A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. II 



Our Rector is one of those singularly able and 

 admirable men who are sometimes to be found in 

 obscure country livings probably left there with 

 intention of showing to the lay mind what com- 

 parative heights of merit are necessary to the attain- 

 ment of the higher stations in the Church. Out of 

 his parish he is little known ; at the Ruridecanal 

 Chapter he is not very popular is, perhaps, a little 

 feared by reason of a discomforting directness of 

 apprehension, and a power of bringing men's cor- 

 porate foolishness home to them singly in a very 

 perspicuous way. Within his own marches he works 

 incessantly ; silent, subterranean, for the most part : 

 "no organiser" his neighbours call him, because 

 he is not caught running to and fro, talking and 

 begging ; because they cannot comprehend his 

 serene economies of time, his far-laid planning and 

 deep-rooted purpose. Some people say he would 

 have made a grand General ; and as I came upon 

 him, after some chase, in the fruit-quarters of the 

 kitchen-garden, he looked military enough with his 

 square figure, close grey hair and moustache, and 

 eyes keen and steady beyond comparisons. He 

 was pruning his greengages ; and according to his 

 custom, had cut away barrowfuls of fruit-budded spray 

 the ground was strewn with lost hopes of Early 



