be necessary to put them under the custody of a
trained _archiviste_, 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 _tabularium_. Let there be the same system
adopted of arranging, indexing, and calendaring. Let there be issued
periodically reports addressed to the central authorities, let the
archives be open to students and inquirers 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
“Solvitur 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 understanding 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 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
destroyed, and 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! 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,
professional, or financial, we are sure to hear of 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, than 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
scandalous 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 from a lemon. “Don’t tell me!” says
one of my agnostic friends who knows everything, as agnostics always
do, and who is absolutely certain, as agnostics always are, that they
know all 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! You might as well try and persuade me you
like being snowed up!”

Now it so happened that, a few days after my bouncing and aggressive
friend had delivered himself 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 lashing 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 long broad stripe
of snow that seemed a trifle higher than the ploughed lands that lay
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 fresh
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! We needn’t go out, need
we?”

Nathan, the wise youth--agnostic, as he calls himself, which is only
Greek for _ignoramus_--would 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 somewhat 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 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 sympathetically 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! “No
interruptions!”

You observe that our day begins at eight. When we came first to Arcady
we said we would breakfast 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 morning 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 the table as if it were
Midsummer Day. The man had left the road, tramped along the fields
which 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 (_i.e._, 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 enjoy a pension of ten shillings a week and the repose of acute
rheumatism consequent upon sudden cessation from physical exertion, I
find myself frequently exclaiming with the poet,--

  πολλὰ τὰ δεινὰ κ’ οὐδὲν ἀνθρώπου δεινότερον πέλει.

  Many the wonderful things that be, but the wonder 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 letters
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
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, who
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 uncompromising,
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 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 me, 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 there is
one thing I could not do without--I could not do without the _Times_.
We have tried again and 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 distracted by the variety of objects, and tantalized by the
restlessness of perpetual solicitation,” till, 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[6]
of Nathan the 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 German 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 performers 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 exceedingly. These people disappeared at last, but they
were succeeded by another band, and a very inferior one, and I took
but little notice of them. There were seven of these performers, a
cornet and two clarionets being prominent--very. However, they got
their shilling, and vanished. Three 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 dolorous chorale in a minor key. It was
really more than flesh and blood could bear. “Send him away, Jemima.
Send him away!--instantly! Tell him I am _sehr krank_. Send him away!”
The fellow smiled with unctuous complacency. But 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!” 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 shilling, 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 withhold 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 snowdrifts. It was inhuman to send
them away without coffee. And they had it accordingly. Poor things!
poor things! Where were they going? They were going back to the “Red
Lion,” a stone’s throw off, 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!” said Mr. Style, “to hear that there
trombone a _sole_ing ‘Rule Britannia’! That made you feel he was a real
musician--that it did!”

So you see we began the day with 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,
dunnocks, blackbirds and thrushes, linnets and--jackdaws, yes! and,
watching very warily for a chance, a dozen or so of rooks in the trees
in yonder plantation, very much excited, very 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 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 may as well
understand 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 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 sufficient reason that
the head gardener is the Lady Shepherd, and the under gardener only
comes 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
_Theœtetus_. As long as τὸ ὄν kept his hand upon the world it went
round all right; when he took it off, the 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 the greenhouse. But when half-past nine strikes I roll
my table into position and set to work, my head gardener puts on her
apron and gathers up her skirts, and starts forth with her basket on
her arm, equipped for _her_ 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 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 to 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.
I think you would have liked to see him.” “What’s the matter?” “He’s
been writing to the dear Queen” (the Lady Shepherd 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 without 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 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 Shepherd’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--_eheu 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 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 blackballed him?--give it up!” 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_--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 Athenæum 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! 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 colleys, so I’m told. 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 fee, no annual subscription,
no blackballing, 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 anywhere else to produce
me fifty per cent. of its members so entirely courteous, cordial,
and clubbable--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 _man_, “You’re to sleep outside
that 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 _modus 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 except 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! That
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 Polus!” said the Lady Shepherd. “Only Polus 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 Council.--Poor man! He only got three votes.--There
was no reference to the young gentleman in the _Gorgias_ 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 profoundest
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 him to
bed? To send for a doctor was out of the question. But we could soon
get him a mustard poultice and a hot bath. Polus laughed the hearty
laugh of rude health and youth. “You, dear old people, you forget I’m
only thirty-five. I’ve had a pleasant walk from Tegea--greased my boots
well--only rolled over twice. I’ve come for a talk. Dear me! dear me!
Didn’t I see a moth there on the curtains? Curious that they should
come out in such numbers when you’re snowed up! May I help you to get
rid of the pests?”

