The Vicar of Roost. CHAPTER I. THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. "I would not change it. Happy is your Grace As you like it. I HAVE often heard it said that there are very few men in the world who are strong-minded enough to be fit to write a diary of their daily lives. I am sure that I am not one of the few, for I see clearly that strength of mind is no quality of mine. I see the danger there is of self-deception; of hiding one's bad, paltry motives; of making one's self seem good upon paper, and depicting, not what one is, but what one ought to be. I see what an encouragement a journal gives to morbid, oversensitive feelings, and to habits of unhealthy selfcontemplation. So I will not write a journal, but only jot down from time to time such things as seem most likely to keep me humble; my mistakes, failures, errors in judgment, and the like. And let me note here that what I write here is for nobody's eyes but my own. I know it is of no N use inscribing the words "To be burnt unread" at the head of this page, for all experience shows that the documents so labelled are those which are preserved the longest; but I do make it my special request to those into whose hands this book may hereafter fall, that they will take care that no stranger "intermeddles" with it. I have known journals as private as this actually set up in print, and published. Such atrocious breaches of confidence make one blush for human nature.1 But I am using too strong language, and had better look at my own misdoings. I believe that I am at this present time a good deal dispirited and discouraged : and these seem to me additional reasons why I 1 Some Editors of the old school would have thought it expedient to suppress this amiable protest of shrinking modesty, as implying a condemnation of their own proceedings. We have no such squeamishness. It is now a well-established principle of literary morality that the private papers of deceased persons are the property of the public. During the last few years, half a score at least of journals have been published which were never intended to see the light (all the more interesting on that account!) and which, in the opinion of our over-conscientious seniors, ought, from that very circumstance, to have been withheld altogether. But such straitlaced theories of honour are not in accordance with the liberal sentiments of our time. The footman and the housemaid have no scruple in reading the letters which we have accidentally left open upon our table. Why then should an intelligent public be debarred from perusing in their full integrity the diaries of their defunct contemporaries? If folks do not mean to have the chronicles of their secret thoughts exposed, they should burn them. If they are too careless to do this, they must take the consequence. "Reverence for the expressed wishes of the deceased," and "delicacy towards survivors," are phrases which are quite unsuited to an inquiring age like the present, and the sooner they are got rid of the better. The public appetite for excitement must be catered for; and literary remains have a money value. The end justifies the means. Fortified by these considerations, we put forth the journal which the reader holds in his hands, without compunction, and without retrenchment.-EDITOR. should make occasional memoranda. A record of the many causes which I have for thankfulness, will, I should hope, as my mind becomes better regulated, help to make me uniformly cheerful and contented; and with respect to the discouragements of my present position, I see clearly that they ought not to weigh too heavily. As time goes on, I trust I shall do better, and then things will wear a brighter aspect. Meanwhile, I may, I think, without risk, take comfort from the recollection that it is not as if I had not had other prospects till within the last few years. The luxury in which I was brought up was not a good school of training for my present life. I trust I am safer now than I was then. And as every day convinces me more and more that the change in our fortunes was for the best, so I hope to find, as time goes on, that I am adapting myself more and more to that state of life to which I have now been called. I am a poor creature at present, but if I work on, and do not lose heart, I shall do better; I know I shall, if I diligently seek GOD's help. And yet what a change it is! Five years ago I was the young squire of Verdon Hall; and I do believe that it was my dear father's over-anxiety that his only child should be the heir of great possessions which was the proximate cause of our ruin. At least there was no other obvious reason why he should have connected himself with that miserable bank. People cruelly blamed his imprudence when all was lost; it was easy enough to do that; but where was the imprudence? Men, whom he had known for years when he was a merchant himself, and whom he had always found upright and honourable, were among the Directors. They sought him in his retirement, and urged him to cast in his lot with them. I cannot persuade myself that they had the remotest intention of in juring him. I will not allow myself to doubt that they believed that in spite of present difficulties the Bank would retrieve its fortunes. They wanted a command of capital for immediate purposes, and so naturally turned to my father: they were heavily pressed by urgent claims, and so thought too much of the present, and too little of the future, too much of themselves, and too little of him. It was wrong, but I am sure it does not behove me to condemn any one for selfishness: I have a great deal too much of it in my own composition. I never could understand how it was that six months before the Bank stopped payment the Directors reported a balance of fifteen thousand pounds as having been paid to a Reserve fund, when there was no such fund in existence; nor how they could speak of a capital of three millions when that capital was gone; nor how they could announce a dividend of ten per cent. upon profits, which had been all loss. But then I never can understand these complicated matters of business, and accounts always distract me. Yet one thing is clear enough: that statement kept up the value of the Bank shares: and it was on the strength of that statement that my poor father invested every shilling he had in the world, and I fear even more than he could call his own, in that Bank. All is ordered for the best: and so I try not to wish that the catastrophe had occurred two days later: for if it had, he would never have known it. O the dreariness of that dark November day, when he received the news! and the misery of hearing him insist on going out alone to grapple with his difficulties amid the howling of the rising storm! And the deepening twilight, and then the drifting snow, and then pitchy darkness, and still no sound of his footsteps! And the sending out servants to look for him, and their cold, blank, uneasy faces when no trace of him could be found! And, woe upon woe, when my dear sweet mother heard a whistle which she thought was his, her throwing open the conservatory-door, rushing down the stone steps leading to the flower-garden, missing her footing in the snow, and getting that terrible fall which injured her spine for ever, and has left her a paralyzed, bed-ridden cripple ever since! And last of all, that awful morrow, when faithful Neptune dashed into the Mere, and brought to shore the walking-stick which he saw floating on the water, and recognized, alas! alas! but too well! "Found drowned!" It was a verdict that never satisfied me. Of course, absorbed as he was with the overwhelming intelligence of the morning, he had failed to notice his approach to the water's edge, and had fallen in. Perhaps he was blinded with the density of the falling snow:-perhaps he lost his way in the dusk ;-perhaps,-but it is no use speculating. It was an accident. It could be nothing else. Why should anyone have felt a doubt on the subject, when his wife and his son felt none ? It is a merciful arrangement on the part of that Providence Which never lays on us more than we are able to bear, that a great trouble absorbs all minor distresses, or at any rate makes us less sensible of their presence. Poor old Verdon Hall! I loved you well. You had been the home of a happy childhood; and you were as much to me as though you had been in the possession of my ancestors for centuries, instead of the recent purchase of one who had been the maker of his own fortunes! but after the bitter tragedy which had befallen us within your precincts, I never could have loved you as a home again! It was almost without a |