One very happy circumstance in a clergyman's lot, is that he is
saved from painful perplexity as regards his choice of the scene
in which he is to spend his days and years. I am sorry for the
man who returns from Australia with a large fortune; and with no
further end in life than to settle down somewhere and enjoy it.
For in most cases he has no special tie to any particular place;
and he must feel very much perplexed where to go. Should any person
who may read this page cherish the purpose of leaving me a hundred
thousand pounds to invest in a pretty little estate, I beg that
he will at once abandon such a design. He would be doing me no
kindness. I should be entirely bewildered in trying to make up my
mind where I should purchase the property. I should be rent asunder
by conflicting visions of rich English landscape, and heathery Scottish
hills: of seaside breezes, and inland meadows: of horse-chestnut
avenues, and dark stern pine-woods. And after the estate had been
bought, I should always be looking back and thinking I might have
done better. So, on the whole, I would prefer that my reader should
himself buy the estate, and bequeath it to me: and then I could
soon persuade myself that it was the prettiest estate and the
pleasantest neighbourhood in Britain.

Now, as a general rule, the Great Disposer says to the parson, Here
is your home, here lies your work through life: go and reconcile
your mind to it, and do your best in it. No doubt there are men in
the Church whose genius, popularity, influence, or luck is such,
that they have a bewildering variety of livings pressed upon them:
but it is not so with ordinary folk; and certainly it was not so
with me. I went where Providence bade me go, which was not where
I had wished to go, and not where I had thought to go. Many who
know me through the pages which make this and a preceding volume,