You are happy, indeed, if after all, though quitting
your country parsonage, and turning over a new leaf
in life, you have not to make a change so entire as
that from country to town generally is: if, like
me, you live in the most beautiful city in Britain:
a city where country and town are blended together:
where there are green gardens, fields, and trees:
shady places into which you may turn from the glaring
streets, into verdure as cool and quiet as ever, and
where your little children can roll upon the grass,
and string daisies as of old; streets, from every
opening in which you look out upon blue hills and
blue sea. No doubt, the work is very hard, and
very constant; and each Sunday is a very exciting and
exhausting day. You will understand, my friend,
when you go to such a charge, what honour is due to
those venerable men who have faithfully and efficiently
done the duty of the like for thirty or forty years.
You will look at them with much interest: you
will receive their kindly counsel with great respect.
You will feel it somewhat trying and nervous work
to ascend your pulpit; and to address men and women
who in mental cultivation, and in things much more
important, are more than equal to yourself. And
as you walk down; always alone, to church each Sunday
morning, you will very earnestly apply for strength
and wisdom beyond your own, in a certain Quarter where
they will never be sought in vain. Yet you will
delight in all your duty: and you will thank
God you feel that were your work in life to choose
again, you would give yourself to the noblest task
that can be undertaken by mortal, with a resolute
purpose firmer a thousand times than even the enthusiastic
preference of your early youth. The attention
and sympathy with which your congregation will listen
to your sermons, will be a constant encouragement and
stimulus; and you will find friends so dear and true,
that yon.
will hope never to part from them while
life remains. In such a life, indeed, these Essays,
which never would have been begun had my duty been
always such, must be written in little snatches of
time: and perhaps a sharp critic could tell, from
internal evidence, which of them have been written
in the country and which in the town. I look
up from the table at which I write: and the roses,
honeysuckle, and the fuchsias, of a year since, are
far away: through the window I discover lofty
walls, whose colour inclines to black. Yet I
have not regretted the day, and I do not believe I
ever will regret the day, when I ceased to be a Country
Parson.
