o
to preach, go and be a witness.'"

"'A witness of what?'

"'He don't know!'"

While Wilson worked under Cecil, Heber, who was still too young for the
family living of Hodnet, in Shropshire, after taking his bachelor's
degree, obtaining a fellowship at All Souls College, and gaining the
prize for the prose essay, accompanied John Thornton on a tour through
northern and eastern Europe, the only portions then accessible to the
traveller; and, returning in 1806, was welcomed at home by his brother's
tenants with a banquet, for which three sheep were slaughtered, and at
which he appeared in the red coat of the volunteer regiment in which he
had taken an eager share during former years.

It was his last appearance in a military character, for in 1807 he was
ordained, and entered on his duties as Rector of Hodnet. Two years later
he married Amelia Shipley, the daughter of the Dean of St. Asaph.
Floating thus easily into preferment, without a shoal or rock in his
course, fairly wealthy, and belonging to a well-esteemed county family,
connected through his brother with the very _elite_ of literary society,
it seemed as though, in the laxity of the early part of the century,
Reginald Heber could hardly have helped falling into the indolence of
learned ease, the peril of the well-beneficed clergy of his day,
especially among those who had not accepted the peculiarities of the
awakening school of the period.

But such was not the case. He was at once an earnest parish priest,
working hard to win his people, not only to attend at church, but to
become regular communicants, and to give up their prevalent evil courses.
We find him in one letter mentioning the writing of an article on Pindar
in the _Quarterly Review_, planning for a village-school on the
Lancastrian principle, and endeavouring to improve the psalmody. "At
least," he says, "I have a better reason to plead for silence than the
Cambridge man who, on being asked in what pursuit he was then engaged,
replied that he was diligently employed in suffering his hair to grow."

These "endeavours to improve the psalmody" were a forestalling of the
victory over the version of Tate and Brady. The Olney Hymns, produced by
Cowper, under the guidance of John Newton, had been introduced by Heber
on his first arrival in the parish, but he felt the lack of something
more thoroughly in accordance with the course of the Christian year, less
personal and meditative, and more cong