ed himself only with a halo of sublunary beatitude. Welcome
always he, as on his side frankly coming to be well, with the farmer,
the squire, the rector, the--I had like to have said, dissenting
minister, but I think Mr. Harrison usually evaded villages for summer
domicile which were in any wise open to suspicion of Dissent in the
air,--but with hunting rector, and the High Church curate, and the
rector's daughters, and the curate's mother--and the landlord of the Red
Lion, and the hostler of the Red Lion stables, and the tapster of the
Pig and Whistle, and all the pigs in the backyard, and all the whistlers
in the street--whether for want of thought or for gayety of it, and all
the geese on the common, ducks in the horse-pond, and daws in the
steeple, Mr. Harrison was known and beloved by every bird and body of
them before half his holiday was over, and the rest of it was mere
exuberance of festivity about him, and applauding coronation of his head
and heart. Above all, he delighted in the ways of animals and children.
He wrote a birthday ode--or at least a tumble-out-of-the-nest-day
ode--to our pet rook, Grip, which encouraged that bird in taking such
liberties with the cook, and in addressing so many impertinences to the
other servants, that he became the mere plague, or as the French would
express it, the "Black-beast," of the kitchen at Denmark Hill for the
rest of his life. There was almost always a diary kept, usually, I
think, in rhyme, of those summer hours of indolence; and when at last it
was recognized, in due and reverent way, at the Crown Life Office, that
indeed the time had drawn near when its constant and faithful servant
should be allowed to rest, it was perhaps not the least of my friend's
praiseworthy and gentle gifts to be truly capable of rest; withdrawing
himself into the memories of his useful and benevolent life, and making
it truly a holiday in its honored evening. The idea then occurred to him
(and it was now my turn to press with hearty sympathy the sometimes
intermitted task) of writing these Reminiscences: valuable--valuable to
whom, and for what, I begin to wonder.

15. For indeed these memories are of people who are passed away like the
snow in harvest; and now, with the sharp-sickle reapers of full shocks
of the fattening wheat of metaphysics, and fair novelists Ruth-like in
the fields of barley, or more mischievously coming through the
rye,--what will the public, so vigorously sustained