Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 53, No. 329, March, 1843

In the lap of nature the troubled mind gets rest; and the wounds of the heart heal rapidly, once delivered there, safe from contact with the infectious world; and the bosom of the nursing mother is not more powerful or quick to lull the pain and still the sobs of her distressed ones. It is the sanctuary of the bruised spirit, and to arrive at it is to secure shelter and to find repose. Peace, eternal and blessed, birthright and joy of angels, whither do those glimpses hover that we catch of thee in this tumultuous life, weak, faint, and transient though they be, melting the human soul with heavenly tranquillity? Whither, if not upon the everlasting hills, where the brown line divides the sky, or on the gentle sea, where sea and sky are one—a liquid cupola—or in the leafy woods and secret vales, where beauty lends her thrilling voice to silence? How often will the remembrance only of one bright spot—a vision of Paradise rising over the dull waste of my existence—send a glow of comfort to my aged heart, and a fresh feeling of repose which the harsh business of life cannot extinguish or disturb! And what a fair history comes with that shadowy recollection! How much of passionate condensed existence is involved in it, and how mysteriously, yet naturally connected with it, seem all the noblest feelings of my imperfect nature! The scene of beauty has become "a joy for ever."

I recall a spring day—a sparkling day of the season of youth and promise—and a nook of earth, fit for the wild unshackled sun to skip along and brighten with his inconstant giddy light. Hope is everywhere; murmuring in the brooks, and smiling in the sky. Upon the bursting trees she sits; she nestles in the hedges. She fills the throat of mating birds, and bears the soaring lark nearer and nearer to the gate of Heaven. It is the first holiday of the year, and the universal heart is glad. Grief and apprehension cannot dwell in the human breast on such a day; and, for an hour, even Self is merged in the general joy. I reach my destination; and the regrets for the past, and the fear for the future, which have accompanied me through the long and anxious journey, fall from the oppressed spirit, and leave it buoyant, cheerful, free—free to delight itself in a land of enchantment, and to revel again in the unsubstantial glories of a youthful dream. I paint the Future in the colours that surround me, and I confide in her again.

It was noon when we reached the headquarters of the straggling parish of Deerhurst—its chief village. We had travelled since the golden sunrise over noble earth, and amongst scenes scarcely less heavenly than the blue vault which smiled upon them. Now the horizon was bounded by a range of lofty hills linked to each other by gentle undulations, and bearing to their summits innumerable and giant trees; these, crowded together, and swayed by the brisk wind, presented to the eye the figure of a vast and supernatural sea, and made the intervening vale of loveliness a neglected blank. Then we emerged suddenly—yes, instantaneously—as though designing nature, with purpose to surprize, had hid behind the jutting crag, beneath the rugged steep—upon a world of beauty; garden upon garden, sward upon sward, hamlet upon hamlet, far as the sight could reach, and purple shades of all beyond. Then, flashes of the broad ocean, like quick transitory bursts of light, started at intervals, washing the feet of a tall emerald cliff, or, like a lake, buried between the hills. Shorter and shorter become the intermissions, larger and larger grows the watery expanse, until, at length, the mighty element rolls unobstructed on, and earth, decked in her verdant leaves, her flowers and gems, is on the shore to greet her.

The entrance to the village is by a swift, precipitous descent. On either side are piled rude stones, placed there by a subtle hand, and with a poet's aim, to touch the fancy, and to soothe the traveller with thoughts of other times—of ruined castles, and of old terrace walks. Already have the stones fulfilled their purpose, and the ivy, the brier, and the saxifrage have found a home amongst them. At the foot of the declivity, standing like a watchful mother, is the church—the small, the unpretending, the venerable and lovely village church. You do not see a house till she is passed. Before a house was built about her, she was an aged church, and her favoured graves were rich in heavenly clay. The churchyard gate; and then at once, the limited and quiet village, nestling in a valley and shut out from the world: beautiful and self-sufficient. Hill upon hill behind, each greener than the last—hill upon hill before, all exclusion, and nothing but her own surpassing loveliness to console and cheer her solitude. And is it not enough? What if she know little of the sea beyond its voice, and nothing of external life—her crystal stream, her myrtle-covered cottages, her garden plots, her variegated flowers and massive foliage, her shady dells and scented lanes are joys enough for her small commonwealth. Thin curling smoke that rises like a spirit from the hidden bosom of one green hillock, proclaims the single house that has its seat upon the eminence. It is the parsonage—my future home.

