How shall I better have that preliminary and moderate exercitation which serves to get up the steam, than by talking for a little about the scene around me?  Through diamond-shaped panes the sunshine falls into this little chamber; and going to the window you look down upon the tops of tall trees.  And it is pleasant to look down upon the tops of tall trees.  The usual way of looking at trees, it may be remarked, is from below.  But this chamber is high up in the tower of a parish church far in the country.  Its furniture is simple as that of the chamber of a certain prophet, who lived long ago.  There are some things here, indeed, which he had not; for yesterday’s Times lies upon the floor drying in the morning sunbeams, and Fraser’s Magazine for May is on a chair by the window.  Why does that incomparable monthly act blisteringly upon the writer’s mind?  It never did so till May, 1859.  Why does he put it for the time out of sight?  Why, but because, for once, he has read in that Magazine an article—­by a very eminent man, too—­written in what he thinks a thoroughly mistaken spirit, and setting out views which he thinks to be utterly false and mischievous.  Not such, the writer knows well, are the views of his dear friend the Editor; not such are the doctrines which Fraser teaches to a grateful world.  In the latter pages of his review of Mill on Liberty, Mr. Buckle spoke golely for himself; he did not express the opinions which this Magazine upholds, nor commit for one moment the staff of men who write in it; and, as one insignificant individual who has penned a good many pages of Fraser, I beg to express my keen disapprobation of Mr. Buckle’s views upon the subject of Christianity.  They may be right, but I firmly believe they are wrong; they may be true, but I think them false.  I repudiate any share in them:  let their author bear their responsibility for himself.  Alas, say I, that so able a man should sincerely think (I give him credit for entire sincerity) that man’s best refuge and most precious hope is vain delusion!  Very jarringly to my mind sound those eloquent periods, so inexpressibly sad and dreary, amid pages penned in many quiet parsonages, by many men who for the truth of Christianity would, God helping them, lay down their lives.  So, you May magazine, get meanwhile out of sight:  I don’t want to think of you.  Rather let me stay this impatient throbbing of heart by looking down on the green tops of those great silent trees.

Thick ivy frames this mullioned window, with its three lance-shaped lights.  Seventy feet below, the grassy graves of the churchyard swell like green waves.  The white headstones gleam in the sun.  Ancient oaks line the lichened wall of the churchyard:  their leaves not yet to thick as they will be a month hereafter.  Beyond the wall, I see a very verdant field, between two oaks; six or seven white lambs are lying there, or frisking about.  The silver gleam of a river bounds the field; and beyond are