CHAPTER III.

Plain living and high thinking.

WORDSWORTH.

A dignified, but most rare and difficult union this! It is comparatively easy to separate the two, to circumscribe the claims of nature, or give latitude to those of mind; but to effect both at the same time, argues real superiority at once of principle and intellect. To study economy from a pinching sense of its necessity, yet never to suffer sordid cares to impede the exercise of a cultivated understanding; to have one eye rigidly fixed on the pence-table, and with the other to pierce the empyrean of science, poetry, or religion, is much more difficult than to ascend Mont Blanc with Mr Auldjo, or accompany Captain Parry to the North Pole. Extremes are things of very easy management; and mediums, which are generally consigned to people of mediocrity, are in fact, the things which to manage properly require great mind. It is easy to forget the

common cares of life, and easy to be absorbed in them; easy to be too ethereal for any occupation but thinking, or too coarse for any questions beyond such as have reference to the life of the body; but to find taste, and time, and energy for both, argues such a balance of power-moral and intellectualthat if the individual cannot receive a triumph, he deserves, at least, an ovation. This marrying of arithmetic to divine philosophy-this making genius stoop its "enthroned fires," and give earnest heed to the consumption of coal and candles, the latter not of wax but of veritable tallow-is, may be, and has been done; and most frequently, and with most grace perhaps, in a country parsonage.

Elegant, or even orderly arrangements, are not the invariable result of lavish expenditure; competence, under the direction of taste and refinement, can produce a much greater appearance of style than wealth without such a presiding influence; whilst with it, positively limited means become productive of graceful comfort. It was on this ground that the parsonage proceedings at Hemdon afforded our friend, Mrs Carhampton, a perpetual theme of admiring discourse. The old rector's handsome establishment, with all the et-ceteras incident to handsome establishments, she could com

prehend; not on the principle of his clerical incomethree hundred pounds per annum, or two hundred clear, for the odd hundred went to enrich his curate; but the reverend Dr Bampton had a private and hereditary income; moreover, he had not a wife and four children-the wife delicate, the children boys. "Girls" she would remark, when upon the death of the former incumbent, the reverend John Percy, who had the above-named incumbrances of wife and children without the consolation of a private fortune, was appointed to the living of Hemdon: "Girls," she would 66 say, are of some service in a house. I am not just thinking of my granddaughter Julia, because she will have a fortune, but of girls who must be brought up to look about them, and they are of some service in a house, from the time they can hem a glass-cloth, up to the day of their leaving it either to be married or buried. Girls are certainly great comforts with a small fortune: it is an anxious thing, to be sure, to leave four or five who must club their pittances, and live together very straitly, in order to keep up an appearance; but then they cost so much less than

boys whilst bringing up, and take

so much better

care of their clothes; and when they are left to wrestle through the world, they have a natural

sharp-wittedness in making bargains, that I verily think bestowed upon them by Providence; and girls are certainly, sight out of mind, less troublesome than boys, and if they are naughty, it is a much less destructive kind of naughtiness: then, when girls grow up, if they should be troublesome in another way, you have always one safe, sure, and easy remedy-you can lock them up :-(the old lady forgot that she had tried the locking-up system on her own daughter with little good effect) poor Mrs Percy! how she manages, manager as I am, I can't discover; she, with her bad health and those four boys, or say three, now Cecil is at college; she, with her two hundred and eighty pounds a year, or say three hundred, as Mr. P. keeps no curate and has the surplice fees, and only one maid and a tiny sprig of a lad,—and the whole house going on just like clock-work; the children as nice as noblemen, she herself always looking like a lady, catch her when you will," &c.

"You seem very partial to our new rector," some auditor would observe, if such a speech as the foregoing happened to be soliloquized in public.

"Yes, indeed, I am very partial to them all, even to the boys-the boys at home, I mean; and Cecil I hear is a sweet, mild youth, and I'll be

bound never litters or disturbs the house; so I expect to like him too. Yes, indeed, I am exceedingly partial. I think Mr Percy's preaching true orthodox gospel. I quite agree with every word he says, just as I did with good old Dr Bampton; though, to be sure, there is no more likeness between them and their sermons, than between my Julia and one of the Miss Prices (they were the little Prices no longer); and, to tell you the truth, I can't say but I respect the Percies too, just as much as if they were one's equals one's equals in fortune, I mean; all are equal in the sight of Heaven, you know; I, and the king, and every body: but, indeed, if I did not like the rector as well as I do, I should think it my duty to show the poor that I countenance the cloth, which is not the fashion so much as it used to be-more's the pity!

I give tithes of all I possess,' even that poor, proud pharisee could say; and I think, ma'am, it behoves us christians, who are altogether so vastly superior to him, to do as much, or more indeed, and to show the clergy little attentions, and make them little presents-very well thought of, by the bye! Here, John! gardener John I say! Be sure do not forget to cut a nice dish of grapes to night to go to the Rectory; and bid the cook kill a