CHAPTER VI. "Quis desiderio sit pudor, aut modus Tam cari capitis." HOR. Lib. 1, Od. 24. "A man he was to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a-year." GOLDSMITH. PURSUANT to the resolution I had formed on the preceding night, I lost no time in communicating with Herbert, and requested his advice in the increased difficulty of my situation, and, on the third morning, I received a reply. Meanwhile, having ascertained that my absence had not reached the ears of my tutor, I prepared to execute the commission with which I had been entrusted by Mrs. Herbert, and in the due discharge of which I felt deeply interested. The clergyman with whom Geoffrey Weldon and his mother were boarded resided at his curacy, which was situated about five miles from Oxford, and at no great distance from Woodstock, in the village of It was a poor living, and, consequently, the curate, with the few parishioners over whose spiritual welfare he watched, was not over-burdened by his duties, nor the emoluments arising therefrom; but those duties were not on that account neglected, nor was that emolument misapplied, and he was revered and beloved, and, in his humble sphere, was an ornament indeed of that most respectable and excellent body of men, the working clergy of the Church of England. Though not personally acquainted with him, his name was not unfamiliar to me, for his good deeds were known, and his worth duly appreciated in Oxford, and he was distinguished by the name, the honourable name, of "The good curate of Poor, but content; personally known to few, save in his own immediate neighbourhood, but by the few, to whom he was known, respected and beloved; with the milk of human kindness ever welling from his bosom, and a temper never disturbed but by anxiety for the welfare of his flock, he could not be otherwise than the object of esteem. Rich, because his wants were few, his income, though small, and what the worldly-minded would term a paltry pittance, contributed to his enjoyment, because that enjoyment was rational, not sensual, and the denial of useless luxuries enabled him to give of his abundance (for it was abundance to his well-regulated mind) to aid the distressed and minister to the sick. High-born men and women, and prelates, who rejoice in the unsullied whiteness of their lawn, would disdain to be put in comparison with that poor curate with his income of one hundred pounds a-year; but their robes, and their gaudiest and most costly dress, would shine but as tinsel by the side of the rusty black coat of that good man, whose rusty coat, by its very rustiness, told of the naked he had clothed; of the bread with which he had fed the hungry; of the luxuries he had denied to himself, but had given to the sick and to the dying; and of the heart which beat doubly quick at the sight of woe, and the picture of broken down humanity-which bled at the tale of the widow and the orphan, and made their sorrows his own, nor turned with disgust from the unhallowed bed of the impenitent and blaspheming sinner. And he was a happy, because he was a good man; for he knew that happiness consisteth not in the possession or acquirement of wealth. It was the will of God that he should have little, and he blessed that little, as the means of keeping him from temptation; he was grateful for having been thought worthy to be selected as a minister of Christ; and he felt that had he been rewarded here, on earth, by the bestowal of honours and riches, he might have been puffed up by an inordinate craving after the things of this life, to the injury of the Church which taught humility as its leading precept, and whose Master had not where to lay his head. Yet was he one of those who taught that the gifts which had been conferred by the Almighty were made to be enjoyed; nor because he might not take pleasure in certain pursuits, that they were, therefore, necessarily sinful, and to be reprobated. "It is not a world of mortification," said he, "but one of well-regulated enjoyment, for innocence begets enjoyment; and we were not sent here to be afflicted, save as a warning to our wandering steps, and as a means of preventing us from suffering a greater measure of evil." Such was the inan I was about to visit. Arrived at the village, which was neat and straggling, I put up my horse at the inn, and enquired the way to the house of Mr. Bainbridge. Following the directions I received, a walk of a few hundred yards brought me in sight of the house, reposing, as it were, under the shelter of several large elms which reared their lofty heads far above the humble parsonage, and gave a sombre, and hallowed, appearance to the quiet and unpretending residence of the humble occupant. The road which led to the house skirted the churchyard; and as I loved to stroll in a country churchyard, and I had arrived sooner than I had intended, I opened the gate which protected it from intruders, and entered the burying-place. A few sheep were grazing among the tombs, and an old white pony, the property of the clergyman, as I supposed, stood under the Saxon arch, which formed the outer part of the vestibule of the ancient church, whose crumbling and moss-grown walls gave une H quivocal signs of fast approaching decay. The latter did not trouble himself to notice my presence, but the sheep looked up with surprise, and an apparent inclination to repel the intrusion, so unaccustomed were they to be disturbed in their occupation. I had always derived a degree of melancholy pleasure, even from childhood, from wandering among the tombs and grass-grown graves of a country churchyard; for there one can speculate more truly on humanity than among the mausoleums of the mighty dead. The humble epitaph the modest record of the virtues of the deceased, the affecting but simple expression of the grief of friends, and the rude couplet which gives the history of the family, and declares the trust they repose in the promises of salvation; and, alas ! the turfed and willow-bound grave, which tells not to the stranger who it is that lies beneath, but whose turf, nevertheless, is watered by the tears of as affectionate friends, and whose loss is mourned by as sorrowing hearts. And how humiliating such a place is to the pride of the human heart! for here may be seen, the history of too many of us— Born, October 19, A.D. 1734. Died, January 20, A.D. 1802. And is this all of a life to be told? Let us look to our own hearts for the answer, and how many of us will Alas! 'tis but too true. For of what does say, |