My ideas of eloquence began, and ended, with the eloquence of the Bible. Of course, such a model must end as it began, unless I could believe myself inspired like Malachi Macbriars. The sublime poetry of the Old Testament, and the words of our Lord, defy imitation. There is nothing equal or second to them-and woe to the rash imitator! When the preacher mounted the pulpit to address listeners fresh from these sublime utterances, they could not but feel a vast interval. But in this very interval was there not space for something better than the pulpit eloquence of the period? Meanwhile, for many years, there was no pressure upon me. I had not to preach; I might still indulge in a dream without putting it to proof.

At length I had to prove it. I took orders, and had to preach. I soon found that I could not hope to be eloquent. I had grown into a priest, but not into an orator. My pleasant ideas of spontaneous growth and happy development had been a bad foundation for the acquirement of a gift which eminently demands application and exercise.

An old friend of mine, at once shrewd and kind, once told me that he would answer for my emptying any church, give me time for it. Happily I had been long before him in the discovery. I had a good deal to make up for, and by every means in my power I had to compensate for the want of the one special gift which, it may be said, dispenses with all other means of attraction, or usefulness.

I could teach, for I had learnt that at Charterhouse. I could show, what indeed I felt, a neighbourly and

WHAT I COULD DO, WHAT I COULD NOT. 53

even pastoral interest in those that Heaven had entrusted to my care. From childhood I had felt with passion, indeed with weakness, the sufferings, the indignities, of poor working-people. The sentiment found more scope in the country than in the town, where labour marshalls itself into armies and assumes an arrogant bearing. For the first four years that I was in orders I had my fellowship as well as my living, and was a bachelor—a rich man indeed, so far as means could make me. I could easily and honestly be liberal with my money, and this sort of charity both the giver and the receiver feel to cover many sins.

All these subsidiary and adventitious aids I employed to make myself as acceptable and useful as my defects of enunciation and expression would allow. I could not envy gifts which I could not attain. I had no right to complain that Heaven had given me some of its gifts, the rest to others. I feel very sure that I would rather have stood in my shoes, and in threadbare garments, or even in a labourer's smock frock, with nothing on earth I could call my own, able to constrain the ears and hearts of a rustic crowd to the message of mercy and grace, than be the possessor of all that Fortune could bestow in her fondest and most capricious mood. Such was the spirit, and such the measure of myself, and with that I began a clerical career—not continuous indeed, yet never completely interrupted-now extending over half a century.

Have I a right to speak on matters deeply affecting the position and efficiency of the Church of

England? It has been denied. I have been told that I am not really of her, and that I am more of the world than of the Church. As far as regards the claim of the world to regard me as her son, I often think of the saying of a nobleman to Lord Anson, the circumnavigator, My lord, you have been round the world, but never in it.' If I am in anything it is the Church of England, not the world; that is, I am in and of the Church of England, but not as far as it is the Church of the world.

CHAPTER XI.

FROM CONISBOROUGH TO DONCASTER.

WHO am I? How came I here, before you, my reader? How was I formed? How did I form myself? How far was I formed by birth, circumstances, and what people call accidents ? These are questions which everybody may well ask himself from time to time, for they affect his responsibility—they should instil caution, they should move gratitude. In the interest of truth it is wise to inquire, from time to time, how one has been led up to it, how far possibly led away from it. Few of us know how much we owe to parentage, to our country, and to the religious community we were born in. But these are not everything. That were as much as to say that there is no truth at all, and no promise of a Power leading to all truth. Moreover, readers and

THE FOUNDER OF OUR FAMILY.

55

hearers have a voice in this matter. It is always assumed, with good reason, that anybody who cares to read what a man has to say on important subjects may wish to know something about him.

First for my ancestry.-Now, my dear grandson, my good nephews and nieces, and great-nephews and nieces, do not excite yourselves. I seem to hear you exclaim,' Pray give us somebody to be proud of; or hold your tongue.' I will do the best I can for you. I cannot give you a Norman knight, or a Scandinavian pirate. I cannot give you a rebel, or a Church robber, or a regicide. Our name is Saxon, and describes the wide, spongy, irregular lane, or 'green,' forming the approach to a village, much cut by wheel-track, and potched, or trod into 'pockets,' by cattle. There are, or were, many such; so of course there are many of our name, spelt in one way or another. But our name represents only one line of ancestry. I must have had about a hundred ancestors living two hundred years ago, all contributing to the blood that flows in these veins; but I will take the particular ancestor that I happen to know something about. He lived at Conisborough, in Yorkshire.

In the reign of Edward III., one William Mosley was Constable of Conisborough Castle. Why do I mention him? I seem to see my nephews and nieces reassuring themselves. What reason have I to think that we are descended from him? None whatever that I know, beyond the name. There is no external evidence, or internal either. I am sure that I should not myself ever have made a Constable of a Castle.

I doubt whether I should have kept the enemy out, but I am certain I should not have kept the garrison itself in order, or duly economised the provisions. In my best days I should never have been fit for a place in the constabulary of our times. I should neither have been terrible to pickpockets, nor welcome to the area.

A good many years ago I was walking down St. James's Street one afternoon, when I saw Denison and Woodgate walking up arm in arm. 'These fellows have been lunching,' I said to myself. The instant of our encounter Denison exclaimed, for me to hear, 'Here comes Mozley. Doesn't he look like a policeman?' As far as I can see myself, I think I might be imagined a 'detective.'

In Berkshire a policeman, stationed I believe on my special account, took much needless care of me for several years. At last, for an indiscretion—that is, for knocking a disorderly ruffian down and not duly reporting it, thus giving the ruffian the whip-hand of officers and magistrates-he was degraded. Thereupon he hastily resigned. So the authorities sent him down to find out the pilferers and purloiners at the Portsmouth dockyards. In a very short time his body was found in the dock. I might myself have achieved that brief career, with its little halo of sentimental regards.

But I must return to Conisborough.

Some time

before the Glorious Revolution there was born there my great-great-grandfather. He was a weaverwhether master or man, I know not. He was probably both, for in those days the men worked their