BY AUGUSTUS JESSOPP, D.D. AUTHOR OF “ONE GENERATION OF A NORFOLK HOUSE,” “HISTORY OF THE DIOCESE OF NORWICH,” &c., &c. London T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE MDCCCXC BY THE SAME AUTHOR. ARCADY: FOR BETTER FOR WORSE. Fourth Edition. Cloth, 3s. 6d. “A volume which is, to our minds, one of the most delightful ever published in English.”— Spectator. The COMING of the FRIARS, AND OTHER MEDIÆVAL SKETCHES. Fourth Edition. Cloth, 7s. 6d. “The book is one to be read and enjoyed from it

In a volume which I published three years ago 1 I attempted to give a faithful picture of the habits and ways of thinking, the superstitions, prejudices and grounds for discontent, the grievances and the trials, of the country folk among whom my lot was cast and among whom it was my duty and my privilege to live as a country clergyman. I was surprised, and not a little pained, to hear from many who read my book that the impression produced upon them was exactly the reverse of that which I had de

My friends from Babylon the great are very good to me in the summer-time. They come in a delightful stream from their thousand luxuries, their great social gatherings, their brilliant talk, and their cheering and stimulating surroundings; they come from all the excitement and the whirl of London or some other huge city where men live , and they make their friendly sojourn with us here in the wilderness even for a week at a time. They come in a generous and self-denying spirit to console and cond

In speaking of the trials of the country parson’s life in my last essay, I left much unsaid that needed saying. I rather shrank from dealing with matters which are outside the range of my own experience, and confined myself to such illustrations of the positions maintained as my own personal knowledge could supply. There are, however, some phases of the country parson’s life which I am perhaps less competent to dwell on than others who have been all their lives rustics , and because I would not

Few men can have watched the movements of opinion during the last few years without being impressed by the change of attitude observable in the two contending parties engaged upon the assault and defence of the possessions of that mysterious entity which goes by the name of the Church of England. This entity it must be premised, so far as it has a collective existence, exists in the person of certain officials who are supposed to be devoting their lives to certain duties, and are in the possessi

The following appeared in The Pall Mall Gazette of August 15, 1889. If a more dreadful comment upon the above essay can be produced, I have not yet met with it:— DISESTABLISHMENT BY DEMOLITION. Mr. Thackeray Turner, the secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, requests us to publish the following appeal for an ancient church which is in imminent danger of destruction:— The parish of Sotterley, in the county of Suffolk, lies about five miles from the town of Beccles, and

The most delightful place of resort on the face of the globe is to be found within a bow-shot of Temple Bar. Not on the south side of Fleet Street, whatever enthusiastic gentlemen of the law may say, nor on the west, nor on the east, for there too there is little to attract us except in the shop windows, and there is noise and turmoil and the roar of a restless multitude bewildering and disturbing us whether we move or halt on our way. No! my happy valley lies to the north of the great thoroughf

No truer saying was ever uttered than that “one half the world does not know how the other half lives.” And yet I am continually contradicted by wiseacres of the streets and squares when I meekly but firmly maintain that it is actually possible to live a happy, intelligent, useful, and progressive life in an out-of-the-way country parish—“far from the madding crowd”—and literally (as I happen to know at this moment) three miles from a lemon. “Don’t tell me!” says one of my agnostic friends who k

This—the great financial measure of the future—can hardly be expected to commend itself to the philosophic economists of the present day. It is the penalty which every man who is before his time must expect to pay for his excessive sagacity, that his contemporaries neglect or deride him. Accordingly the very name of the French thinker who suggested this beautiful scheme for ensuring Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity has been forgotten and—will it be believed?—the number of those who have ever ta

Many more years than I like to acknowledge, have passed away since a day when my father caught me slinking out of his library with Mrs. Trollope’s “Travels in the United States” under my arm. He laughed at my absurd precocity, for I was little more than a child, and as he took the book away from me, he said, “My boy, that is not a book for you to read. It is not even true. You shall go to America yourself one day, when you’re a man, and you’ll know better than to write that kind of stuff.” It wa