They send a thrill of noble emotion
through the heart of their generation, and the divine tremor does not
soon subside; they gather round them the pure and generous--the lofty
souls which are not all of the earth earthy. In such, at any rate, a
fire is kindled by the spark that has fallen from the altar. By-and-
by it is the fuel that fails; then the old fire, after smouldering
for a while, goes out, and by no stirring of the dead embers can you
make them flame again. You may cry as loudly as you will, "Pull down
the chimney that will not draw, and set up another in its place!"
That you may do if you please; another fire you may have, but the new
will not be as the old.
II.
_VILLAGE LIFE SIX HUNDRED YEARS AGO_.
"The rude forefathers of the hamlet..."
[In the autumn of 1878, while on a visit at Rougham Hall, Norfolk, the
seat of Mr. Charles North, my kind host drew my attention to some
large boxes of manuscripts, which he told me nobody knew anything
about, but which I was at liberty to ransack to my heart's content. I
at once dived into one of the boxes, and then spent half the night in
examining some of its treasures. The chest is one of many,
constituting in their entirety a complete apparatus for the history
of the parish of Rougham from the time of Henry the Third to the
present day--so complete that it would be difficult to find in
England a collection of documents to compare with it.
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