The autumn holidays of a country parson

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WRITINGS OF THE "COUNTRY PARSON/

Chapter I

E have been here a little more than a week, all of us together. For if you be a man of more than five-and-thirty years, and if you have a wife and children, you have doubtless found out that the true way to enjoy your autumn holidays, and to be the better for them, is not to go away by yourself to distant regions where you may climb snowy Alps and traverse glaciers, in the selfish enjoyment of new scenes and faces. These things must be left to younger men, who have not yet formed their home-ties, and who know neither the happiness nor the anxieties of human beings, who spread a large surface on any part of which fortune may hit hard and deep. Let us find a quiet place where parents and children may enjoy the time of rest in company ; where you will be free from the apprehensions of evil which (unless you be a very selfish person) you will not escape when the little things are a thousand miles away. And, to this end, one may well do without the sight of lakes, waterfalls, streets, and churches, which it was pleasant once on a time to see. Upon this day, last year, I ascended

1 A the marvellous spire of Strasburg Cathedral. It was the brightest of all bright days. You went up and up, by little stairs winding through a lace-work of stone, which it makes one somewhat nervous to think of even now, till you emerged on a platform whence you looked down dizzily on the market-place hundreds of feet below ; upon the town, all whose buildings looked so clean and well-defined in the smokeless air ; upon the fertile level plain, stretching away towards Baden ; and the ugly poplars, marking the course of the Rhine. It was all, to an untravelled man and an enthusiastic lover of Gothic architecture, interesting beyond expression : yet I would much rather be here.

For this is Saturday morning, and my parish is far away. There is no sermon to be thought of for to-morrow ; and no multitude of sick folk to see ; no pressure of manifold parochial cares. This is a very ugly cottage by a beautiful shore ; and, through a simple pecuniary negotiation, the cottage is ours for the months of August and September. Looking up from this table, and looking out of the window, the first object you would see is a shaggy little fuchsia, covered with red flowers, waving about in a warm western wind. Beyond, there is a small expanse of green grass, in which I see, with entire composure, a good many weeds which would disquiet me much if the grass were my own. The little lawn is bounded by a wall of rough stone, half concealed by shrubs. And on the farther side, the top of the wall cutting sharp against it, weltering and toiling now in shadow, but a minute ago bright in sunshine, with the unnumbered dimple of little waves, spreads the sea. Now it has brightened again ; and three gleaming sails break the deep blue. Opposite, a few miles off, there are grand Highland hills. Sometimes they look purple ; sometimes, light blue ; sometimes the sunshine shows a yellow patch of cornfield. Never, for more than an hour or two, do those hills and tills sea look the same. They are always changing ; and the changes are extreme. You could no more tell a stranger what this place is like, by describing it ever so accurately as it is at this moment, than you could worthily represent the most changeful human face by a single photograph. In the sunset you may often see what will make you understand the imagery of the Revelation,— a sea of glass mingled with fire; then the mountains -are of a deep purple hue, such as you would think exaggerated if you saw it in a picture. Hardly have the crimson and golden lights faded from the smooth water, when a great moon, nearly full, rises above the trees on this side, and casts a long golden path, flickering and heaving ; the stillness is such that you fear to break it by a footfall. Then there have been times, even within this week, when drenching showers darkened the water and hid the opposite hills ; or when white-crested waves made the sea into a wild, ridgy plain, and broke on the shingle hard by in foam and thunder.

