ed, and at last he said: "If you feel a real call to the
ministry, and I won't say from your conversation that you do not,
for it is that of a thoughtful and educated man, you might enter the
Church as a licentiate. Only you must make up your mind to avoid
strong drink."

"I could avoid that easily enough, if I had any kind of hope to
support me!"

Part Third

AT MELCHESTER

"For there was no other girl, O bridegroom,
like her!"--SAPPHO (H. T. Wharton).

I

It was a new idea--the ecclesiastical and altruistic life as distinct
from the intellectual and emulative life. A man could preach and
do good to his fellow-creatures without taking double-firsts in the
schools of Christminster, or having anything but ordinary knowledge.
The old fancy which had led on to the culminating vision of the
bishopric had not been an ethical or theological enthusiasm at all,
but a mundane ambition masquerading in a surplice. He feared that
his whole scheme had degenerated to, even though it might not have
originated in, a social unrest which had no foundation in the nobler
instincts; which was purely an artificial product of civilization.
There were thousands of young men on the same self-seeking track
at the present moment. The sensual hind who ate, drank, and lived
carelessly with his wife through the days of his vanity was a more
likable being than he.

But to enter the Church in such an unscholarly way that he could not
in any probability rise to a higher grade through all his career than
that of the humble curate wearing his life out in an obscure village
or city slum--that might have a touch of goodness and greatness in
it; that might be true religion, and a purgatorial course worthy of
being followed by a remorseful man.

The favourable light in which this new thought showed itself by
contrast with his foregone intentions cheered Jude, as he sat there,
shabby and lonely; and it may be said to have given, during the next
few days, the _coup de grace_ to his intellectual career--a career
which had extended over the greater part of a dozen years. He did
nothing, however, for some long stagnant time to advance his new
desire, occupying himself with little local jobs in putting up and
lettering headstones about the neighbouring villages, and submitting
to be regarded as a social failure, a returned purchase, by the
half-dozen or so of farmers and other country-people who condescended
to nod to him