With a trembling heart I left the little inn, and took my silent way to the incumbent's house. There was no eye to follow me, the leafy street was tenantless, and seemed made over to the restless sun and dissolute winds to wanton through it as they pleased. As I ascended, the view enlarged—beauty became more beauteous, silence more profound. I reached the parsonage gate, and my heart yearned to tell how much I longed to live and die on this sequestered and most peaceful spot. The dwelling-house was primitive and low; its long and overhanging roof was thatched; its windows small and many. A myrtle, luxuriant as a vine, covered its entire front, and concealed the ancient brick and wood. A raised bank surrounded the green nest, and a gentle slope conducted to a lawn fringed with the earliest flowers of the year. I rang the loud bell, and a neatly dressed servant-girl gave me admittance to the house. In a room of moderate size, furnished by a hand as old at least as the grandsires of the present occupants, and well supplied with books, sat the incumbent. He was a man of fifty years of age or more, tall and gentlemanly in demeanour. His head was partly bald, and what remained of his hair was grey almost to whiteness. He had a noble forehead, a marked brow, and a cold grey eye. His mouth betrayed sorrow, or habitual deep reflection, and the expression of every other feature tended to seriousness. The first impression was unfavourable. A youth, who was reading with the minister when I entered the apartment, was dismissed with a simple inclination of the head, and the Rev. Walter Fairman then pointed to a seat.

"You have had a tedious journey, Mr Stukely," began the incumbent, "and you are fatigued, no doubt."

"What a glorious spot this is, sir!" I exclaimed.

"Yes, it is pretty," answered Mr Fairman, very coldly as I thought. "Are you hungry, Mr Stukely? We dine early; but pray take refreshment if you need it."

I declined respectfully.

"Do you bring letters from my agent?"

"I have a parcel in my trunk, sir, which will be here immediately. What magnificent trees!" I exclaimed again, my eyes riveted upon a stately cluster, which were about a hundred yards distant.

"Have you been accustomed to tuition?" asked Mr Fairman, taking no notice of my remark.

"I have not, sir, but I am sure that I shall be delighted with the occupation. I have always thought so."

"We must not be too sanguine. Nothing requires more delicate handling than the mind of youth. In no business is experience, great discernment and tact, so much needed as in that of instruction."

"Yes, sir, I am aware of it."

"No doubt," answered Mr Fairman quietly. "How old are you?"

I told my age, and blushed.

"Well, well," said the incumbent, "I have no doubt we shall do. You are a Cambridge man, Mr Graham writes me?"

"I was only a year, sir, at the university. Circumstances prevented a longer residence. I believe I mentioned the fact to Mr Graham."

"Oh yes, he told me so. You shall see the boys this afternoon. They are fine-hearted lads, and much may be done with them. There are six. Two of them are pretty well advanced. They read Euripides and Horace. Is Euripides a favourite of yours?"

"He is tender, plaintive, and passionate," I answered; "but perhaps I may be pardoned if I venture to prefer the vigour and majesty of the sterner tragedian."

"You mean you like Æschylus better. Do you write poetry, Mr Stukely? Not Latin verses, but English poetry."

"I do not, sir."

"Well, I am glad of that. It struck me that you did. Will you really take no refreshment? Are you not fatigued?"

"Not in the least, sir. This lovely prospect, for one who has seen so little of nature as I have, is refreshment enough for the present."

"Ah," said Mr Fairman, sighing faintly, "you will get accustomed to it. There is something in the prospect, but more in your own mind. Some of our poor fellows would be easily served and satisfied, if we could feed them on the prospect. But if you are not tired you shall see more of it if you will. I have to go down to the village. We have an hour till dinner-time. Will you accompany me?"