The man had come to show his defiance of the laws of nature and
ordinary prudence. In fact, he had come for mere _cussedness_! 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 depression. The
People’s Palace. The Feudal System. The Bacon-Shakespeare--anything you
please in reason--but Education! No! Not for worlds.” 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 disagreeable 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 difficult
to discover what the main object was--or, in fact, if the 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-prêtre_)? 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? Entails!”

Then it appeared that the great League was to be 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 silenced 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 belonged
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 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 enchanting island?

Hereupon ensued an elaborate monologue, admirably expressed, closely
reasoned, carrying not so much conviction as demonstration along
with it. Granting the premises, the conclusion was inevitable. It
was as good as Bishop Blougram. The scheme was this: Property--even
in the funds--is 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
permanent 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 in
the name of trustees shall be transferred to the names of the present
beneficiaries, and shall be extinguished 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 take from them nothing that they ever 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
phantasms. The sooner they learn their glorious lesson the better. They
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
foreshadow? “Now, my dear Doctor,” said Polus, pausing for 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 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 tenderness. The last
time I saw eyes flash was when a certain college don came to pay his
respects to a certain little lady--she _was_ a little lady then--a week
after she was married. The old blunderer boasted that he had been on
Lord Powis’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 undergraduate. But----” The man almost jumped 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
Consort? 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.” Hesitate, 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!

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._

       *       *       *       *       *

Something 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 gabbling here last week. But it’s like
you men--you’ve no more common sense than this trowel! Visions indeed!

      I gladly live amid the real,
      And I seek a worthier ideal.
    Courage, brothers; God is overhead!

Ah! you may laugh. But it’s all on my side.”

Away she swept, basket and trowel and all. Stop to listen to that
gibberish--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 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
contrary. 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 International 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 cathedrâ_,
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 come in trouble and pain crying out for τὴν
μαιείαν?” He threw up his hands: “Speak, and I will listen.” Then said
I, “O 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 choosing the wrong
ones. But I have been excogitating of late a theory which will supply
your next plank to perfection, and in fact 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 something 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 - m)² = The income tax levied upon each citizen.

  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 £1,000 a year was free from all
taxation.

When x was greater than m, then taxation upon the income in excess of
£1,000 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 beneficent 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 this 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 £1,000 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 _minus_ quantity represented by
x-m, where m is greater than x, offers no difficulty. The two poles
of this perfect sphere, if I may so speak, this financial orb--_teres
atque rotundus_--are reached, first when x=0, last when x = £11,000.
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 £100 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 Polus, next time you come, do bring me tidings of my
Frenchman, and do work the thing out on paper, for I never was much
of a mathematician, and now my decimals are scandalously 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 husband’s such a goose!” We watched him
floundering through the snowdrifts; and I verily believe he was working
out my problem with his stick, ·0001 (x-m)².

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 intercourse, 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 £1,000 in the funds all the while?”

       *       *       *       *       *

Here I may as well explain that the Shepherd and his lady are the
objects of some wonder and perplexity 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 rolling in riches.
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 provision--

        Ne turpe toral, ne sordida mappa
    Corruget nares, ne non et cantharus et lanx
    Ostendat tibi te.

