England, and might have seemed to introduce a dangerous laxity of
supposition about Christian laymen who happened to be creditors. My
father was none the less beloved because he was understood to be of a
saving disposition, and how could he save without getting his tithe? The
sight of him was not unwelcome at any door, and he was remarkable among
the clergy of his district for having no lasting feud with rich or poor
in his parish. I profited by his popularity, and for months after my
mother's death, when I was a little fellow of nine, I was taken care of
first at one homestead and then at another; a variety which I enjoyed
much more than my stay at the Hall, where there was a tutor. Afterwards
for several years I was my father's constant companion in his outdoor
business, riding by his side on my little pony and listening to the
lengthy dialogues he held with Darby or Joan, the one on the road or in
the fields, the other outside or inside her door. In my earliest
remembrance of him his hair was already grey, for I was his youngest as
well as his only surviving child; and it seemed to me that advanced age
was appropriate to a father, as indeed in all respects I considered him
a parent so much to my honour, that the mention of my relationship to
him was likely to secure me regard among those to whom I was otherwise a
stranger--my father's stories from his life including so many names of
distant persons that my imagination placed no limit to his
acquaintanceship. He was a pithy talker, and his sermons bore marks of
his own composition. It is true, they must have been already old when I
began to listen to them, and they were no more than a year's supply, so
that they recurred as regularly as the Collects. But though this system
has been much ridiculed, I am prepared to defend it as equally sound
with that of a liturgy; and even if my researches had shown me that some
of my father's yearly sermons had been copied out from the works of
elder divines, this would only have been another proof of his good
judgment. One may prefer fresh eggs though laid by a fowl of the meanest