om far and wide,
and felt the beautiful old fragment of a monastic building where he
dwelt a true court of peace and refreshment, whence they came forth,
aided by prayer and counsel, for their own share of the combat.

Julius Charnock had, happily for himself, found his way thither when
his character and opinions were in process of formation, and had
ever since looked to Rood House for guidance and sympathy. To be
only fourteen miles distant had seemed to him one great perfection
of Compton Poynsett; but of course he had found visits there a far
more possible thing to an unoccupied holiday son of the great house
than to a busy parish priest, so that this opportunity was very
valuable to him.

And so it proved; not so much for the details as for the spirit in
which he was aided in looking at everything, from the mighty
questions which prove the life of the Church by the vehement emotion
they occasion, down to the difficulties of theory and practice that
harassed himself--not named, perhaps, but still greatly unravelled.

Those perpetual questions, that have to be worked out again and
again by each generation, were before him in dealing with his
parish; and among them stood in his case the deeper aspects of the
question that had come forward on the drive, namely, the lawfulness
and expedience of amusement.

Granting the necessity of pastimes and recreation for most persons,
specially the young, there opened the doubtful, because ever-
varying, question of the kind and the quantity to be promoted or
sanctioned, lest restraint should lead to reaction, and lest
abstinence should change from purity and spirituality to moroseness
or hypocrisy. And if Julius found one end of the scale represented
by his wife and his junior curate, his sister-in-law and his senior
curate were at the other. Yet the old recluse was far more inclined
to toleration than he had been in principle himself, though the spur
of the occasion had led him to relaxations towards others in the
individual cases brought before him, when he had thought opposition
would do more harm than the indulgence. His conscience had been
uneasy at this divergence, till he could discuss the subject.

The higher the aspiration of the soul, the less, of course, would be
the craving for diversion, the greater the shrinking from those evil
accompaniments that soon mar the most innocent delights. Some
spirits are austere in their purity, like Anne; some so fervent in
z