ministry, and had, moreover, a clearer perception, as I thought, how
sacramental teaching, under the authority of the Church, ought to work.
I preached on holy living, not conversion, for as yet I knew nothing
about the latter.

In 1847, I went on a visit to a very remarkable man, who had a great
effect upon me in many ways. He was the Rev. Robert Hawker, of
Morwenstow, in the extreme north of Cornwall.*

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* See his "LIFE," by Rev. Baring Gould.
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This friend was a poet, and a High Churchman, from whom I learned many
practical lessons. He was a man who prayed, and expected an answer; he
had a wonderful perception for realizing unseen things, and took
Scripture literally, with startling effect. He certainly was most
eccentric in many of his ways; but there was a reality and
straightforwardness about him which charmed me very much; and I was the
more drawn to him, from the interest he took in me and my work.

He knew many legends of holy men of old, and said that the patron saints
of West Cornwall were in the calendar of the Eastern Church, and those
in the north of Cornwall belonged to the Western. His own patron saint,
Morwenna, was a Saxon, and his church a Saxon fane. He talked of these
saints as if he knew all about them, and wrote of them in a volume of
poems thus:--