But the forks are all electro-plate, and the dishes 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 do 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 enjoyments; 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 obligation 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 he
wedded Biddy. We make out that Biddy and her three 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, hawking; 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 100 yards
off the parsonage, and every now and then the old lady comes to tea
in the kitchen. 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 merriment
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 had no churchings, and I don’t
hold wi’ that there _Combination_. Dash it! I never did like cussing
and swearing!”[7] It turned out that Biddy had set herself 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 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 with
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 the grey twilight, and muse upon
those ten years that have rushed by so peacefully, and yet which have
remorselessly 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 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 insistence 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 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 contemporaries 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 believed?--the number of
those who have ever taken the trouble to work out his formula is quite
disgracefully small.


The _Formula_ of the great unknown stands thus:--

  ·0001 (x - m)² = The amount which the state deals with in all incomes
                    above £100 a year.[8]

        Here x = the income. m = £1,000.

In working out this Formula, the _Rule_ may be stated as 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 £200 a year; _i.e._, x = 200.

    200 - 1,000 = -800.
    -800 squared; [_i.e._,-800 multiplied by -800] = 640,000.

Result of 640,000/10,000 = 64.

Consolation income to all possessors of £200 a year ... £64.

(_b_) Income of £500 a year; _i.e._, x = 500.

    500 - 1,000 = -500.
    -500 squared; [_i.e._,-500 multiplied by -500] = 250,000.

Result of 250,000/10,000 = 25.

Consolation income to all possessors of £500 a year ... £25.

(_c_) Income of £900 a year; _i.e._, x = 900.

    900 - 1,000 = -100.
    -100 squared; [_i.e._, -100 multiplied by -100] = 10,000.

Result of 10,000/10,000 = 1.

Consolation income to all possessors of £900 a year ... £1.

(_d_) Income of £1,000 a year; _i.e._, x = 1,000.

    1,000 - 1,000 = 0.
    0 multiplied by 0 = 0.

Consolation income to all possessors of £1,000 a year ... 0.

(_e_) Income of £2,000 a year; _i.e._, x = 2,000.

    2,000 - 1,000 = 1,000.
    1,000 squared [_i.e._, 1,000 multiplied by 1,000] = 1,000,000.

Result of 1,000,000/10,000 = 100.

_Income tax paid by_ all possessors of £2,000 a year ... £100.

Reduced to a tabulated form it becomes evident that the consolation
paid by the State to all owners of income below £1,000 will decrease
as the incomes increase; until, when a prosperous gentleman attains
to £1,000 a year, the consolation will disappear, 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 £11,000 a year, he will pay £10,000
a year income tax, and if he does not take this warning and rises to
£12,000 a year the State will not only claim all his £12,000 but demand
£100 a year more.

That is to say,

A.

Incomes of

   £200 will receive from the State the Consolation of £64
    300              ”           ”           ”          49
    400              ”           ”           ”          36
    500              ”           ”           ”          25
    600              ”           ”           ”          16
    700              ”           ”           ”           9
    800              ”           ”           ”           4
    900              ”           ”           ”           1
  1,000              ”           ”           ”         Nil

B.

Incomes of

  £2,000 will pay to the State a Tax of  £100
   3,000       ”        ”        ”        400
   4,000       ”        ”        ”        900
   5,000       ”        ”        ”      1,600
   6,000       ”        ”        ”      2,500
   7,000       ”        ”        ”      3,600
   8,000       ”        ”        ”      4,900
   9,000       ”        ”        ”      6,400
  10,000       ”        ”        ”      8,100
  11,000       ”        ”        ”     10,000
  12,000       ”        ”        ”     12,100

       *       *       *       *       *

The richest man in the community will thus be he who has an income of
£6,000 a year; on this he will have to pay £2,500 income tax, leaving
him with an available balance of £3,500 a year to spend! Now was not
this anonymous Frenchman a man of real genius? And is he not a signal
example of the truth that

    “The world knows nothing of its greatest men”?

       *       *       *       *       *

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 possessors of a
      secure annual income. _De minimis non curat lex._

  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
      property 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
      discourage 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 Rothschilds and Barings! Ye kings
of railroads and bacon and nitre! Aye! and such as thou citizen
Labouchere--thou of the morbidly sensitive conscience. Tremble, for
your day is coming! The age of hap-hazard and empirical finance
is passing--the age of scientific and philosophic readjustment 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 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 untaught 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)².




