Gods Good Man | Page 3

witness to the past,--as will presently be duly seen and attested.
But St. Rest, or St. Est, whichever name rightly belonged to it, was in itself so insignificant as a 'benefice,' that its present rector, vicar, priest and patron had bought it for himself, through the good offices of a friend, in the days when such purchases were possible, and for some ten years had been supreme Dictator of his tiny kingdom and limited people. The church was his,--especially his, since he had restored it entirely at his own expense,--the rectory, a lop- sided, half-timbered house, built in the fifteenth century, was his,--the garden, full of flowering shrubs, carelessly planted and allowed to flourish at their own wild will, was his,--the ten acres of pasture-land that spread in green luxuriance round and about his dwelling were his,--and, best of all, the orchard, containing some five acres planted with the choicest apples, cherries, plums and pears, and bearing against its long, high southern wall the finest peaches and nectarines in the county, was his also. He had, in fact, everything that the heart of a man, especially the heart of a clergyman, could desire, except a wife,--and that commodity had been offered to him from many quarters in various delicate and diplomatic ways,--only to be as delicately and diplomatically rejected.
And truly there seemed no need for any change in his condition. He had gone on so far in life,--'so far!' he would occasionally remind himself, with a little smile and sigh,--that a more or less solitary habit had, by long familiarity, become pleasant. Actual loneliness he had never experienced, because it was not in his nature to feel lonely. His well-balanced intellect had the brilliant quality of a finely-cut diamond, bearing many facets, and reflecting all the hues of life in light and colour; thus it quite naturally happened that most things, even ordinary and common things, interested him. He was a great lover of books, and, to a moderate extent, a collector of rare editions; he also had a passion for archaeology, wherein he was sustained by a certain poetic insight of which he was himself unconscious. The ordinary archaeologist is generally a mere Dry-as- Dust, who plays with the bones of the past as Shakespeare's Juliet fancied she might play with her forefathers' joints, and who eschews all use of the imaginative instinct as though it were some deadly evil. Whereas, it truly needs a very powerful imaginative lens to peer down into the recesses of bygone civilisations, and re-people the ruined haunts of dead men with their shadowy ghosts of learning, art, enterprise, or ambition.
To use the innermost eyes of his soul in such looking backward down the stream of Time, as well as in looking forward to that 'crystal sea' of the unknown Future, flowing round the Great White Throne whence the river of life proceeds, was a favourite mental occupation with John Walden. He loved antiquarian research, and all such scientific problems as involve abstruse study and complex calculation,--but equally he loved the simplest flower and the most ordinary village tale of sorrow or mirth recounted to him by any one of his unlessoned parishioners. He gave himself such change of air and scene as he thought he required, by taking long swinging walks about the country, and found sufficient relaxation in gardening, a science in which he displayed considerable skill. No one in all the neighbourhood could match his roses, or offer anything to compare with the purple and white masses of violets which, quite early in January came out under his glass frames not only perfect in shape and colour, but full of the real 'English' violet fragrance, a benediction of sweetness which somehow seems to be entirely withheld from the French and Russian blooms. For the rest, he was physically sound and morally healthy, and lived, as it were, on the straight line from earth to heaven, beginning each day as if it were his first life-opportunity, and ending it soberly and with prayer, as though it were his last.
To such a mind and temperament as his, the influences of Nature, the sublime laws of the Universe, and the environment of existence, must needs move in circles of harmonious unity, making loveliness out of commonness, and poetry out of prose. The devotee of what is mistakenly called 'pleasure,'--enervated or satiated with the sickly moral exhalations of a corrupt society,--would be quite at a loss to understand what possible enjoyment could be obtained by sitting placidly under an apple-tree with a well-thumbed volume of the wisdom of the inspired pagan Slave, Epictetus, in the hand, and the eyes fixed, not on any printed page, but on a spray of warmly- blushing almond blossom, where a well-fed thrush, ruffling its softly speckled breast, was singing a