Adam Bede

“Very well, Adam,” said Arthur, remembering what Mr. Irwine had said about a probable hitch in the love-making between Adam and Mary Burge, “we’ll say no more about it at present. When is your father to be buried?”

“On Sunday, sir; Mr. Irwine’s coming earlier on purpose. I shall be glad when it’s over, for I think my mother ‘ull perhaps get easier then. It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they’ve no way o’ working it off, and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree.”

“Ah, you’ve had a good deal of trouble and vexation in your life, Adam. I don’t think you’ve ever been hare-brained and light-hearted, like other youngsters. You’ve always had some care on your mind.”

“Why, yes, sir; but that’s nothing to make a fuss about. If we’re men and have men’s feelings, I reckon we must have men’s troubles. We can’t be like the birds, as fly from their nest as soon as they’ve got their wings, and never know their kin when they see ‘em, and get a fresh lot every year. I’ve had enough to be thankful for: I’ve allays had health and strength and brains to give me a delight in my work; and I count it a great thing as I’ve had Bartle Massey’s night-school to go to. He’s helped me to knowledge I could never ha’ got by myself.”

“What a rare fellow you are, Adam!” said Arthur, after a pause, in which he had looked musingly at the big fellow walking by his side. “I could hit out better than most men at Oxford, and yet I believe you would knock me into next week if I were to have a battle with you.”

“God forbid I should ever do that, sir,” said Adam, looking round at Arthur and smiling. “I used to fight for fun, but I’ve never done that since I was the cause o’ poor Gil Tranter being laid up for a fortnight. I’ll never fight any man again, only when he behaves like a scoundrel. If you get hold of a chap that’s got no shame nor conscience to stop him, you must try what you can do by bunging his eyes up.”

Arthur did not laugh, for he was preoccupied with some thought that made him say presently, “I should think now, Adam, you never have any struggles within yourself. I fancy you would master a wish that you had made up your mind it was not quite right to indulge, as easily as you would knock down a drunken fellow who was quarrelsome with you. I mean, you are never shilly-shally, first making up your mind that you won’t do a thing, and then doing it after all?”

“Well,” said Adam, slowly, after a moment’s hesitation, “no. I don’t remember ever being see-saw in that way, when I’d made my mind up, as you say, that a thing was wrong. It takes the taste out o’ my mouth for things, when I know I should have a heavy conscience after ‘em. I’ve seen pretty clear, ever since I could cast up a sum, as you can never do what’s wrong without breeding sin and trouble more than you can ever see. It’s like a bit o’ bad workmanship—you never see th’ end o’ the mischief it’ll do. And it’s a poor look-out to come into the world to make your fellow-creatures worse off instead o’ better. But there’s a difference between the things folks call wrong. I’m not for making a sin of every little fool’s trick, or bit o’ nonsense anybody may be let into, like some o’ them dissenters. And a man may have two minds whether it isn’t worthwhile to get a bruise or two for the sake of a bit o’ fun. But it isn’t my way to be see-saw about anything: I think my fault lies th’ other way. When I’ve said a thing, if it’s only to myself, it’s hard for me to go back.”

“Yes, that’s just what I expected of you,” said Arthur. “You’ve got an iron will, as well as an iron arm. But however strong a man’s resolution may be, it costs him something to carry it out, now and then. We may determine not to gather any cherries and keep our hands sturdily in our pockets, but we can’t prevent our mouths from watering.”

“That’s true, sir, but there’s nothing like settling with ourselves as there’s a deal we must do without i’ this life. It’s no use looking on life as if it was Treddles’on Fair, where folks only go to see shows and get fairings. If we do, we shall find it different. But where’s the use o’ me talking to you, sir? You know better than I do.”

“I’m not so sure of that, Adam. You’ve had four or five years of experience more than I’ve had, and I think your life has been a better school to you than college has been to me.”

“Why, sir, you seem to think o’ college something like what Bartle Massey does. He says college mostly makes people like bladders—just good for nothing but t’ hold the stuff as is poured into ‘em. But he’s got a tongue like a sharp blade, Bartle has—it never touches anything but it cuts. Here’s the turning, sir. I must bid you good-morning, as you’re going to the rectory.”

“Good-bye, Adam, good-bye.”