"With pleasure, sir."

"Very well." Mr Fairman then rang the bell, and the servant girl came in.

"Where's Miss Ellen, Mary?" asked the incumbent.

"She has been in the village since breakfast, sir. Mrs Barnes sent word that she was ill, and Miss took her the rice and sago that Dr Mayhew ordered."

"Has Warden been this morning?"

"No, sir."

"Foolish fellow. I'll call on him. Mary, if Cuthbert the fisherman comes, give him that bottle of port wine; but tell him not to touch a drop of it himself. It is for his sick child, and it is committing robbery to take it. Let him have the blanket also that was looked out for him."

"It's gone, sir. Miss sent it yesterday."

"Very well. There is nothing more. Now, Mr Stukely, we will go."

I have said already that the first opinion which I formed of the disposition of Mr Fairman was not a flattering one. Before he spoke a word, I felt disappointed and depressed. My impression after our short conversation was worse than the first. The natural effect of the scene in which I suddenly found myself, had been to prepare my ever too forward spirit for a man of enthusiasm and poetic temperament. Mr Fairman was many degrees removed from warmth. He spoke to me in a sharp tone of voice, and sometimes, I suspected, with the intention of mocking me. His manner, when he addressed the servant-girl, was not more pleasing. When I followed him from the room, I regretted the haste with which I had accepted my appointment; but a moment afterwards I entered into fairyland again, and the passing shadow left me grateful to Providence for so much real enjoyment. We descended the hill, and for a time, in silence, Mr Fairman was evidently engaged in deep thought, and I had no wish to disturb him. Every now and then we lighted upon a view of especial beauty, and I was on the point of expressing my unbounded admiration, when one look at my cool and matter-of-fact companion at once annoyed and stopped me.

"Yes," said Mr Fairman at length, still musing. "It is very difficult—very difficult to manage the poor. I wonder if they are grateful at heart. What do you think, Mr Stukely?"

"I have nothing to say of the poor, sir, but praise."

Mr Fairman looked hard at me, and smiled unpleasantly.

"It is the scenery, I suppose. That will make you praise every thing for the next day or so. It will not do, though. We must walk on our feet, and be prosaic in this world. The poor are not as poets paint them, nor is there so much happiness in a hovel as they would lead you to expect. The poets are like you—they have nothing to say but praise. Ah, me! they draw largely on their imaginations."

"I do not, sir, in this instance," I answered, somewhat nettled. "My most valued friends are in the humblest ranks of life. I am proud to say so. I am not prepared to add, that the most generous of men are the most needy, although it has been my lot to meet with sympathy and succour at the hands of those who were much in want of both themselves."

"I believe you, Mr Stukely," answered the incumbent in a more feeling tone. "I am not fond of theories; yet that's a theory with which I would willingly pass through life; but it will not answer. It is knocked on the head every hour of the day. Perhaps it is our own fault. We do not know how to reach the hearts, and educate the feelings of the ignorant and helpless. Just step in here."

We were standing before a hut at the base of the hill. It was a low dirty-looking place, all roof, with a neglected garden surrounding it. One window was in the cob-wall. It had been fixed there originally, doubtless with the object of affording light to the inmates; but light, not being essential to the comfort or happiness of the present tenants, was in a great measure excluded by a number of small rags which occupied the place of the diamond panes that had departed many months before. A child, ill-clad, in fragments of clothes, with long and dirty hair, unclean face, and naked feet, cried at the door, and loud talking was heard within. Mr Fairman knocked with his knuckle before he entered, and a gruff voice desired him to "come in." A stout fellow, with a surly countenance and unshaven beard, was sitting over an apology for a fire, and a female of the same age and condition was near him. She bore an unhappy infant in her arms, whose melancholy peakish face, not twelve-months old, looked already conscious of prevailing misery. There was no flooring to the room, which contained no one perfect or complete article of furniture, but symptoms of many, from the blanketless bed down to the solitary coverless saucepan. Need I add, that the man who sat there, the degraded father of the house, had his measure of liquor before him, and that the means of purchasing it were never wanting, however impudently charity might be called upon to supply the starving family with bread?

