To sit on rocks, to muse on flood and fell, To climb the trackless mountain, &c. I suppose we all know that wishy-washy stuff, so there is no need to go on with the quotation. What _is_ trying in the country parson’s life is its _isolation_. That is a very different thing from saying that he lives a lonely life. The parson who is conscientiously trying to do his duty in a country parish occupies a unique position. He is a man, and yet he must be something more than man, and something less too. He must be more than man in that he must be free from human passions and human weaknesses, or the whole neighbourhood is shocked by his frailty; he must be something less than man in his tastes and amusements and way of life, or there will be those who will be sure to denounce him as a worldling who ought never to have taken orders. If he be a man of birth and refinement, he is sure to be reported of as proud and haughty; if he be not quite a gentleman, he will be snubbed and flouted outrageously. The average country parson and his family has often to bear an amount of patronizing impertinence which is sometimes very trying. Even the squire and the parson do not always get on well together, and when they do not, the parson is very much at the other’s mercy, and may be thwarted and worried and humiliated almost to any extent by a powerful, ill-conditioned, and unscrupulous landed proprietor. But it is from the come-and-go people who hire the country houses which their owners are compelled to let, that we suffer most. Not that this is always the case, for it not unfrequently happens that the change in the occupancy of a country mansion is a clear gain socially, morally, and intellectually to a whole neighbourhood--when, in the place of a necessitous Squire Western, and his cubs of sons and his half-educated daughters, drearily impecunious, but not the less self-asserting and supercilious, we get a family of gentle manners and culture and accomplishments, and lo! it is as sunshine after rain. But sometimes the new comers are a grievous infliction. Town-bred folk who emerge from the back streets and have amassed money by a new hair-wash or an improvement in sticking-plaster. Such as these are out of harmony with their temporary surroundings: they giggle in the faces of the farmers’ daughters, ridicule the speech and manners of the labourers and their wives, and grumble at everything. They cannot think of walking in the dirty lanes, they are afraid of cows, and call children nasty little things. These people’s hospitalities are very trying.