This is not a fashionable watering-place ; you go back to a quiet and simple life, coming here. No band of music plays upon the black wooden pier, where the rare steamboat calls daily. There is no such thing as a gay promenade, frequented by brightly dressed people desirous to see and to be seen. There is no readingroom, no billiard-room, no circulating library, no hotel, no people who let out boats, no drinking-fountain. There is a post-office ; but it is a mile distant. You would find here no more than a line of detached houses, a few extremely pretty, and more of them extremely ugly, reaching for somewhat more than a mile along the sea-shore. The houses, each with its shrubbery and lawn, greater or less, stand on a strip of level ground between the sea and a rocky wall of cliff, which follows the line of the beach at no great distance ; doubtless an ancient sea margin. But now it serves as a beautiful background to the jDretty houses, and it almost redeems the ugly ones ; it is covered richly with trees, which through ages have rooted themselves in the crevices of the rock ; and where the perpendicular wall forbids that vegetation, it is clothed with ivy so luxuriant, that you would hardly think those hearty leaves ever knew the blighting " salt spray. By the sea-shore there runs a highway; the waves break within a few yards on a beach of rough shingly gravel. It is to be confessed, that this charming place lacks the level sand which the ebbing tide leaves for a firm, cool walking space at some time of every day. But your walks are not confined to the path to right and left along the sea-shore. You will discover pleasant ways, that lead to the country above the wooded and ivied cliff; and there j^ou will find ripen-, ing harvest fields, and paths that wind through fragrant woods of birch, oak, and pine, and here and there the mountain-ash, with its glowing scarlet berries. But it is not what one understands by a country side : the w^hole landscape is gradually, but constantl3% sloping upwards, till it passes into dark heathery hills, solitary as Tadmor in the wilderness. There the sportsman goes in search of grouse and deer ; and thence you have views of the level blue water far below you, that are worth going many miles to see.

There are places along this seaside where your only walk is beside the sea. The hills rise almost from the water, an expanse of shadeless heather. But we are happier with our shady woodland walks. When the glare and heat are oppressive along the shore in the vacant afternoon, let us turn away from the road that skirts the beach, up this thickly wooded glen, through which a stream brawls from rock to rock, hardly seen for the leaves. You will not walk for a few yards imder the pleasant shadow, till you find yourself so environed with ivy-grown trees, honeysuckle and wild flowers, that you might fancy the sea many miles off. And the oppressive light and heat and dust are gone. Let us go on, following the windings of the path and the water, till we reach a spot where a clear little brook, tumbling over rocks from far above us, crosses the road under a rude arch, to join the larger stream ; and now let us sit down on a great stone, where the little brook, close by our feet, makes a leap into the dark entrance of the bridge. Here let us rest and be thankful. Many people find this a feverish world : let us rejoice in a nook so green and quiet. Ferns of many kinds cover the damp rocks : there is a thick canopy of green leaves overhead, through which you may see blinks of the brightest blue sky ; and through which you may see an intense flickering of light, where the sun is struggling to pierce the dense shade. The air is fragrant and cool and moist : all around there is a thicket of evergreens and underwood, over which the tall trunks arise whose spreading branches make our grateful shadow.

We have all, young and old, wearied for this time ; and here it is at last. The cheerful anticipation of it was something to help one through laborious summer days. For if you are to be in the country no more than two months in the year, the months beyond question should be August and September. Let us keep our cake as long as we can ; let us make our holiday season late. June and July are delightful months amid rural scenes ; but it would be dismal to go back to the hot town at the end of July, and think one had settled down for the winter. But, at the beginliing of October, a little space of long dark evenings, and the growing crispness of the morning air, help to make one feel ready to take with good heart to the laboring oar again.

Yet, though this holiday time be so enjoyed by anticipation, I think that when the day comes on which you preach to your own congregation for the last time before leaving, you feel it rather a trial ; and you turn your back upon your church with some regret and some misgiving. A clergyman's work is not like any other ; you have not quite the school-boy's feeling when working days are over and holidays begin. For your work is not merely your duty, it is your happiness too ; and though some folk may not understand it, you feel it something of a privation to think on a Sunday in your play-time that the bells are ringing, and the people assembling in the familiar place, and you not there. Happily, there are regions in this world where the clergyman's last Sunday at church, is likewise the last Sunday at church of a great part of the congregation. It is gathered, as usual, one day ; and the next, scattered far and wide, by the seaside and among the hills.

And in this uncertain world, where when many hundreds of human beings are in one place to-day, no one can say who may be missing when they meet after some weeks' separation, I think that you, my friend, will preach with special kindness and heartiness on your last Sunday at home ; and that you will be heard with special attention and sympathy. There will be a very perfect stillness as you pronounce the blessing for what may be the last time. And you will well remember the words and the music of the parting hymn. Taking your final look round your vestry, and round your emptied church, as you come away, you will feel the sorrow and anxiety which come of the vain delusion common to man, that the place where you worked and labored your best will not go on quite as well in your absence. Ah, my friend, some day you and I must leave our several churches for ever ; and though we shall be kindly remembered and missed there for a while, they will come by and by to do without us. And very fit and right too. We are not such self-conceited fools as to wish it were otherwise. Yet it is cheering, each Tuesday morning through the holidays, when the letter comes by post, in which a kind friend, whom duty ties to his town work at this season, tells how all went well in the services of the Sunday before.