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 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 read
a great many books about America since those days; but I 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 Trollope’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 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
arrangement.

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, which can for a moment
be compared with the growth of this nationality. I use that word
advisedly. 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 population 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 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
confidence 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-asserting.
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, awful force, a force that acts upon the
new-comer with exceeding rapidity. How soon does the immigrant 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 Amsterdam 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 themselves in what I may call
the national life of America, so there are others in the political life
of the American 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. We are on the eve of a great change, when something very
like manhood suffrage will be 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 ἄχρηστοι πολῖται, 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 enormously when we are assured that this
deep interest in political questions appears to be wholly distinct
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 becoming increasingly apparent that the
characteristic 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 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 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 becomes of them? What is the effect upon
the executive? With us the patronage of the government, 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 government 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 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,
unprincipled, 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
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 suspicion 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 their due recognition in
the shape of titular distinction 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 _entrée_
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 undoubtedly 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 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, disappointed, and soured. They tell me that wealth in
America will gain admission to any society for any one. I have been
repeatedly assured by intelligent Americans that this is so; yet I
cannot understand that it should be so. I can quite understand 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 subscription 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 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 _de haut en
bas_. The Lady Mayoress receives ambassadors with condescension; next
year some young _attaché_ 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 sarcasms against Æschines by reminding his audience
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 marrying 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
receive? 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, what are you going to do?” This “going away” means leaving our
country-houses when 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’hôte_ 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 tourists, 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 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, unostentatious 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 with equal impartiality; and
no more faithful delineations 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 is to be felt among them, if
at all.

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 communion 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 presume 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 recognized 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 disputants will cease to wrangle when
lawyers learn to love one another as brethren and doctors differ
without asperity; but among us the situation is 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 approach 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
attitude of the clergy[9] toward all the religious teachers has always
been exclusive; there has never been any cordiality, and very little
coöperation. 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 absolutely 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 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
accepting the situation, and shutting himself up also. Result, to all
appearance, nothing but two unoccupied 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 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 organization 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, notebooks, 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
darkness and inform my ignorance, and it may happen that the hints I
have thrown out may be suggestive to them.

As to the big cities, with their colossal warehouses 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. Sometimes I should
even venture to inquire about the war--_the_ 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 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 extended 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?


UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON.




FOOTNOTES


[1] “Arcady, for Better for Worse.”

[2] This is a matter of very great importance in hundreds of country
parishes, where the washing of the rectory frequently suffices to
maintain a whole family.

[3] 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.

[4] 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 vehemently protest that Crabbe deserves to be reckoned
among the greatest of the great. Was not his first poem entitled
_Inebriety_? 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 conceived a horror of the _Faery Queen_ in consequence.

[5] 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 _in extenso_; 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, ornaments, &c., all set down in detail,
the names of the donors being frequently given, and sometimes the value
of the more precious articles being stated. Some years ago I stumbled
upon 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
inventory begins at fol. cci.

[6] 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 it and print
it? It is very short, and it is perfectly harmless. I am afraid it must
mean something bad in Finnish or some other strange tongue, for the
_reader_ always draws my attention to it.

[7] Fact! Old Biddy’s habit of _dashing it_ is so confirmed that
there’s no hope of her outgrowing it.

[8] 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 ·0001 is the same thing as _dividing_ by 10,000; and
so ·0001 (x - m)² is only another way of writing ((x - m)²)/10,000

[9] 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 nonconformists 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.




Transcriber’s Notes


Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of
inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.

Spelling and punctuation in dialect has not been changed.

Page 166: Transcriber added closing double-quotation mark to ‘in those
rude old times.” How?’ but it may belong after the ‘How?’ or in some
other place.

Pages 252-253: In the formulas and explanations of them, the variables
x and m were printed in italics. For readability, that is not indicated
here.

Pages 264-269: In the formulas and explanations of them, the variables
x and m were printed in boldface. For readability, that is not
indicated here.





End of Project Gutenberg's Trials of a Country Parson, by Augustus Jessopp