association;
with marriage and children, and pure enjoyment and active benevolence
and neighbourly goodwill. In a word, the country house was Home, and for
those who dwelt in it the interests of life were very much bound up in
the Park and the covers, the croquet-ground and the cricket-ground, the
kennel, the stable, and the garden. I remember, when I was an
undergraduate, lionizing some Yorkshire damsels on their first visit to
Oxford, then in the "high midsummer pomps" of its beauty. But all they
said was, in the pensive tone of unwilling exiles, "How beautifully the
sun must be shining on the South Walk at home!"

The Village Church was a great centre of domestic affection. All the
family had been christened in it. The eldest sister had been married in
it. Generations of ancestry mouldered under the chancel-floor. Christmas
decorations were an occasion of much innocent merriment, and a little
ditty high in favour in Tractarian homes warned the decorators to be--

"Unselfish--looking not to see
Proofs of their own dexterity;
But quite contented that 'I' should
Forgotten be in brotherhood."

Of course, whether Tractarian or Evangelical, religious people regarded
church-going as a spiritual privilege; and everyone, religious or not,
recognized it as a civil duty. "When a gentleman is _sur ses terres_,"
said Major Pendennis, "he must give an example to the country people;
and, if I could turn a tune, I even think I should sing. The Duke of St.
David's, whom I have the honour of knowing, always sings in the country,
and let me tell you it has a doosed fine effect from the Family Pew."
Before the passion for "restoration" had set in, and ere yet Sir Gilbert
Scott had transmogrified the Parish Churches of England, the Family Pew
was indeed the ark and sanctuary of the territorial system--and a very
comfortable ark too. It had a private entrance, a round table, a good
assortment of armchairs, a fire-place, and a wood-basket. And I well
remember a wash-leather glove of unusual size which was kept in the
wood-basket for the greater convenience of making up the fire during
divine service. "You may restore the church as much as you like," said
the lay-rector of our parish, to an innovating Incumbent, "but I must
insist on my Family Pew not being touched. If I had to sit in an open
seat, I should never get a wink of sleep again."

A country home left its mark for all time on those who were brought up