Arthur gave his horse to the groom at the rectory gate, and walked along the gravel towards the door which opened on the garden. He knew that the rector always breakfasted in his study, and the study lay on the left hand of this door, opposite the dining-room. It was a small low room, belonging to the old part of the house—dark with the sombre covers of the books that lined the walls; yet it looked very cheery this morning as Arthur reached the open window. For the morning sun fell aslant on the great glass globe with gold fish in it, which stood on a scagliola pillar in front of the ready-spread bachelor breakfast-table, and by the side of this breakfast-table was a group which would have made any room enticing. In the crimson damask easy-chair sat Mr. Irwine, with that radiant freshness which he always had when he came from his morning toilet; his finely formed plump white hand was playing along Juno’s brown curly back; and close to Juno’s tail, which was wagging with calm matronly pleasure, the two brown pups were rolling over each other in an ecstatic duet of worrying noises. On a cushion a little removed sat Pug, with the air of a maiden lady, who looked on these familiarities as animal weaknesses, which she made as little show as possible of observing. On the table, at Mr. Irwine’s elbow, lay the first volume of the Foulis AEschylus, which Arthur knew well by sight; and the silver coffee-pot, which Carroll was bringing in, sent forth a fragrant steam which completed the delights of a bachelor breakfast.

“Hallo, Arthur, that’s a good fellow! You’re just in time,” said Mr. Irwine, as Arthur paused and stepped in over the low window-sill. “Carroll, we shall want more coffee and eggs, and haven’t you got some cold fowl for us to eat with that ham? Why, this is like old days, Arthur; you haven’t been to breakfast with me these five years.”

“It was a tempting morning for a ride before breakfast,” said Arthur; “and I used to like breakfasting with you so when I was reading with you. My grandfather is always a few degrees colder at breakfast than at any other hour in the day. I think his morning bath doesn’t agree with him.”

Arthur was anxious not to imply that he came with any special purpose. He had no sooner found himself in Mr. Irwine’s presence than the confidence which he had thought quite easy before, suddenly appeared the most difficult thing in the world to him, and at the very moment of shaking hands he saw his purpose in quite a new light. How could he make Irwine understand his position unless he told him those little scenes in the wood; and how could he tell them without looking like a fool? And then his weakness in coming back from Gawaine’s, and doing the very opposite of what he intended! Irwine would think him a shilly-shally fellow ever after. However, it must come out in an unpremeditated way; the conversation might lead up to it.

“I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day,” said Mr. Irwine. “No dust has settled on one’s mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things. I always have a favourite book by me at breakfast, and I enjoy the bits I pick up then so much, that regularly every morning it seems to me as if I should certainly become studious again. But presently Dent brings up a poor fellow who has killed a hare, and when I’ve got through my ‘justicing,’ as Carroll calls it, I’m inclined for a ride round the glebe, and on my way back I meet with the master of the workhouse, who has got a long story of a mutinous pauper to tell me; and so the day goes on, and I’m always the same lazy fellow before evening sets in. Besides, one wants the stimulus of sympathy, and I have never had that since poor D’Oyley left Treddleston. If you had stuck to your books well, you rascal, I should have had a pleasanter prospect before me. But scholarship doesn’t run in your family blood.”

“No indeed. It’s well if I can remember a little inapplicable Latin to adorn my maiden speech in Parliament six or seven years hence. ‘Cras ingens iterabimus aequor,’ and a few shreds of that sort, will perhaps stick to me, and I shall arrange my opinions so as to introduce them. But I don’t think a knowledge of the classics is a pressing want to a country gentleman; as far as I can see, he’d much better have a knowledge of manures. I’ve been reading your friend Arthur Young’s books lately, and there’s nothing I should like better than to carry out some of his ideas in putting the farmers on a better management of their land; and, as he says, making what was a wild country, all of the same dark hue, bright and variegated with corn and cattle. My grandfather will never let me have any power while he lives, but there’s nothing I should like better than to undertake the Stonyshire side of the estate—it’s in a dismal condition—and set improvements on foot, and gallop about from one place to another and overlook them. I should like to know all the labourers, and see them touching their hats to me with a look of goodwill.”

