out of it, but in the old and ardent sense of the Evangelical school:
one who could
Indeed opine
That the Eternal and Divine
Did, eighteen centuries ago
In very truth...
Angel's father tried argument, persuasion, entreaty.
'No, father; I cannot underwrite Article Four (leave alone the rest),
taking it 'in the literal and grammatical sense' as required by the
Declaration; and, therefore, I can't be a parson in the present state
of affairs,' said Angel. 'My whole instinct in matters of religion
is towards reconstruction; to quote your favorite Epistle to the
Hebrews, 'the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things
that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.''
His father grieved so deeply that it made Angel quite ill to see him.
'What is the good of your mother and me economizing and stinting
ourselves to give you a University education, if it is not to be used
for the honour and glory of God?' his father repeated.
'Why, that it may be used for the honour and glory of man, father.'
Perhaps if Angel had persevered he might have gone to Cambridge like
his brothers. But the Vicar's view of that seat of learning as a
stepping-stone to Orders alone was quite a family tradition; and so
rooted was the idea in his mind that perseverance began to appear to
the sensitive son akin to an intent to misappropriate a trust, and
wrong the pious heads of the household, who had been and were, as his
father had hinted, compelled to exercise much thrift to carry out
this uniform plan of education for the three young men.
'I will do without Cambridge,' said Angel at last. 'I feel that I
have no right to go there in the circumstances.'
The effects of this decisive debate were not long in showing
themselves. He spent years and years in desultory studies,
undertakings, and meditations; he began to evince considerable
indifference to social forms and observances. The material
distinctions of rank and wealth he increasingly despised. Even the
'good old family' (to use a favourite phrase of a late local worthy)
had no aroma for him unless there were good new resolutions in its
representatives. As a balance to these austerities, when he went to
live in London to see what the world was like, and with a view to
practising a profession or business there, he was carried off his
head, and nearly entrapped by a woman much older than himself, though
luckily he escaped not greatly the worse for the experience.
Early association with country solitudes had bred in him an
unconquerable, and almost unreasonable, aversion to modern town life,
and shut him out from such success as he might have aspired to by
following a mundane calling in the impracticability of the spiritual
one. But something had to be done; he had wasted many valuable
years; and having an acquaintance who was starting on a thriving life
as a Colonial farmer, it occurred to Angel that this might be a lead
in the right direction. Farming, either in the Colonies, America, or
at home--farming, at any rate, after becoming well qualified for the
