now and then, a little waking up of old ideas and aspirations? All
this, you thought, was not what you once had wished, and pictured
to yourself. You vainly fancied, in your student days, that you
might reach a more eminent place and greater usefulness. I know,
indeed, that even such as have gone very unwillingly to a little
remote country parish, have come most heartily to enjoy its peaceful
life: have grown fond of that, as they never thought to do. I do
not mean that you need affectedly talk, after a few months there,
as if you had lived in the country all your life, and as if your
thoughts had from childhood run upon horses, turnips, and corn. But
in sober earnest, as weeks pass over, you gain a great interest in
little country cares; and you discover that you may be abundantly
useful, and abundantly laborious, amid a small and simple population.

Yet sometimes, my clever friend, I know you sit down on a green
bank, under the trees, and look at your little church. You think,
of your companions and competitors in College days, filling
distinguished places in life: and, more particularly, of this and
that friend in your own calling, who preaches to as many people on
one Sunday as you do in half a year. Fine fellows they were: and
though you seldom meet now, you are sure they are faithful, laborious,
able, and devoted ministers: God bless them all! You wonder how
they can do so much work; and especially how they have confidence
to preach to so large and intelligent congregations. For a certain
timidity, and distrust of his own powers, grows upon the country
parson. He is reaching the juster estimate of himself, indeed: yet
there is something not desirable in the nervous dislike to preach
in large churches and to cultivated people which is sure to come.
And little things worry him, which would not worry a mind kept more
upon the stretch. It is possible enough that among the Cumberland