“Bravo, Arthur! A man who has no feeling for the classics couldn’t make a better apology for coming into the world than by increasing the quantity of food to maintain scholars—and rectors who appreciate scholars. And whenever you enter on your career of model landlord may I be there to see. You’ll want a portly rector to complete the picture, and take his tithe of all the respect and honour you get by your hard work. Only don’t set your heart too strongly on the goodwill you are to get in consequence. I’m not sure that men are the fondest of those who try to be useful to them. You know Gawaine has got the curses of the whole neighbourhood upon him about that enclosure. You must make it quite clear to your mind which you are most bent upon, old boy—popularity or usefulness—else you may happen to miss both.”

“Oh! Gawaine is harsh in his manners; he doesn’t make himself personally agreeable to his tenants. I don’t believe there’s anything you can’t prevail on people to do with kindness. For my part, I couldn’t live in a neighbourhood where I was not respected and beloved. And it’s very pleasant to go among the tenants here—they seem all so well inclined to me I suppose it seems only the other day to them since I was a little lad, riding on a pony about as big as a sheep. And if fair allowances were made to them, and their buildings attended to, one could persuade them to farm on a better plan, stupid as they are.”

“Then mind you fall in love in the right place, and don’t get a wife who will drain your purse and make you niggardly in spite of yourself. My mother and I have a little discussion about you sometimes: she says, ‘I’ll never risk a single prophecy on Arthur until I see the woman he falls in love with.’ She thinks your lady-love will rule you as the moon rules the tides. But I feel bound to stand up for you, as my pupil you know, and I maintain that you’re not of that watery quality. So mind you don’t disgrace my judgment.”

Arthur winced under this speech, for keen old Mrs. Irwine’s opinion about him had the disagreeable effect of a sinister omen. This, to be sure, was only another reason for persevering in his intention, and getting an additional security against himself. Nevertheless, at this point in the conversation, he was conscious of increased disinclination to tell his story about Hetty. He was of an impressible nature, and lived a great deal in other people’s opinions and feelings concerning himself; and the mere fact that he was in the presence of an intimate friend, who had not the slightest notion that he had had any such serious internal struggle as he came to confide, rather shook his own belief in the seriousness of the struggle. It was not, after all, a thing to make a fuss about; and what could Irwine do for him that he could not do for himself? He would go to Eagledale in spite of Meg’s lameness—go on Rattler, and let Pym follow as well as he could on the old hack. That was his thought as he sugared his coffee; but the next minute, as he was lifting the cup to his lips, he remembered how thoroughly he had made up his mind last night to tell Irwine. No! He would not be vacillating again—he WOULD do what he had meant to do, this time. So it would be well not to let the personal tone of the conversation altogether drop. If they went to quite indifferent topics, his difficulty would be heightened. It had required no noticeable pause for this rush and rebound of feeling, before he answered, “But I think it is hardly an argument against a man’s general strength of character that he should be apt to be mastered by love. A fine constitution doesn’t insure one against smallpox or any other of those inevitable diseases. A man may be very firm in other matters and yet be under a sort of witchery from a woman.”

“Yes; but there’s this difference between love and smallpox, or bewitchment either—that if you detect the disease at an early stage and try change of air, there is every chance of complete escape without any further development of symptoms. And there are certain alternative doses which a man may administer to himself by keeping unpleasant consequences before his mind: this gives you a sort of smoked glass through which you may look at the resplendent fair one and discern her true outline; though I’m afraid, by the by, the smoked glass is apt to be missing just at the moment it is most wanted. I daresay, now, even a man fortified with a knowledge of the classics might be lured into an imprudent marriage, in spite of the warning given him by the chorus in the Prometheus.”

The smile that flitted across Arthur’s face was a faint one, and instead of following Mr. Irwine’s playful lead, he said, quite seriously—“Yes, that’s the worst of it. It’s a desperately vexatious thing, that after all one’s reflections and quiet determinations, we should be ruled by moods that one can’t calculate on beforehand. I don’t think a man ought to be blamed so much if he is betrayed into doing things in that way, in spite of his resolutions.”

“Ah, but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his reflections did, and more. A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.”

“Well, but one may be betrayed into doing things by a combination of circumstances, which one might never have done otherwise.”

“Why, yes, a man can’t very well steal a bank-note unless the bank-note lies within convenient reach; but he won’t make us think him an honest man because he begins to howl at the bank-note for falling in his way.”

“But surely you don’t think a man who struggles against a temptation into which he falls at last as bad as the man who never struggles at all?”

