You are happy, indeed, if after all, though quitting your country parsonage, and turning over a new leaf in life, you have not to make a change so entire as that from country to town generally is:  if, like me, you live in the most beautiful city in Britain:  a city where country and town are blended together:  where there are green gardens, fields, and trees:  shady places into which you may turn from the glaring streets, into verdure as cool and quiet as ever, and where your little children can roll upon the grass, and string daisies as of old; streets, from every opening in which you look out upon blue hills and blue sea.  No doubt, the work is very hard, and very constant; and each Sunday is a very exciting and exhausting day.  You will understand, my friend, when you go to such a charge, what honour is due to those venerable men who have faithfully and efficiently done the duty of the like for thirty or forty years.  You will look at them with much interest:  you will receive their kindly counsel with great respect.  You will feel it somewhat trying and nervous work to ascend your pulpit; and to address men and women who in mental cultivation, and in things much more important, are more than equal to yourself.  And as you walk down; always alone, to church each Sunday morning, you will very earnestly apply for strength and wisdom beyond your own, in a certain Quarter where they will never be sought in vain.  Yet you will delight in all your duty:  and you will thank God you feel that were your work in life to choose again, you would give yourself to the noblest task that can be undertaken by mortal, with a resolute purpose firmer a thousand times than even the enthusiastic preference of your early youth.  The attention and sympathy with which your congregation will listen to your sermons, will be a constant encouragement and stimulus; and you will find friends so dear and true, that yon. will hope never to part from them while life remains.  In such a life, indeed, these Essays, which never would have been begun had my duty been always such, must be written in little snatches of time:  and perhaps a sharp critic could tell, from internal evidence, which of them have been written in the country and which in the town.  I look up from the table at which I write:  and the roses, honeysuckle, and the fuchsias, of a year since, are far away:  through the window I discover lofty walls, whose colour inclines to black.  Yet I have not regretted the day, and I do not believe I ever will regret the day, when I ceased to be a Country Parson.

CHAPTER II.

Concerning disappointment and success.