interpretation of nature. One
evening--we had been listening to the owls crying--he said,
abstractedly:

"We put strange meanings enough, God knows, into faces that never
owned them. We hear dreary hopelessness in the moaning of the wind;
wild sorrow in the tossing of the trees; and read into the work-a-day
cries of birds, content, humour, melancholy, and a thousand other
unknown feelings."

He spoke much about the country and its effect on people. "Wisdom,"
he said, "is generally reared among fields and woody places, and when
she is nearly grown she wanders into the cities of men, to see if she
can not rule there; and then the test really comes. If she is genuine
and strong, she says her say and makes her protest, and passes back
again, uncontaminated, into the quiet villages, as pure and free as
ever. That is the case with genius. But if the spring of her energy
is not all her own--is not quite untainted, she parts with her
old grace and glory, losing it in hard unloving talk, in selfish
intercourse, in striving after the advantages of comfort and wealth.
She stays, and is dissipated--she is conformed to the image of the
world. That is what happens to mere talent."

The only other conversation with him that impressed itself very
distinctly upon my mind was about religion. He had been thinking--so
he told me--very deeply about Christianity, its strength and
weakness. "Its weakness, nowadays," he said, "is the mistake of
confusing it with the principles advocated by any one of the bodies
that profess to represent it. When one sees in the world so many
bodies--backed by wealth, tradition, prestige--shouting, 'We are the
only authorized exponents of Christ's truth; we are the only genuine
succession of the apostles;' when we see Churches who claim and
make much of possessing the succession (which they have in reality
forfeited by secession), and yet demand the right to be heretical
if the main stream is, as they say, 'corrupted' (for once introduce
that principle, and you can never limit subdivision, and equitable
subdivision too)--it is no wonder weaker intellects are confused and
distressed, and from their inability to decide between five or six
sole possessors of the truth, fall outside teaching and encouragement
altogether, though they could have got what they wanted in any of
these bodies.

"But, in spite of the hopeless strife of Churches, the fundamental
attraction of Christianity for human nature remains ev