“No, certainly; I pity him in proportion to his struggles, for they foreshadow the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis. Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before—consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it is best to fix our minds on that certainty, instead of considering what may be the elements of excuse for us. But I never knew you so inclined for moral discussion, Arthur? Is it some danger of your own that you are considering in this philosophical, general way?”

In asking this question, Mr. Irwine pushed his plate away, threw himself back in his chair, and looked straight at Arthur. He really suspected that Arthur wanted to tell him something, and thought of smoothing the way for him by this direct question. But he was mistaken. Brought suddenly and involuntarily to the brink of confession, Arthur shrank back and felt less disposed towards it than ever. The conversation had taken a more serious tone than he had intended—it would quite mislead Irwine—he would imagine there was a deep passion for Hetty, while there was no such thing. He was conscious of colouring, and was annoyed at his boyishness.

“Oh no, no danger,” he said as indifferently as he could. “I don’t know that I am more liable to irresolution than other people; only there are little incidents now and then that set one speculating on what might happen in the future.”

Was there a motive at work under this strange reluctance of Arthur’s which had a sort of backstairs influence, not admitted to himself? Our mental business is carried on much in the same way as the business of the State: a great deal of hard work is done by agents who are not acknowledged. In a piece of machinery, too, I believe there is often a small unnoticeable wheel which has a great deal to do with the motion of the large obvious ones. Possibly there was some such unrecognized agent secretly busy in Arthur’s mind at this moment—possibly it was the fear lest he might hereafter find the fact of having made a confession to the rector a serious annoyance, in case he should NOT be able quite to carry out his good resolutions? I dare not assert that it was not so. The human soul is a very complex thing.

The idea of Hetty had just crossed Mr. Irwine’s mind as he looked inquiringly at Arthur, but his disclaiming indifferent answer confirmed the thought which had quickly followed—that there could be nothing serious in that direction. There was no probability that Arthur ever saw her except at church, and at her own home under the eye of Mrs. Poyser; and the hint he had given Arthur about her the other day had no more serious meaning than to prevent him from noticing her so as to rouse the little chit’s vanity, and in this way perturb the rustic drama of her life. Arthur would soon join his regiment, and be far away: no, there could be no danger in that quarter, even if Arthur’s character had not been a strong security against it. His honest, patronizing pride in the good-will and respect of everybody about him was a safeguard even against foolish romance, still more against a lower kind of folly. If there had been anything special on Arthur’s mind in the previous conversation, it was clear he was not inclined to enter into details, and Mr. Irwine was too delicate to imply even a friendly curiosity. He perceived a change of subject would be welcome, and said, “By the way, Arthur, at your colonel’s birthday fete there were some transparencies that made a great effect in honour of Britannia, and Pitt, and the Loamshire Militia, and, above all, the ‘generous youth,’ the hero of the day. Don’t you think you should get up something of the same sort to astonish our weak minds?”

The opportunity was gone. While Arthur was hesitating, the rope to which he might have clung had drifted away—he must trust now to his own swimming.

In ten minutes from that time, Mr. Irwine was called for on business, and Arthur, bidding him good-bye, mounted his horse again with a sense of dissatisfaction, which he tried to quell by determining to set off for Eagledale without an hour’s delay.

Book Two

Chapter XVII

In Which the Story Pauses a Little

“THIS Rector of Broxton is little better than a pagan!” I hear one of my readers exclaim. “How much more edifying it would have been if you had made him give Arthur some truly spiritual advice! You might have put into his mouth the most beautiful things—quite as good as reading a sermon.”

Certainly I could, if I held it the highest vocation of the novelist to represent things as they never have been and never will be. Then, of course, I might refashion life and character entirely after my own liking; I might select the most unexceptionable type of clergyman and put my own admirable opinions into his mouth on all occasions. But it happens, on the contrary, that my strongest effort is to avoid any such arbitrary picture, and to give a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind. The mirror is doubtless defective, the outlines will sometimes be disturbed, the reflection faint or confused; but I feel as much bound to tell you as precisely as I can what that reflection is, as if I were in the witness-box, narrating my experience on oath.

