With Ellen, young Myrvin was more at his ease; he recalled the days that were past, and never felt with her the barrier which his sensitive delicacy had placed between himself and her cousins.  Arthur was proud, more so than he was aware of himself.  He would have considered himself more humbled to love and sue for one raised by fortune or rank above him, than in uniting with one, who in both these essentials was his inferior.  He was ambitious, but for honours and station obtained by his own endeavours not conferred by another.  From his earliest youth he had grown up with so strong an impression that he was intended for the Church, that he considered it impossible any other profession could suit him better.  When he mingled intimately at college with young men of higher rank and higher hopes, he discovered too late that a clergyman’s life was not such as to render him most happy; but he could not draw back, he would not so disappoint his father.  He felt and knew, to obtain the summit of his desires, to be placed in a public situation, where his ambition would have full scope, required a much larger fortune than his father possessed.  He clothed himself in what he believed to be resignation and contentment, but which was in truth a morbid sensitiveness to his lot in life, which he imagined poverty would separate from every other.  Association with Herbert Hamilton, to whom in frankness he confided these secret feelings, did much towards removing their bitterness; and the admiration which he felt for Herbert, whose unaffected piety and devotion to the Church he could not fail to appreciate, partially reconciled his ambitious spirit to his station.  Yet the exalted ideas of Herbert were not entirely shared by Arthur, whose thoughts were centred in a more stirring field of usefulness than it would in all probability be his to fill.  Herbert combated these objections with so much eloquence, he pointed with such ardent zeal to the crown eternal that would be his, when divine love had triumphed over all earthly ambition, and his duties were done for love of Him, who had ordained them, that when the time of his ordination came (which it did very shortly after the commencement of this chapter), he would not have drawn back, even had a more attractive profession been offered for his acceptance.  The friendship and countenance of Mr. Hamilton did much to reconcile him to his lot.  Mr. Howard’s curate died suddenly, at the very time that Mr. Hamilton was writing to the Marquis of Malvern, in Arthur’s favour, for a vacant living then at his disposal.  Both now were offered to the young man’s choice, and Percy, even Mr. Hamilton himself, were somewhat surprised that, without a moment’s hesitation, he accepted that under Mr. Howard, in the gift of Mr. Hamilton, inferior as it was in point of worldly prospects to Lord Malvern’s.  His two parishes were situated about nine or ten miles from Oakwood, and seven or eight from Mr. Howard’s rectory, and ere Mr. Myrvin returned to Llangwillan, he had the satisfaction of seeing his son settled comfortably in his curacy, performing his duties to the approval of his rector, and gaining by his manner the affection of his parishioners.