health more beautiful than ill-health, and a normal state more pleasant than an abnormal. There may be some apparent exceptions to the rule, as in the case of recovery from illness there is a certain delicacy which is very attractive; but then it is the first flush of health that gives the beauty, just like that which makes spring more interesting than summer. Still it is not merely delicacy that is beautiful, but delicacy pervaded by health and conquered by it-life in its first fresh rising, like a new childhood; but I acknowledge that I can not acquire the sickly taste of admiring the delicacy of ill-health. Beauty, in my eyes, depends much upon association; and delicacy that calls up one's knowledge of morbid anatomy, and suggests the thought of disordered functions, and abnormal states, and physicians' attendance, never affects me with a sense of beauty. This may be an unfashionable view, but I am certain it is a sound and healthy one, fresh from Nature's heart. The other taste is of the same family as that which makes the Chinese admire feet quashed into smallness. I admire refinement in a female form; but the moment that it appears as the result of ill-health, I reject it as a counterfeit. For this reason I can not even admire the hectic of consumption; it puts me in mind at once of glaring eyes and panting breath, and I see what will be. I have a fastidiousness of taste in this respect, almost painful, and I acknowledge that I admire the beauty which God made-health-immeasurably above the counterfeit which man procures. A country girl, modest and neat, is not my beau idéal of beauty; but I admire her far more than a pale, languid girl of fashion, just as I like brown bread better than bled-white veal; but I think you are much mistaken if you mean by delicacy that I do not admire refinement. I can not admire any thing that reminds one of the "mould above the rose,' and forces upon one the question, whether an allopathic or homœopathic druggist could best get rid of that delicate look. I delight not in any thing unnatural or diseased. Lord Byron has well described this unhealthy taste about beauty, in his description of the Spanish ladies, as compared with the languid, wan, and weak" forms of others. 66 I rejoice that you like Wordsworth's "Life." Badly and coldly as it is written, the extracts from his own letters give some insight into his inner life. And it seems to me, in reading lives, the question too often is whether it be one which in all respects answers our ideal of a life; whereas the question ought to be, whether it has strongly exhibited some side or other of our manifold and many-sided life. I am satisfied with One life with One ideal, and I read all others to understand that, by illustration or contrasts of their whole to parts of it. Now Wordsworth throws some light on its purely contemplative side. The life of Action and Sacrifice is wanting, but I can find those in various forms-in Wellington's life, or women's, etc. My life for the last few weeks has been one of perpetual pain-forced to work, and forced to mix with people, and to talk when it has taken me actually, only two days ago, an hour and a quarter to crawl, by back streets, from Kemp Town, in suffering all the way; and now at this moment languor makes me stop in writing after every third line. If my congregation had not come forward so generously, and if I had not received so many letters full of kindness, containing expressions of pain and regret about my looks, etc., I should, I verily think, have given up work entirely, so hardly does it press upon me, and so much that is painful have I had to submit to. But their warmth has settled the question, and left me no alternative, and I must work on as long as I have strength for it. CHAPTER XII. JUNE, JULY, AUGUST, 1853. Mr. Robertson leaves Trinity Chapel forever.-The Controversy with the Vicar of Brighton. The last sad Months.-His Death and Burial. THE last few months of Mr. Robertson's life were not passed in peace. A blow was dealt him by one to whom his courtesy had been invariable, and dealt him at a time when its stroke was fatal. The Rev. H. M. Wagner, the Vicar of Brighton, refused, from personal pique against Mr. Tower, to allow of his nomination as curate to Trinity Chapel, unless under conditions which Mr. Robertson refused even to propose to Mr. Tower. There was nothing for Mr. Robertson to do but submit; but that submission hastened his death. It was imperative that he should have rest. In his letter to the Vicar he urged not only his friend's cause, but the opinion of the doctors, that without help his own health must finally give way. The Vicar replied that his objection was conscientious and final; and yet this objection rested on the single circumstance that two years before Mr. Tower had resisted the Vicar's will, not on a religious, but on a financial question. "You will agree with me," writes Mr. Robertson, in his published letter to the Committee, "that this conduct leaves me without an alternative. I will not trust myself to characterize it as I feel it, for strong sense of wrong makes a man prone to use strong words. It is enough to say quietly, using the mildest terms which are consistent with truth, that by a discourteous and ungenerous exercise of legal power, and by the rude manner in which I was personally