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"FOOLS blind to truth; nor know their erring soul
How much the half is better than the whole."
—HESIOD: Op. et Dies, 40.
Do as the Heavens have done; forget your evil;
With them, forgive yourself.—The Winter's Tale.
. . . The sweet'st companion that e'er man
Bred his hopes out of.—Ibid.
THE curate of Brook-Green was sitting outside his door. The vicaragewhich he inhabited was a straggling, irregular, but picturesquebuilding,—humble enough to suit the means of the curate, yet largeenough to accommodate the vicar. It had been built in an age when theindigentes et pauperes for whom universities were founded supplied,more than they do now, the fountains of the Christian ministry, whenpastor and flock were more on an equality.
From under a rude and arched porch, with an oaken settle on either sidefor the poor visitor, the door opened at once upon the old-fashionedparlour,—a homely but pleasant room, with one wide but low cottagecasement, beneath which stood the dark shining table that supported thelarge Bible in its green baize cover; the Concordance, and the lastSunday's sermon, in its jetty case. There by the fireplace stood thebachelor's round elbow-chair, with a needlework cushion at the back; awalnut-tree bureau, another table or two, half a dozen plain chairs,constituted the rest of the furniture, saving some two or three hundredvolumes, ranged in neat shelves on the clean wainscoted walls. There wasanother room, to which you ascended by two steps, communicating with thisparlour, smaller but finer, and inhabited only on festive days, when LadyVargrave, or some other quiet neighbour, came to drink tea with the goodcurate.
An old housekeeper and her grandson—a young fellow of about two andtwenty, who tended the garden, milked the cow, and did in fact what hewas wanted to do—composed the establishment of the humble minister.
We have digressed from Mr. Aubrey himself.
The curate was seated, then, one fine summer morning, on a bench at theleft of his porch, screened from the sun by the cool boughs of achestnut-tree, the shadow of which half covered the little lawn thatseparated the precincts of the house from those of silent Death andeverlasting Hope; above the irregular and moss-grown paling rose thevillage church; and, through openings in the trees, beyond theburial-ground, partially gleamed the white walls of Lady Vargrave'scottage, and were seen at a distance the sails on the—
"Mighty waters, rolling evermore."
The old man was calmly enjoying the beauty of the morning, the freshnessof the air, the warmth of the dancing beam, and not least, perhaps, hisown peaceful thoughts,—the spontaneous children of a contemplativespirit and a quiet conscience. His was the age when we most sensitivelyenjoy the mere sense of existence,—when the face of Nature and a passiveconviction of the benevolence of our Great Father suffice to create aserene and ineffable happiness, which rarely visits us till we have donewith the passions; till memories, if more alive than heretofore, are yetmellowed in the hues of time, and Faith softens into harmony all theirasperities and harshness;