The man did not rise upon our entrance. He changed colour very slightly, and looked more ignorantly surly, or tried to do so.

"Well, Jacob Warden," said the incumbent, "you are determined to brave it out, I see." The fellow did not answer.

"When I told you yesterday that your idleness and bad habits were bringing you to ruin, you answered—I was a liar. I then said, that when you were sorry for having uttered that expression, you might come to the parsonage and tell me so. You have not been yet—I am grieved to say it. What have I ever done to you, Jacob Warden, that you should behave so wickedly? I do not wish you to humble yourself to me, but I should have been glad to see you do your duty. If I did mine, perhaps, I should give you up, and see you no more, for I fear you are a hardened man."

"He hasn't had no work for a month," said the wife, in a tone of upbraiding, as if the minister had been the wilful cause of it.

"And whose fault is that, Mrs Warden? There is work enough for sober and honest men in the parish. Why was your husband turned away from the Squire's?"

"Why, all along of them spoons. They never could prove it agin him, that's one thing—though they tried it hard enough."

"Come, come, Mrs Warden, if you love that man, take the right way to show it. Think of your children."

"Yes; if I didn't—who would, I should like to know? The poor are trodden under foot."

"Not so, Mrs Warden, the poor are taken care of, if they are deserving. God loves the poor, and commands us all to love them. Give me your Bible?" The woman hesitated a minute, and then answered—

"Never mind the Bible, that won't get us bread."

"Give me your Bible, Mrs Warden."

"We have'nt got it. What's the use of keeping a Bible in the house for children as can't read, when they are crying for summat to eat?"

"You have sold it, then?"

"We got a shilling on it—that's all."

"Have you ever applied to us for food, and has it been denied you?"

"Well, I don't know. The servant always looks grumpy at us when we come a-begging, and seems to begrudge us every mouthful. It's all very well to live on other persons' leavings. I dare say you don't give us what you could eat yourselves."

"We give the best we can afford, Mrs Warden, and, God knows, with no such feeling as you suppose. How is the child? Is it better?"

"Yes, no thanks to Doctor Mayhew either."

"Did he not call, then?"

"Call! Yes, but he made me tramp to his house for the physic, and when he passed the cottage the other day, I called after him; but devil a bit would he come back. We might have died first, of course: he knows, he isn't paid, and what does he care?"

"It is very wrong of you to talk so. You are well aware that he was hurrying to a case of urgency, and could not be detained. He visited you upon the following day, and told you so."

"Oh yes, the following day! What's that to do with it?"

"Woman" exclaimed Mr Fairman, solemnly, "my heart bleeds for those poor children. What will become of them with such an example before their eyes? I can say no more to you than I have repeated a hundred times before. I would make you happy in this world if I could; I would save you. You forbid me. I would be your true friend, and you look upon me as an enemy. Heaven, I trust, will melt your heart! What is that child screaming for?"

"What! she hasn't had a blessed thing to-day. We had nothing for her."

Mr Fairman took some biscuits from his pockets, and placed them on the table. "Let the girl come in, and eat," said he. "I shall send you some meat from the village. Warden, I cannot tell you how deeply I feel your wickedness. I did expect you to come to the parsonage and say you were sorry. It would have looked well, and I should have liked it. You put it out of my power to help you. It is most distressing to see you both going headlong to destruction. May you live to repent! I shall see you again this evening, and I will speak to you alone. Come, Mr Stukely, our time is getting short."

The incumbent spoke rapidly, and seemed affected. I looked at him, and could hardly believe him to be the cold and unimpassioned man that I had at first imagined him.

We pursued our way towards the village.

"There, sir," said the minister in a quick tone of voice, "what is the beautiful prospect, and what are the noble trees, to the heart of that man? What have they to do at all with man's morality? Had those people never seen a shrub or flower, could they have been more impenetrable, more insolent and suspicious, or steeped in vice much deeper? That man wants only opportunity, a large sphere of action, and the variety of crime and motive that are to be found amongst congregated masses of mankind, to become a monster. His passions and his vices are as wilful and as strong as those of any man born and bred in the sinks of a great city. They have fewer outlets, less capability of mischief—and there is the difference."

