A JOURNAL KEPT IN THE COUNTRY. 



where I sat I could see the Rector's profile against 

 the dark of the firs, and could see something of the 

 troubled thought which I knew very well had brought 

 him here to-night, that gloom which waits upon 

 strong souls, and rebukes our easy optimisms. 



There is no time for confidences like a dark, still 

 summer night not even the wintry small hours when 

 the last flicker has died from the logs, and the rain 

 beats at the window. But the Rector very rarely 

 indeed opens the penetralia. To-night I merely guess 

 something of causes in his work some soul in his 

 care snapped from the branch, as I may find a rose- 

 shoot broken after a windy night ; or the latter rain 

 denied. 



" After all," he was saying, " one must leave people 

 their posse damnari, as the sarcastic Schoolman called 

 it. By the way, how little we observe the sarcasm 

 of the Gospels! the 'just persons that need no 

 repentance/ and ' the poor have the Gospel preached 

 unto them,' and the rest. Milk diet, all our lives ! 

 and not very good of its kind. We had a paper on 

 Evolution at our Deanery Meeting: it isn't the 

 change in opinions which interests me, but the quick- 

 ness of the change. You know I always was an 

 Involutionist. The Chapter think worse of me than 

 their fathers did of the Essays and Reviewers. I 