Then, following that parting day, comes one of confusion and worry and fatigue, — the day on which the family accomplishes the journey to the distant resting-place. Would that the age might come when human beings shall be able to do without baggage ! Yet even baggage serves good moral ends. You are very thankful indeed, when, in the quiet evening, the cottage, or the more ambitious dwelling, is reached at last ; and the manifold packing-cases, being counted up, are found to be all right. During the day, several times, you had quite resigned yourself to the conviction that half of them would never be found more.

There are simple statements which may be repeated many times, while yet no wise man will pull you up by declaring that he has heard the like before ; for such simple statements are the irrepressible outflow of the present happy mood and feeling. Yon could not help uttering such, to any one to whom you might be talking out your heart. Suffer me now to declare, that there is no more precious blessing than rest. "The end of work is to enjoy rest." " The end and the reward of toil is rest." Yes, it is delightful to rest for a while from even the most congenial and beloved work. And rest is not merely delightful ; it is needful. The time comes when the task drags heavily ; when it is got through heartlessly, and by a painful effort often renewed. Most busy men, busied with work that wears the brain and nervous system, have some little time of rest in their daily round, — some precious hour of quiet. There is generally the short breathing space between dinner and tea. But, as months pass, the nerves grow so irritable that many sounds and circumstances worry you ; then is the hour when the organ-grinder painfully thrills you through. At this stage, busy men find the relief of a little pause, — a day or two away from work, no matter where. Arnold said, that the most restful days of the year were those spent in the long journeys by coach between Rugby and Fox How. A very eminent and over-driven man lately told me, that when he is being jvrought into a fever, he finds rest by going to London by the express train, and returning the next day.

The distance is four hundred miles going, and the like returning, — eleven hours either way. But it is enjoyable to lean back in the carriage ; to read and to muse, — sure that no one will speak to him on the business of his profession. I have heard of a great man who found the hke relief in going to bed for two days or so. There was physical repo§e ; and even the unreasonable caller and tormentor, who would utterly disregard the assurance that the Doctor was weary and could see no one, was beaten by the assurance that the Doctor was in bed. For the average human being, on being told that the Doctor could see no one, would instantly say, " 0, but I know he will see me ! " But- not even these retreats will stay the gathering weariness which grows on body and mind as the seasons pass. And if you have been at work from the beginning of October to the end of July, — ten months with little relaxation, — then you have fairly earned the autumn holiday-time. And your rest will be not merely the reward of past work, but the preparation for future. You are laying up the strength, spirit, and patience needful for the winter months, if you are to see that time. And you must act on the calculation that you are to see it. On dark Sunday afternoons in January, when gas is lit throughout the church, and snow lies in the wintry streets, you may preach your sermon with the greater heart and vigor for the hours you sit now on a stone by the seaside, looking at the waves, and for the bracing breezes that supply the ozone the city lacks. So the diligent clergyman is as 1* mucli in the way of duty while enjoying his autumn rest as while fulfilling the work of the remainder of^the year.

That you may thoroughly enjoy the autumn holidays, it is essential that you should feel that they have been fairly earned by long and hard work. You cannot feel the delight of rest, unless by contrast with toil, hurry, and weariness. All this quiet and beauty, to you and me grateful as water to the thirsty, would be to people who habitually live an idle life no better than something insufferably dull and stupid. Let us hope that we have faithfully gone through the previous discipline, that will make us relish simple quiet and peace. Some people think it shows humility to say things against themselves which they know are not true. They meekly confess sins of which they are aware they are not guilty ; saying what they suppose must be true, instead of what they feel to be true. Let us never do the like. Few thmgs are more fatal to a true and h"onest spirit. For myself, I will say, without reserve, that in these last ten months I have worked to the very best of my abihty and strength to fulfil my duty. And, if not very much after all, I have done what I could. I can say the like for certain dear friends in my own profession. They never wilfully neglect any work ; they never see any thing that ought to be done, without trying to do it. Unprofitable servants, doubtless, in the sight of One above us ; but, at least, we can look our fellow-men in the face.

