I said that I
had no doubt he was,--to a _Scotchman_. We exchanged no more words that
day.... Let me hear that you have clambered up to Lover's Seat; it is as
fine in that neighborhood as Juan Fernandez,--as lonely, too, when the
fishing-boats are not out; I have sat for hours staring upon a shipless
sea. The salt sea is never as grand as when it is left to itself. One
cock-boat spoils it; a seamew or two improves it. And go to the little
church, which is a very Protestant Loretto, and seems dropped by some
angel for the use of a hermit who was at once parishioner and a whole
parish. It is not too big. Go in the night, bring it away in your
portmanteau, and I will plant it in my garden. It must have been
erected, in the very infancy of British Christianity, for the two or
three first converts, yet with all the appurtenances of a church of the
first magnitude,--its pulpit, its pews, its baptismal font; a cathedral
in a nutshell. The minister that divides the Word there must give
lumping pennyworths. It is built to the text of "two or three assembled
in my name." It reminds me of the grain of mustard-seed. If the glebe
land is proportionate, it may yield two potatoes. Tithes out of it could
be no more split than a hair. Its First fruits must be its Last, for 't
would never produce a couple. It is truly the strait and narrow way, and
few there be (of London visitants) that find it.
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