chance could it ever be mine; and that I could remain within its walls
no longer, but with a sense of uselessness and shame.

If I could have taken staff in hand and pack on shoulder, I would have
started at that moment on a pilgrimage that might have circled the
globe. But the most fiery resolution must submit to circumstances. One
night more, at least, I must sleep under the paternal roof, and I was
hastening home, brooding over bitter thoughts, when I suddenly rushed
against some one whom I nearly overthrew.--"Bless me, Mr Marston, is it
you?"--told me that I had run down my old tutor, Mr Vincent, the parson
of the parish. He had been returning from visiting some of his flock,
and in the exercise of the vocation which he had just been fulfilling,
he saw that something went ill with me, and taking my arm, forced me to
go home with him, for such comfort as he could give.

Parsons, above all men, are the better for wives and families; for,
without them, they are wonderfully apt to grow saturnine or stupid. Of
course there are exceptions. Vincent had a wife not much younger than
himself, to whom he always spoke with the courtiership of a _preux
chevalier_. A portrait of her in her bridal dress, showed that she had
been a pretty brunette in her youth; and her husband still evidently
gave her credit for all that she had been. They had, as is generally the
fate of the clergy, a superfluity of daughters, four or five I think,
creatures as thoughtless and innocent as their own poultry, or their own
pet-sheep. But all round their little vicarage was so pure, so quiet,
and so neat--there was such an aspect of order and even of elegance,
however inexpensive, that its contrast with the glaring and restless
tumult of the "great house" was irresistible. I never had so full a
practical understanding of the world's "pomps and vanities," as while
looking at the trimmings and trelisses of the parson's dwelling.