Sixty years ago—it is a long time, so no wonder things have changed—all clergymen were not zealous; indeed, there is reason to believe that the number of zealous clergymen was small, and it is probable that if one among the small minority had owned the livings of Broxton and Hayslope in the year 1799, you would have liked him no better than you like Mr. Irwine. Ten to one, you would have thought him a tasteless, indiscreet, methodistical man. It is so very rarely that facts hit that nice medium required by our own enlightened opinions and refined taste! Perhaps you will say, “Do improve the facts a little, then; make them more accordant with those correct views which it is our privilege to possess. The world is not just what we like; do touch it up with a tasteful pencil, and make believe it is not quite such a mixed entangled affair. Let all people who hold unexceptionable opinions act unexceptionably. Let your most faulty characters always be on the wrong side, and your virtuous ones on the right. Then we shall see at a glance whom we are to condemn and whom we are to approve. Then we shall be able to admire, without the slightest disturbance of our prepossessions: we shall hate and despise with that true ruminant relish which belongs to undoubting confidence.”

But, my good friend, what will you do then with your fellow-parishioner who opposes your husband in the vestry? With your newly appointed vicar, whose style of preaching you find painfully below that of his regretted predecessor? With the honest servant who worries your soul with her one failing? With your neighbour, Mrs. Green, who was really kind to you in your last illness, but has said several ill-natured things about you since your convalescence? Nay, with your excellent husband himself, who has other irritating habits besides that of not wiping his shoes? These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people—amongst whom your life is passed—that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire—for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields—on the real breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice.

So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one’s best efforts, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin—the longer the claws, and the larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings—much harder than to say something fine about them which is NOT the exact truth.

It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise. I find a source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic suffering or of world-stirring actions. I turn, without shrinking, from cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls, and heroic warriors, to an old woman bending over her flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner, while the noonday light, softened perhaps by a screen of leaves, falls on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel, and her stone jug, and all those cheap common things which are the precious necessaries of life to her—or I turn to that village wedding, kept between four brown walls, where an awkward bridegroom opens the dance with a high-shouldered, broad-faced bride, while elderly and middle-aged friends look on, with very irregular noses and lips, and probably with quart-pots in their hands, but with an expression of unmistakable contentment and goodwill. “Foh!” says my idealistic friend, “what vulgar details! What good is there in taking all these pains to give an exact likeness of old women and clowns? What a low phase of life! What clumsy, ugly people!”

But bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope? I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have not been ugly, and even among those “lords of their kind,” the British, squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions are not startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love amongst us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying; yet to my certain knowledge tender hearts have beaten for them, and their miniatures—flattering, but still not lovely—are kissed in secret by motherly lips. I have seen many an excellent matron, who could have never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered kisses on her sallow cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of young heroes, of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a wife who waddles. Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty—it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.

All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women, and children—in our gardens and in our houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy. Paint us an angel, if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a face paled by the celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face upward and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the region of Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house, those rounded backs and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough work of the world—those homes with their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of onions. In this world there are so many of these common coarse people, who have no picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of our religion and philosophy and frame lofty theories which only fit a world of extremes. Therefore, let Art always remind us of them; therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a life to the faithful representing of commonplace things—men who see beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly the light of heaven falls on them. There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can’t afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are picturesque lazzaroni or romantic criminals half so frequent as your common labourer, who gets his own bread and eats it vulgarly but creditably with his own pocket-knife. It is more needful that I should have a fibre of sympathy connecting me with that vulgar citizen who weighs out my sugar in a vilely assorted cravat and waistcoat, than with the handsomest rascal in red scarf and green feathers—more needful that my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trait of gentle goodness in the faulty people who sit at the same hearth with me, or in the clergyman of my own parish, who is perhaps rather too corpulent and in other respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than at the deeds of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest abstract of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able novelist.