treated, and of which I have said nothing in this letter, the Vicar has put it out of my power to offer another nominee, or to accept any favors at his hands. I owe this both to my friend's character and to myself. There remains for me nothing but to go on with my work single-handed as long as I am able." Undeterred by the tone of this letter, Mr. Wagner wrote to ask Mr. Robertson to name another curate. This proposition was the last stroke. It was answered by the following dignified and forcible refusal : 60 Montpelier Road, June 22, 1853. REVEREND SIR, I have to acknowledge the receipt of your note of the 18th inst., in which you recommend me to present another nominee for your approval, and offer to find some one to supply his place till appointed. I regret that I can not reciprocate the bland tone of this last communication; for I confess that patronizing offers of favor seem to me out of place, when that which is asked for, and still peremptorily refused, is the redress of a wrong. And I regret to find that you view the matter between us, your own part in it in particular, in a much more light and easy way than that in which any one else will see it. Suffer me to be explicit; for the forbearance of my first letter having been unappreciated, I am compelled to speak English that can not be misunderstood. I can not offer another nominee; nor is it in my power to accept at your hands the favor of any aid such as you offer. I will examine, first, the objection against Mr. Tower, and how far it is possible for me to pass smoothly by the rejection of my friend, and receive a favor from his rejector. The charge, as I collect it from your words, assumes two shapes: 1. Unbecoming behavior in interfering with the affairs of the Lewes Deanery Branch of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge—a society established in your parish. 2. Unbecoming conduct towards yourself. With respect to the first, it must be remembered that, though Brighton be the head-quarters of the Branch Society, and the Vicar of Brighton at present chairman, it is not a Brighton society, but one belonging to the whole Deanery of Lewes, and that, as a clergyman of the Deanery, and member of the Committee, Mr. Tower had an equal right with yourself to move any measures he thought right. It is as incorrect to imply that he interfered with a parochial society, or the prerogatives of the Vicar of Brighton, as it is unjust to insinuate that, as a curate, he took too much upon him. The country clergy gave him—he did not assume—a leading part in the discussion, because he was furnished with considerable information from the Parent Society. 2dly. With respect to Mr. Tower's personal conduct to yourself. An overwhelming majority of the Committee-all, indeed, I believe, except those who are bound by some personal tie to yourself, and therefore, perhaps naturally, feel with you-are prepared to assert that Mr. Tower's conduct on those occasions was that of a Christian and a gentleman. If necessary, I shall call for that testimony. I could call for more, but I have no wish for recrimination. For the question is not, after all, whether Mr. Tower spoke warmly to you, or you to him, nor whether Mr. Tower was right or wrong in the course which he at least pursued conscientiously; but the question is, whether that course was sufficient ground for permanent unforgivingness on your part, and whether such offenses as a personal difference with yourself, and interference in a favorite society of your own, admitting them to have existed to their fullest extent, are just grounds for the rejection of one whom you yourself admit to be in conduct and doctrine an exemplary Christian minister. No bishop would exclude from his diocese on such grounds; if he did, all England would ring with the news of the transaction. I will now advert, with much regret, to your treatment of myself, which will account for my inability to adopt suddenly the suave tone of your last communication. I fix on a single instance. On Trinity-Sunday, during our first accidental interview between services, I told you several times that I was desirous of postponing the subject of the curacy till to-morrow, and anxious to return home, as I had to prepare for the duties of the afternoon pulpit, and was much pressed for time. In spite of this, within half an hour you abruptly and unnecessarily invaded a privacy which you knew I had such anxious reasons to keep calm and sacred from interruption; and with yourself you forced upon me as a witness a gentleman personally unknown to me. The witness-system, in a conversation between gentlemen, used by you to me even more offensively on a previous occasion, is in itself a very objectionable proceeding. It is scarcely necessary to say that the interruption incapacitated me from addressing my congregation on the intended subject. I select this fact, not because it is the only instance, by many, of your discourtesy, but because your own witness was present. These are not supposed to be the manners of civilized society; nor can the grievance of them be obliterated by a few smooth lines, not of apology, but of patronage. It is curious to see with what marvellously different degrees of tenacity men retain the recollection of their own discourtesy to others, and that of others towards them. At the end of a couple of