1 68 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



their contented and cultivated owners. Every ramble through 

 lanes smothered in honeysuckles, and along the oak-tufted up- 

 lands to the distant farm-house or knot of cottages which demand 

 his ministrations, provides the parson with an inexhaustible fund 

 of recreation. The creative marvels of earth and air form an 

 appropriate study wherein he meditates, in accordance with 

 high episcopal advice, his sermon for next Sunday ; and the 

 keynote of happiness ringing everywhere around him, pervades 

 his meditations on Redeeming Love with admirable effect. 

 Though his eyes take in the trout that leaps under the willow, 

 as well as the ferns nodding above it, and the butterfly borne 

 on over the stream with somewhat fatal daring, his bosom friends 

 are the birds. For him the kestrel hovers over the clover field, 

 and the sparrow-hawk dashes over its hedge, like the pirates of 

 the Chinese seas, never visible until they make their swoop ; 

 the magpie chatters from her thorn bush, and the jay shows her 

 blue feathers in the sunlight. Amongst the smaller birds, too, 

 the finches and larks, his observations are just as carefully made ; 

 the sky-lark transports his soul above to return on her lessening 

 wings only to admire the more the beauty and prodigality of 

 contrivance in the landscape spreading around. In such sort 

 did that excellent prelate Bishop Andrewes " often profess that 

 to observe the grass, herbs, corn, trees, cattle, earth, waters, 

 heavens, any of the creatures, and to contemplate their natures, 

 orders, qualities, virtues, uses, &c., was even to him the greatest 

 mirth, content, and recreation that could be, and this he held 

 to his dying day." * And the country parson keeps diaries and 

 meteorological entries, in a somewhat erratic manner it may be, 

 but still in a manner to qualify him to act as arbitrator on 

 natural phenomena at the squire's dining-table or in the columns 

 of the County Jupiter. All these little interests intensify his 

 thankfulness and content, as the meadows waving with hay 

 become still more beautiful to him when the wood-pigeon cooes 

 * Life by Isaacson, his Secretary. 



