The Recreations of A Country Parson | Page 6

CHAPTER II.
CONCERNING DISAPPOINTMENT AND SUCCESS.

Russet woods of Autumn, here you are once more! I saw you, golden
and brown, in the afternoon sunshine to-day. Crisp leaves were falling,
as I went along the foot-path through the woods: crisp leaves lie upon
the green graves in the churchyard, fallen from the ashes: and on the
shrubbery walks, crisp leaves from the beeches, accumulated where the
grass bounds the gravel, make a warm edging, irregular, but pleasant to
see. It is not that one is 'tired of summer:' but there is something
soothing and pleasing about the autumn days. There is a great clearness
of the atmosphere sometimes; sometimes a subdued, gray light is
diffused everywhere. In the country, there is often, on these afternoons,
a remarkable stillness in the air, amid which you can hear a withering
leaf rustling down. I will not think that the time of bare branches and
brown grass is so very near as yet; Nature is indeed decaying, but now
we have decay only in its beautiful stage, wherein it is pensive, but not
sad. It is but early in October; and we, who live in the country all
through the winter, please ourselves with the belief that October is one
of the finest months of the year, and that we have many warm, bright,
still days yet before us. Of course we know we are practising upon
ourselves a cheerful, transparent delusion; even as the man of
forty-eight often declares that about forty-eight or fifty is the prime of
life. I like to remember that Mrs. Hemans was describing October,
when she began her beautiful poem on The Battle of Morgarlen, by
saying that, 'The wine-month shone in its golden prime:' and I think
that in these words the picture presented to the mind of an untravelled
Briton, is not the red grapes hanging in blushing profusion, but rather
the brown, and crimson, and golden woods, in the warm October
sunshine. So, you russet woods of autumn, you are welcome once more;
welcome with all your peculiar beauty, so gently enjoyable by all men

and women who have not used up life; and with all your lessons, so
unobtrusive, so touching, that have come home to the heart of human
generations for many thousands of years. Yesterday was Sunday; and I
was preaching to my simple rustics an autumn sermon from the text We
all do fade as a leaf. As I read out the text, through a half-opened
window near me, two large withered oak-leaves silently floated into the
little church in the view of all the congregation. I could not but pause
for a minute till they should preach their sermon before I began mine.
How simply, how unaffectedly, with what natural pathos they seemed
to tell their story! It seemed as if they said, Ah you human beings,
something besides us is fading; here we are, the things like which you
fade!
And now, upon this evening, a little sobered by the thought that this is
the fourth October which has seen this hand writing that which shall
attain the authority of print, I sit down to begin an essay which is to be
written leisurely as recreation and not as work. I need not finish this
essay, unless I choose, for six weeks to come: so I have plenty of time,
and I shall never have to write under pressure. That is pleasant. And I
write under another feeling, more pleasing and encouraging still. I think
that in these lines I am addressing many unknown friends, who, though
knowing nothing more of me than they can learn from pages which I
have written, have come gradually not to think of me as a stranger. I
wish here to offer my thanks to many whose letters, though they were
writing only to a shadow, have spoken in so kindly a fashion of the
writer's slight productions, that they have given me much enjoyment in
the reading, and much encouragement to go on. To all my
correspondents, whether named or nameless, I now, in a moral sense,
extend a friendly hand. As to the question sometimes put, who the
writer is, that is of no consequence. But as to what he is, I think,
intelligent readers of his essays, you will gradually and easily see that.
It is a great thing to write leisurely, and with a general feeling of
kindliness and satisfaction with everybody; but there is a further reason
why one should set to work at once. I feel I must write now, before my
subject loses its interest; and before the multitude of thoughts, such as
they are, which have been clustering round it since it presented itself
this afternoon in that walk through the woods, have faded