Godfrey, however, had
positively declined entering on the studies special to a career
he detested; nor was it difficult to reconcile his mother to the
enforced change of idea, when she found that his sole desire was
to settle down with her, and manage the two hundred acres his
father had left him. He took his place in the county, therefore,
as a yeoman-farmer--none the less a gentleman by descent,
character, and education. But while in genuine culture and
refinement the superior of all the landed proprietors in the
neighborhood, and knowing it, he was the superior of most of them
in this also, that he counted it no derogation from the dignity
he valued to put his hands upon occasion to any piece of work
required about the place.
His nature was too large, however, and its needs therefore too
many, to allow of his spending his energies on the property; and
he did not brood over such things as, so soon as they become
cares, become despicable. How much time is wasted in what is
called thought, but is merely care--an anxious idling over the
fancied probabilities of result! Of this fault, I say, Godfrey
was not guilty--more, however, I must confess, from healthful
drawings in other directions, than from philosophy or wisdom: he
was _a reader_--not in the sense of a man who derives
intensest pleasure from the absorption of intellectual pabulum--
one not necessarily so superior as some imagine to the
_gourmet_, or even the _gourmand_: in his reading Godfrey
nourished certain of the higher tendencies of his nature--
read with a constant reference to his own views of life, and the
confirmation, change, or enlargement of his theories of the same;
but neither did he read with the highest aim of all--the
enlargement of reverence, obedience, and faith; for he had never
turned his face full in the direction of infinite growth--the
primal end of a man's being, who is that he may return to the
Father, gathering his truth as he goes.
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