weeks, all that you said and did to me seems to have vanished from your mind; at the end of two years, Mr. Tower's so-called transgression against yourself is as indelible as ever. I much regret that it is my duty to write thus plainly, because I foresee that the publication of this letter may be necessary-the right of doing which I reserve to myself; more especially as your uncalled-for offer to supply my pulpit may give a fallacious aspect to the whole affair, unless I very distinctly show what the question at issue is, and what it is not. I can offer no other nominee, because I can not admit your right of rejection on personal grounds. I am informed that you have a legal right; but I believe the whole world will deny your moral right. I know that, as you have stated, you are irresponsible by law, and can reject without assigning a reaBut irresponsibility is one thing in despotic Russia, and another thing in free England. No man can be irresponsible to public judgment in the exercise of a solemn public trust. son. Nor can I subject another friend to the chance of your discovering, as in Mr. Macleane's case, a ground of objection in the circumstance of his taking pupils; or, as in Mr. Tower's case, in the fact of his having had the misfortune to vote against you an indefinite number of years ago. Lastly, I will not subject any gentleman again to the indignity of being asked for guaranties for conduct, or willingness to support, blindfold, the particular societies which you choose to name. I have the honor to be, reverend sir, your obedient servant, Mr. Robertson gave Mr. Wagner won his legal victory. up the contest, and went home to die. more. The endless committee meetings and correspondence harassed a frame already worn out, and all chance of recovery became hopeless. Do I am really and seriously unwell (he writes); more so, I think, than even the doctors say; for the prostration of every kind of power has been too complete and too permanent to mean nothing, as there is no distinct cause. not put it down to hypochondria. I can endure any pain, and am not afraid of any future; but the entire inability to do any work, physical or mental, without exhaustion which is intolerable, appalls me. To such suffering as I have borne for months death would be a very welcome relief. No defense worthy of the name was put forward by Mr. Wagner. No one can say that he knew what he was doing, or had any idea of what Mr. Robertson would suffer; it was incapability, not animosity, of feeling. He did not know that his brother minister was dying, but he did believe that his own dignity had been hurt; and, alas! he could not see that there are times when the resentment of a personal injury is a public injustice, and the exercise of a legal right a moral wrong. Nevertheless, as if these excuses had not existed, the indignation in Brighton was extreme. To so great a height, indeed, did it rise, that assuredly, had he known of it, Mr. Robertson would have endeavored to check its violence; but he was closely confined to his room-forbidden either to read the papers or to see his friends. It was all over for him-happily enough; the ceaseless contest against underhand slander on one side, and open opposition on the other. Little did he now care for the gentlest praise or the loudest blame. It was a curious and sorrowful contrast to turn from Brighton and its excitement on this matter-from the papers in the columns of which appeared letter after letter, some violent, some satirical, and few moderate-from the angry discussions in public and in private, every one almost taking one side or another-to turn from these things and enter the stillness of the sick-room where the unwilling cause of all this lay, his life ebbing slowly from him in bitter and unremitting pain. The only history which can be given of the last two sad months of his life is from his own pen, in the following short and hurried letters. Nothing can be more pitiable to look at than the handwriting. Few men wrote so clear and fair a hand. But the last ten or twelve of these records would seem to have been written by one who had just been delivered from the rack. Every stroke of the pen zigzags with the feebleness of pain: June 20. I received your letter this morning with many thanks. I am unfit to write, though a trifle better. I have scarcely manhood enough to hold a pen. Í was forbidden to do any duty yesterday, and spent the day in listlessness and semi-dozing. The Confirmation candidates must be prepared, and it is my duty. They may be empty, unmeaning girls, but so most girls are-and among people of this character the chief part of ministerial work lies, for the simple reason that others are the exception; and if we are only to teach and preach to those who have much meaning in them, I fear schools and churches must be shut up. If I prepare them now, I may get away with a better grace in August; if not, I must either return a little after that time, or leave this important part of my duty at sixes and sevens, with a fair cause for grumbling on the part of parents, and for running all over the town to different clergymen to prepare them, subject to the question in each case, "Why does not your own minister prepare them?" Now it is foolish to defy public opinion. Prime Ministers can not do it: the only man who can is the man |