1 suppose, my readers, we have all a picture in our minds of the ideal autumn holidays. They never have come; they are never to be. Yet we can think of broad harvest fields, golden in sunshine ; of magnificent trees, the growth of centuries ; of green glades, with the startled deer ; of the gray Gothic dwelling, large and hospitable ; of a mode of life in which sickness, anxiety, vague fears, and pinching eflTorts to save shillings, are quite unknown. Yes, it is to be admitted that this ugly little cottage and its surroundings, physical and moral, are no more than a makeshift. But then, my friend, what more is all our life, and all our lot ? We must make them do ; we have great reason to be thankful for things as they are : but all this is not what we used to think of, when we were Uttle children or hopeful youths. Let us train ourselves to look at lights rather than dai'ks. There is such a thing as an eye for lights, and such a thing as an eye for darks. You know, when you look at a grand Gothic window, — the eastern window of a noble church ; and when you look at a much smaller Gothic window, you may look either at the dark tracery of stone, or at the lights of gorgeous storied glass. Now, in a physical sense, it is well to look at each in turn. You may behold a really excellent wdndow by this, — that the darks are beautiful in form, if you fix your attention on them only ; and the lights are likewise beautiful in form, if you consider them by themselves. An inferior architect will give you the tracery beautiful, but the lights shapeless ; or the lights pretty, but the tracery ugly.

But, though it is well physically to have an eye for both darks and lights, it is best, usually, to look mainly at lights, as you contemplate the grand Gothic window of your lot and of circumstances. For many people look at the darks to the exclusion of the lights. They dwell on the worries of their condition, to the forgetfulness of its blessings and advantages. They contemplate the smoky chimney of their dining-room, to the forgetfulness of a hundred good tilings. They try to get other people to do th6 like. My friend Smith told me, that, once on a time, he had Mr. Jones to preach in his church. Smith's church holds fifteen hundred people, ;vnd it is perfectly filled by its congregation ; of this circumstance Smith is pardonably proud. When Mr. Jones preached, the church was quite crowded, save that three seats (not pews, seats for a single person each) were vacant in a front gallery. But so keen was Mr. Jones's eye for darks, to the oblivion of lights, that after service he merely said to Smith, that he had remarked three seats empty in the gallery. Not one thought or word had he for the fourteen hundred and ninety-seven seats that were filled. Smith was a little mortified. But by and by he remembered, that the peculiar disposition of Mr. Jones was one that would inflict condign punishment upon itself. Then he was sorry, rather than angry. Yes, my friend, let us be glad, if we have an eye for the lights of life, rather than for its darks !

It is curious, how very soon the burden drops from one's back, when you come for your holidays to some place far away from your home and your duty. The relief is in direct proportion to the distance in miles. A hundred miles will suffice ; a thousand are better. Very lightly does the care of your parish rest on you, when the parish is a thousand miles distant ! Even a tenth part of that amount makes one feel as a horse must, when its harness is removed, and its shoes taken off, and it is turned out to grass. As you put on a tweed suit, and adopt a wide-awake hat, you forget the responsibilities and labors of past months ; you cease to be the same man. The careful lines are' smoothed out of your face ; the hair pauses in growing gray. It is necessary, indeed, to the true sense of rest, that you should have the feeling of a good long horizon of time before you. A few days in the countiy, with the feeling that you are just going back to work, will not do ; the feverish pulse will keep by you. It is quite a different thing, when you know you have several weeks in prospect. Then you expatiate ; then you truly rest. Those good men who remain within a few miles of their parish, and who go back for each Sunday's duty, do not enjoy the feeling of the holiday-time at all. And feeling is the reality. It is not what a thing is in itself, but how it presents itself to you. You know how different a thing a railway-station, thirty miles from home, looks to you when you are to stop at it, and when you are to go on three hundred miles further.