I ventured no remark, and the incumbent, after a short pause, continued in a milder strain.

"I may be, after all, weak and inefficient. Doubtless great delicacy and caution are required. Heavenly truths are not to be administered to these as to the refined and willing. The land must be ploughed, or it is useless to sow the seed. Am I not perhaps, an unskilful labourer?"

Mr Fairman stopped at the first house in the village—the prettiest of the half dozen myrtle-covered cottages before alluded to. Here he tapped softly, and a gentle foot that seemed to know the visitor hastened to admit him.

"Well, Mary," said the minister, glancing round the room—a clean and happy-looking room it was—"where's Michael?"

"He is gone, sir, as you bade him, to make it up with Cousin Willett. He couldn't rest easy, sir, since you told him that it was no use coming to church so long as he bore malice. He won't be long, sir."

Mr Fairman smiled; and cold as his grey eye might be, it did not seem so steady now.

"Mary, that is good of him; tell him his minister is pleased. How is work with him?"

"He has enough to do, to carry him to the month's end, sir."

"Then at the month's end, Mary, let him come to the parsonage. I have something for him there. But we can wait till then. Have you seen the itinerary preacher since?"

"It is not his time, sir. He didn't promise to come till Monday week."

"Do neither you nor Michael speak with him, nor listen to his public preachings. I mean, regard him not as one having authority. I speak solemnly, and with a view to your eternal peace. Do not forget."

Every house was visited, and in all, opportunity was found for the exercise of the benevolent feelings by which the incumbent was manifestly actuated. He lost no occasion of affording his flock sound instruction and good advice. It could not be doubted for an instant that their real welfare, temporal and everlasting, lay deeply in his heart. I was struck by one distinguishing feature in his mode of dealing with his people; it was so opposed to the doctrine and practice of Mr Clayton, and of those who were connected with him. With the latter, a certain degree of physical fervour, and a conventional peculiarity of expression, were insisted upon and accepted as evidences of grace and renewed life. With Mr Fairman, neither acquired heat, nor the more easily acquired jargon of a clique, were taken into account. He rather repressed than encouraged their existence; but he was desirous, and even eager, to establish rectitude of conduct and purity of feeling in the disciples around him: these were to him tangible witnesses of the operation of that celestial Spirit before whose light the mists of simulation and deceit fade unresistingly away. I could not help remarking, however, that in every cottage the same injunction was given in respect of the itinerant; the same solemnity of manner accompanied the command; the same importance was attached to its obedience. There seemed to me, fresh from the hands of Mr Clayton, something of bigotry and uncharitableness in all this. I did not hint at this effect upon my own mind, nor did I inquire into the motives of the minister. I was not pleased; but I said nothing. As if Mr Fairman read my very thoughts, he addressed me on the subject almost before the door of the last cottage was closed upon us.

"Bigoted and narrow-minded, are the terms, Mr Stukely, by which the extremely liberal would characterize the line of conduct which I am compelled by duty to pursue. I cannot be frightened by harsh terms. I am the pastor of these people, and must decide and act for them. I am their shepherd, and must be faithful. Poor and ignorant, and unripe in judgment, and easily deceived by the shows and counterfeits of truth as the ignorant are, is it for me to hand them over to perplexity and risk? They are simple believers, and are contented. They worship God, and are at peace. They know their lot, and do not murmur at it. Is it right that they should be disturbed with the religious differences and theological subtleties which have already divided into innumerable sects the universal family of Christians whom God made one? Is it fair or merciful to whisper into their ears the plausible reasons of dissatisfaction, envy, and complaining, to which the uninformed of all classes but too eagerly listen? I have ever found the religious and the political propagandist united in the same individual. The man who proposes to the simple to improve his creed, is ready to point out the way to better his condition. He succeeds in rendering him unhappy in both, and there he leaves him. So would this man, and I would rather die for my people, than tamely give them over to their misery."