had sought to release it from a great superincumbent weight; but
that, finding he could not do so without mutilating the remains, he
had left it where it was.

It was the kind and wholesome face I have made mention of as being
then beside me, that I had purposed to myself to see, when I left
home for Wales. I had heard of that clergyman, as having buried
many scores of the shipwrecked people; of his having opened his
house and heart to their agonised friends; of his having used a
most sweet and patient diligence for weeks and weeks, in the
performance of the forlornest offices that Man can render to his
kind; of his having most tenderly and thoroughly devoted himself to
the dead, and to those who were sorrowing for the dead. I had said
to myself, 'In the Christmas season of the year, I should like to
see that man!' And he had swung the gate of his little garden in
coming out to meet me, not half an hour ago.

So cheerful of spirit and guiltless of affectation, as true
practical Christianity ever is! I read more of the New Testament
in the fresh frank face going up the village beside me, in five
minutes, than I have read in anathematising discourses (albeit put
to press with enormous flourishing of trumpets), in all my life. I
heard more of the Sacred Book in the cordial voice that had nothing
to say about its owner, than in all the would-be celestial pairs of
bellows that have ever blown conceit at me.

We climbed towards the little church, at a cheery pace, among the
loose stones, the deep mud, the wet coarse grass, the outlying
water, and other obstructions from which frost and snow had lately
thawed. It was a mistake (my friend was glad to tell me, on the