It is pleasant, and at first a little perjDlexing, instead of setting to work after breakfast, to go forth and wander about the shore, or sit on a rock as long as you please, with the sense that you are neglecting nothing that needs to be done. You feel, as regards time, as a poor man who has suddenly inherited a Jarge fortune must feel towards money. Strange, to have so much to spare of the thing of which before one had so little ! And how misty and unreal the scenes and the life that are distant and past grow to be! I cannot at this minute, sitting on a warm stone by the sea in the morning sunshine, feel that at the entrance to a certain square stands in this same sunshine, with a Httle shrubbery before it, a certain church, Ionic as to its front elevation, which the writer well knows. It is always there when I go back; but I do not know what becomes of it in the mean while.

There is nothing more certain than this, that it will not answer to go to your resting-place to spend your holiday-time, without having thought of what you are to do while there. If the truth were told, it would be the confession of many men, that the enjoyment of their holidays was all in the anticipation and the retrospect ; and that the holidays themselves were a very disappointing and tiresome time, very listless and weary. All this comes of their vaguely believing that, to enjoy the season of rest, all you have to do is to go to some quiet, retired place, and then some occupation will suggest itself, some mode of getting the due enjoyment out of the long-expected time. A clergyman might just as wisely ascend his pulpit, without having thought of what he is to say from it of his text and his sermon, and count upon these turning up at the moment they are needed. Before going to the seaside, you should carefully consider what you are to do there, and map out some little plan of life ; not adliering to it, of course, should some pleasant deviation suggest itself. And every one must devise such a plan for himself, according to his own liking. Only let it be remembered, that it will not do to be absolutely vacant. Time will hang heavy ; and then enjoyment is at an end. Different men have devised different modes of light occupation for their holiday-time ; and that wliich suited one man might be most unsuitable for another. IVIr. Jay, the eminent Non-conformist of Bath, tells us that it helped liim to thoroughly enjoy his vacation, to write one little sermon in the morning of each day, and another in the evening. The sermons were certainly very brief; you might read each in five minutes; yet not every preacher would have regarded it as recreation to produce them. There are very many to whom sermonwriting does not come so easily ; to whom a sermon is the thought of a week, not the diversion of an hour. Let it be said, that Mr. Jay's little sermons now fill four volumes, under the title of Morning and Evening Exercises ; they pro\dde a little pious reading for the mornings and evenings of a year. The writer is so verywarm a Churchman, that he seldom looks at the volumes without regretting that the good man was not one ; the more so, as it is plain that no conscientious scruple kept him out of his national church. Yet, let it be said, that if you read the little discourses daily, for a year, you will leave off with a very kindly and pleasant impression of their author. It is not that any one discourse is in any way specially brilliant, but that all are so evenly good ; and they treat, in the most admirable spirit, not the matters on which good Christians differ, but those on which they all agree.

For men to whom the writing of sermons is not relaxation, but rather work, yet whose likings are quiet and scholarly, certain rules may be suggested. In addition to the physical employment of mountain excursions, yachting, riding, shooting, and the like, let abundance of reading be provided. Let the Times daily tell how the great world goes ; let plenty of other newspapers come besides. Thus post-time will be a fresh sensation, even if very few letters appear, and these of very small interest. And, besides as many pleasant new books as you can get, let there be some large work, of many volumes, read perhaps long ago, yet worth reading again, and which could not be read satisfactorily amid the pressure of working days and months. And weeks before you come to the seaside, consider what this book shall be. Mine, this year, is Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott, — an admirable history of a great and good man. If you have read it as a boy, read it once more as a man ; and you will find how well you remember it. It is a sad history, certainly ; and you will find many things to be thought of with deep regret : yet you will rise from it with a hearty admiration and affection for the greatest Scotchman. And often, as you go on, you will come on passages that will make you pause and muse, with the finger in the half-closed book.

But the writer's special occupation during these holidays is to revise and consider the essays which make up this volume. He has very little time now for writing such; and the little time is growing less. The spare hours of two years have gone to tlie production of this little book. It will always be jDleasant to look back on time so pleasantly spent. And these chapters have already met so kind a reception, as they appeared in that dear old magazine in which the writer saw his earliest article in print and his latest, and in another magazine which professes to publish good words, though some people have declared it to be a bad and dangerous periodical, that the indulgent reader may easily understand how this volume has been added to the list of certain which have gone before. Let me wish for this book, that it may fall into as kind hands as the rest, and into as many.