A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 65 



in his presence must have its counterpart in many 

 other of his flock. He is not to be ignored : that 

 common relation of the country priest and the 

 labourers is impossible here. The farthest outliers 

 on the upland farms, the veriest lurcher-keeping ne'er- 

 do-well, fall under his influence, and must feel too 

 clearly that he belongs to a world not theirs ; must 

 know how he scorns the life they love. Such and 

 such a course he holds to a hair's-breadth, such a 

 threat he defies, such a slight he overlooks ; not the 

 most fervent charity will meet meanness or malice 

 half way ; and herein lies a strange natural check to 

 the weight of a perfect example. He himself dis- 

 regards what we call results, in the way of Band of 

 Hope converts or offertory pence. His ideal of duty 

 is shut up in his own thoughts. Only by long 

 acquaintance I came to guess the immense solicitude 

 for his people that fills him ; to trace a not infrequent 

 fit of gloom and abstraction almost terrible in its 

 degree, or a humour of inward gaiety and intellectual 

 abandon to some apparently small happening in 

 school or cottage, evidence, to him, of rise or fall in 

 the world of souls, his care. 



A short time ago we had among us a clergyman 

 whose vocation it was to conduct that sort of religious 

 Blue-Pill called Missions, a thing imported, as I 



F 