And so I come back to Mr. Irwine, with whom I desire you to be in perfect charity, far as he may be from satisfying your demands on the clerical character. Perhaps you think he was not—as he ought to have been—a living demonstration of the benefits attached to a national church? But I am not sure of that; at least I know that the people in Broxton and Hayslope would have been very sorry to part with their clergyman, and that most faces brightened at his approach; and until it can be proved that hatred is a better thing for the soul than love, I must believe that Mr. Irwine’s influence in his parish was a more wholesome one than that of the zealous Mr. Ryde, who came there twenty years afterwards, when Mr. Irwine had been gathered to his fathers. It is true, Mr. Ryde insisted strongly on the doctrines of the Reformation, visited his flock a great deal in their own homes, and was severe in rebuking the aberrations of the flesh—put a stop, indeed, to the Christmas rounds of the church singers, as promoting drunkenness and too light a handling of sacred things. But I gathered from Adam Bede, to whom I talked of these matters in his old age, that few clergymen could be less successful in winning the hearts of their parishioners than Mr. Ryde. They learned a great many notions about doctrine from him, so that almost every church-goer under fifty began to distinguish as well between the genuine gospel and what did not come precisely up to that standard, as if he had been born and bred a Dissenter; and for some time after his arrival there seemed to be quite a religious movement in that quiet rural district. “But,” said Adam, “I’ve seen pretty clear, ever since I was a young un, as religion’s something else besides notions. It isn’t notions sets people doing the right thing—it’s feelings. It’s the same with the notions in religion as it is with math’matics—a man may be able to work problems straight off in’s head as he sits by the fire and smokes his pipe, but if he has to make a machine or a building, he must have a will and a resolution and love something else better than his own ease. Somehow, the congregation began to fall off, and people began to speak light o’ Mr. Ryde. I believe he meant right at bottom; but, you see, he was sourish-tempered, and was for beating down prices with the people as worked for him; and his preaching wouldn’t go down well with that sauce. And he wanted to be like my lord judge i’ the parish, punishing folks for doing wrong; and he scolded ‘em from the pulpit as if he’d been a Ranter, and yet he couldn’t abide the Dissenters, and was a deal more set against ‘em than Mr. Irwine was. And then he didn’t keep within his income, for he seemed to think at first go-off that six hundred a-year was to make him as big a man as Mr. Donnithorne. That’s a sore mischief I’ve often seen with the poor curates jumping into a bit of a living all of a sudden. Mr. Ryde was a deal thought on at a distance, I believe, and he wrote books, but as for math’matics and the natur o’ things, he was as ignorant as a woman. He was very knowing about doctrines, and used to call ‘em the bulwarks of the Reformation; but I’ve always mistrusted that sort o’ learning as leaves folks foolish and unreasonable about business. Now Mester Irwine was as different as could be: as quick!—he understood what you meant in a minute, and he knew all about building, and could see when you’d made a good job. And he behaved as much like a gentleman to the farmers, and th’ old women, and the labourers, as he did to the gentry. You never saw HIM interfering and scolding, and trying to play th’ emperor. Ah, he was a fine man as ever you set eyes on; and so kind to’s mother and sisters. That poor sickly Miss Anne—he seemed to think more of her than of anybody else in the world. There wasn’t a soul in the parish had a word to say against him; and his servants stayed with him till they were so old and pottering, he had to hire other folks to do their work.”

“Well,” I said, “that was an excellent way of preaching in the weekdays; but I daresay, if your old friend Mr. Irwine were to come to life again, and get into the pulpit next Sunday, you would be rather ashamed that he didn’t preach better after all your praise of him.”

“Nay, nay,” said Adam, broadening his chest and throwing himself back in his chair, as if he were ready to meet all inferences, “nobody has ever heard me say Mr. Irwine was much of a preacher. He didn’t go into deep speritial experience; and I know there s a deal in a man’s inward life as you can’t measure by the square, and say, ‘Do this and that ‘ll follow,’ and, ‘Do that and this ‘ll follow.’ There’s things go on in the soul, and times when feelings come into you like a rushing mighty wind, as the Scripture says, and part your life in two a’most, so you look back on yourself as if you was somebody else. Those are things as you can’t bottle up in a ‘do this’ and ‘do that’; and I’ll go so far with the strongest Methodist ever you’ll find. That shows me there’s deep speritial things in religion. You can’t make much out wi’ talking about it, but you feel it. Mr. Irwine didn’t go into those things—he preached short moral sermons, and that was all. But then he acted pretty much up to what he said; he didn’t set up for being so different from other folks one day, and then be as like ‘em as two peas the next. And he made folks love him and respect him, and that was better nor stirring up their gall wi’ being overbusy. Mrs. Poyser used to say—you know she would have her word about everything—she said, Mr. Irwine was like a good meal o’ victual, you were the better for him without thinking on it, and Mr. Ryde was like a dose o’ physic, he gripped you and worreted you, and after all he left you much the same.”