The Fate: A Tale of Stirring Times

by G. P. R. James

He fell into deep thought after uttering the last words, and his son would not disturb his revery; for the ice was broken, the first announcement made, and he was very certain of gaining his point in the end. Oh how eagerly did the youth long for the attainment of that point! What was it that attracted him so strongly? No truant disposition; no idle weariness of the spot where his ancestors had dwelt; no gilded dreams of sport and pleasure; no overcolored picture of the world's brightness. But it offered him hope; one small spark of that sacred fire, the extinction of which is death. He felt within him strong energies; he had proved somewhat severely his own abilities; he had a great purpose before him, a strong passion to lead him, and all he wanted was hope and opportunity. He dared not tell his father all that was in his heart, for there is a cold mist about age in which the flame of hope will hardly burn; and if prescience were equal to experience, youth would never struggle on so far and overcome so much, for want of sunshine on the way.

The father sat gazing thoughtfully into the fire; the son remained with his head leaning on his hand, till both started at a sharp rap upon the door of the house from the heavy iron knocker which I have mentioned.

There was, indeed, no need of starting, for both knew they were to have a visitor that night, to taste a bowl of punch and chat over the affairs of the country round. But they had been so deeply involved in personal feelings that they had forgotten the flight of time, and the guest was upon them ere either was aware that the usual hour of his visit on a Wednesday night was actually come.

The father buttoned up a portion of his waist coat, and drew on again a slipper which, under the pressure of cogitation, he had kicked off his foot. The son put straight several of the chairs, which somehow or another had got into a state of confusion; and in the mean while was heard a sound, such as might have proceeded from a seal new caught scrambling about in the bottom of a boat, but which, in reality, was caused by the movement through the passage of a short, fin-legged maid-servant, eager to open the door without delay to his reverence the parson, of whose weekly visitation she had been more mindful than her master. Hardly two minutes elapsed after the stroke upon the outer door when that of the little library opened, and not one visitor, but two, presented themselves, and both bedecked with cassocks.

I can not but regret the rubbing of the face off the coin wherever I see it in society. I love local color; I love class costume, though not class interests, however they may be disguised. Every profession, every calling, honorably exercised, is honorable, and there is nothing so vain as the vanity, nothing so pitiful as the pride which would conceal any external indication of a position we have no right to be ashamed of occupying. The Norman peasant girl, in love with her immemorial white cap, would feel herself degraded were you to dress her head up in hat and feathers. The New Haven fish-wife has an honest pride in her yellow petticoat. The doctor in former times could still be known by red roquelaur and gold-headed cane; the divine by the garments of his order. The soldier aped not the civilian, nor the civilian the soldier; each ship carried its own colors, and could be known by those that sailed by it. I see not those inconveniences of the system, which have produced a change in our day. However, in the times of which I write, each parson could be known by his clerical garments; and both the two gentlemen who now entered were evidently churchmen, though very different both in appearance and demeanor from each other.

The first was a fat, rosy personage, in a bran new cassock, glossy and black as a raven's wing. In personal appearance he was no mean representative of the old friar, wanting, however, the shaven crown and the bare feet. The glance he gave around the room had just such a degree of strangeness in it as might imply that he was not a frequent visitor there, though not altogether unknown.

The second was an older man, perhaps sixty years of age, tall, pale, and thin, with garments well worn, yet whole and decent. His hands, though they not unfrequently held the spade in his own garden, were peculiarly fine and delicate, and his face had seemingly been very handsome in early life.

Now, from the time of the suppression of monasteries and the reformation of the Church of England under Henry VIII. (if reformation that movement could be called which took place under the wife-slayer) to the present day, some five or six complete revolutions have occurred in the state and character of the clergy of Great Britain. Those are now living who remember one or two. By a very natural reaction, the fishing, and shooting, and hunting parson of the early part of the nineteenth century, the man unmindful of all outward observances, and very little careful of even the more solemn duties of his calling, has given place either to the man of forms and ceremonies, of surplices and genuflexions, of crosses and candlesticks, or to the eager, laborious, anxious evangelical minister, ever visiting the sick, attending to the school, or frightening the wicked with vivid pictures of damnation, and diversifying labors, almost too much in themselves for any one man, with missionary meetings, propagation of the Gospel societies, and tract and Bible distribution. The parson Trulliber (I know not if I spell the name aright, as I have no books with me), the parson Adams, the Vicar of Wakefield--although each certainly very much overdrawn, if we consider them as representatives of a class--give us some idea of the various phases of the clerical state in the last century; and innumerable memoirs, histories, and essays show the real condition of the clergy in the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. At none of these periods, be it however remembered, was there not among the clergy of the day an infinite difference, in manners, character, and condition, between different individuals, according to circumstances. The man placed at a distance from refined society, in some remote country parish, was apt to lose the more polished manners acquired at college. This was especially the case where, as sometimes happened, the shameful smallness of the stipend compelled the parish priest or curate to eke out the means of subsistence by hard manual labor. But even then it was not always the case; and hands that have held the plow or dug the glebe have often, washed and clean, during the evening hours, penned words of fire, which have not only found their way to the hearts of men, kindling a flame of pure religion in the breast, but have lighted the writer himself on the road to high preferment.

Again, the chaplain of the lord or great landed proprietor, depending upon his patron for advancement in the Church, and sometimes even for his dinner, was often inclined to be subservient and lickspittle, to undertake degrading and sometimes shameless offices, to forget the dignity of his calling and the dignity of man. But this was merely occasionally; and occasionally, also, you would find a chaplain as stern and harsh as the most fierce reformer, keeping the whole household in awe, and even reproving the faults of his lord himself. These, however, were the extremes, and the general course lay between. There you would find the domestic priest, plodding on quietly in his duties, doing as much good as a not very zealous character could accomplish, bearing the crosses of his situation meekly, and looking forward to a better and a freer day when the long-expected living should be bestowed.

All the coarse caricature daubing in the world can not alter the lines of the picture left to us by the authentic records of those days, and, though it may make the idle smile and the ignorant applaud, yet it will not deceive those who are really conversant with the manners and customs of other times.