CHAPTER XXXV. 

 THE MISSION OF CANON GIRDLESTONE. 



As the present writer's account of the noble work of 

 the late Canon Girdlestone was, as far as he knows, the 

 only carefully elaborate and authoritative one, he feels 

 he cannot do better than quote it verbatim. He is 

 inclined to do this because, although the method of 

 putting the case is his, the facts were supplied by Canon 

 Girdlestone ; and because one of the present writer's 

 reviewers, in dealing with that method, commended 

 the author's plan by remarking that he was " above 

 the temptation to deaden the force of startling facts 

 by padding the statements of them with cheap 

 declamation." It may, indeed, be said that the facts 

 disclosed in the following narrative which should 

 possess historical interest as representing a condition 

 of things now, happily, altered for the better need 

 no " declamation " to emphasise their startling char- 

 acter. The narrative is as follows : 



" Early morning in June could scarcely open upon a 

 prettier scene of its kind, looked at from a distance, than 

 a Devonshire village upon which has fallen the ' hush ' 

 of Sunday. The profound quiet made audible now and 

 then by the ' cock's shrill clarion ' serves to assist the 

 imagination in creating impressions of beauty for the 

 eye is but the servant of the mind. Red stone and cob- 

 walled cottages, left in their native warmth of hue, or 

 whitened with roofs of thatch, slate, or tile strongly con- 

 trast with the greenery of their own little garden enclosures, 

 and with the verdant clothing bright in its spring fresh- 

 ness of level meadows, upland, and hill all round. Peace 

 and stillness brood upon the scene, and the cottagers are 

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