Phaethon

Phaethon

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Phaethon, by Charles Kingsley
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Title: Phaethon
Author: Charles Kingsley
Release Date: February 10, 2004 [eBook #11025]
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
PHAETHON***

Transcribed by David Price, email [email protected]

PHAETHON; LOOSE THOUGHTS FOR LOOSE THINKERS. 1852.

Templeton and I were lounging by the clear limestone stream which

crossed his park and wound away round wooded hills toward the
distant Severn. A lovelier fishing morning sportsman never saw. A soft
gray under-roof of cloud slid on before a soft west wind, and here and
there a stray gleam of sunlight shot into the vale across the purple
mountain-tops, and awoke into busy life the denizens of the water,
already quickened by the mysterious electric influences of the last
night's thunder-shower. The long-winged cinnamon-flies spun and
fluttered over the pools; the sand-bees hummed merrily round their
burrows in the marly bank; and delicate iridescent ephemerae rose by
hundreds from the depths, and, dropping their shells, floated away,
each a tiny Venus Anadyomene, down the glassy ripples of the reaches.
Every moment a heavy splash beneath some overhanging tuft of milfoil
or water hemlock proclaimed the death- doom of a hapless beetle who
had dropped into the stream beneath; yet still we fished and fished, and
caught nothing, and seemed utterly careless about catching anything;
till the old keeper who followed us, sighing and shrugging his
shoulders, broke forth into open remonstrance:
"Excuse my liberty, gentlemen, but what ever is the matter with you
and master, sir? I never did see you miss so many honest rises before."
"It is too true," said Templeton to me with a laugh. "I must confess I
have been dreaming instead of fishing the whole morning. But what has
happened to you, who are not as apt as I am to do nothing by trying to
do two things at once?"
"My hand may well be somewhat unsteady; for to tell the truth, I sat up
all last night writing."
"A hopeful preparation for a day's fishing in limestone water! But what
can have set you on writing all night after so busy and talkative an
evening as the last, ending too, as it did, somewhere about half-past
twelve?"
"Perhaps the said talkative evening itself; and I suspect, if you will
confess the truth, you will say that your morning's meditations are
running very much in the same channel."

"Lewis," said he, after a pause, "go up to the hall, and bring some
luncheon for us down to the lower waterfall."
"And a wheelbarrow to carry home the fish, sir?"
"If you wish to warm yourself, certainly. And now, my good fellow,"
said he, as the old keeper toddled away up the park, "I will open my
heart-a process for which I have but few opportunities here-to an old
college friend. I am disturbed and saddened by last night's talk and by
last night's guest."
"By the American professor? How, in the name of English
exclusiveness, did such a rampantly heterodox spiritual guerilla invade
the respectabilities and conservatisms of Herefordshire?"
"He was returning from a tour through Wales, and had introductions to
me from some Manchester friends of mine, to avail himself of which I
found he had gone some thirty miles out of his way."
"Complimentary to you, at least."
"To Lady Jane, I suspect, rather than to me; for he told me broadly
enough that all the flattering attentions which he had received in
Manchester-where, you know, all such prophets are received with open
arms, their only credentials being that, whatsoever they believe, they
shall not believe the Bible-had not given him the pleasure which he had
received from that one introduction to what he called 'the inner
hearth-life of the English landed aristocracy.' But what did you think of
him?"
"Do you really wish to know?"
"I do."
"Then, honestly, I never heard so much magniloquent unwisdom talked
in the same space of time. It was the sense of shame for my race which
kept me silent all the evening. I could not trust myself to argue with a
gray-haired Saxon man, whose fifty years of life seemed to have left

him a child in all but the childlike heart which alone can enter into the
kingdom of heaven."
"You are severe," said Templeton, smilingly though, as if his estimate
were not very different from mine.
"Can one help being severe when one hears irreverence poured forth
from reverend lips? I do not mean merely irreverence for