and before the
year was over Julian had been elected a Fellow, and the living of Elstan
was offered to him. Being of small value--200 pounds a year--it had
been rejected by all the Fellows of older standing, and had "come down"
to Julian, who, to the surprise of his friends, left Camford and
accepted it without hesitation.

"My dear fellow," said Mr Admer, "how in the world can you be so insane
as to bury yourself alive, at the age of twenty-two, in so obscure a
place as the vicarage of Elstan?"

"Oh, Elstan is a charming place," said Julian; "I visited it before
accepting it, and found it to be one of those dear little English
villages in the greenest fields of Wiltshire. The house is a very
pretty one, and the parish is in perfect order. My predecessor was an
excellent man: his population, of one thousand souls, were perhaps as
well attended to as any in all England."

"Yes, yes," said Mr Admer, impatiently, "I know all that; but who will
ever hear of you again if you go and become what Sydney Smith calls `a
kind of holy vegetable' in the cabbage-gardens of a Wiltshire hamlet?"

"Why, what would you have me do, Mr Admer?"

"Oh, I don't know; stay up here, edit a Greek play, or one of the
epistles; bestir yourself for some rising university member in a
contested election; set yourself to get a bishopric or a deanery; you
could easily do it if you tried. I'll give you a receipt for it any day
you like. Or go to some London church; with such sermons as you could
preach you might have London at your heels in no time, and as you would
superadd learning to effectiveness, your fortune would be made."

Julian was sorry to hear him talk like this; it was the language of a
disappointed and half-believing man.

"I don't care for such aims," he said. "A _mere_ popular preacher I
would not be, and as for preferment it doesn't depend much on me, but
for the most part on purely accidental causes. All I care for at
present is to be useful and happy. Obscurity is no trial to me; neither
success nor failure can make me different from what I am."

"Well then, at least, write a book or something to keep yourself in
men's memory."

"I don't feel inclined. There are too many books in the world, and I
have nothing particular to say. Besides, the annoyance and spite to
which an author subjects himself are endless--to hear ignorant and often
malicious criticisms, to see his views misrepresented, his motives
calumniated,