The Sun

MATTHEW GRYLLS.

OR,

Murder Will Out.

STORY OF REAL LIFE.

"But my abilities are not equal to it." Roger exclaimed, almost frantic at his mother's words. "I am very ignorant: and I am always glad when church is over. I am both wicked and ignorant." And he tried to recollect instances of some gross failures in his school learning. "I reply," his mother took some letters from her pocket—the usual porte-feuille in those days,—and which consisted of two enormous flat dimity bags tied round the waist an entrance to them being effected by corresponding pocket-holes in the gown. The letters were from the schoolmaster, expressing much admiration and approval of her son's abilities and rare quickness, admitting that his education was advanced far beyond the point to which he aimed to lead his pupils; and offering him the situation of usher in his school, with a salary of twenty pounds a year until that time when Mr. Vyse should have fixed upon a profession. Roger's consternation was excessive What was to become of the agricultural castles in the air which he had so sanguinely built, and in which he had figured as a new Jack and the Beanstalk? How was that romance to be perfected which was to see him, from the successful tillage of a bit of worthless ground, let to him at a nominal rent, become the proprietor of rich acres? Were all these bright visions to be renounced for the drear realities of schoolroom, where the cruel task was to be performed of making little boys work at Latin and arithmetic, whose whole soul was in leap-frog and ring taw? The blood came to the cheeks, and the tears to the eyes of poor Roger, as he prepared to combat the tyrannous argument of his little fragile mother. She saw his perturbation, and told him, in her tranquil way, not to disturb himself. She had shown him his master's letters, to make him more sensible of his standing in learning: and not to hold up usher-ship as a bugbear.

Thanks to her good friend the dean, all was smooth for his path to the priesthood. The nomination was insured to him to a school which would prepare him for Oxford, and in all probability enable him to obtain one of those scholarships which would give him a university education without burdening her. Here was an upset at all farming schemes! Perhaps the horrors of the impending usher-ship made the alternative less to be contended; at any rate, Roger, muttered his obedience to the dictates of the absolute mother.

College life soon followed upon school life, and coincided very little more with the tastes of Roger Vyse than did the stone halls and stone courts of that inflexible nursery for the classics which the grammar-school had proved. All was deprivation to him.

At Oxford, people, seeing how he favoured woods and meadows, thought he must be of a very poetical turn: and all had looked for a wonderful prize poem. They would have found it difficult to have believed that his only thought of poetry in these sylvan haunts was the utter conviction of the utter nullity of Virgil's Georgics taken as a rural manual and that, far from courting the muse in forest glades, he was busied in rehearsing a miniature experiment of sub-drainage in a small quagmire in Bagley Wood.

In the mean time, study went on as easily as ever, and his mother had soon to congratulate him on the successful results of his first examination. His reply might have shaken one less firm in her resolves than little Mrs. Vyse. It told her that his progress in classical and theological learning did not at all advance her wishes respecting him: and that now, his aversion to enter the ministry was established on principle. He in all things held by the doctrines of Pelagius, and felt it an impossibility to subscribe to articles which condemned them.

His mother's letter in reply was as calmly worded and as neatly written as usual: but it contained this damnatory sentence: "A silly young man who could believe that the angel's words in the twenty-first verse of the first chapter of St. Matthew had been said in vain, was certainly not only unfit for the ministry, but for Christian society in general." In the arguments which succeeded, Mrs. Vyse seemed to her son a perfect miracle as, regarded her theological knowledge. He knew nothing of her early studies of the fathers, and later notables of the Church; but when, at a later period of his university career, he rashly and rather ostentatiously adopted the infidel notions at that period infecting society,—when he declared that man was a slave who dared not reason on points of faith,—the man a bigot who would not.—Mrs. Vyse begged he would not offend decent ears with such noiseless jargon, but read the books whose titles she subjoined, adding this quotation from Jeremy Taylor:-

"Men have wearied themselves in the dark having been amused with false fires: and instead of going home, have wandered all night in untrod den, unsafe, and uneasy ways, but have not found out what the soul desires. But therefore, since we are so miserable, and are in error, and have wandered very far, we must do as wandering travellers used to do, go back just to that place from whence they wandered, and begin upon a new account. Let us go to the truth itself in Christ, and he will set us an easy way of ending all our quarrels. For we shall find Christianity to be the easiest and hardest thing in the world: it is like a secret in arithmetic, infinitely hard till it be found out by exact operation, and then it is so plain, we wonder we did not understand it earlier."

Roger Vyse discovered that the minor canon's daughter was a perfect Athanasius for the faith. But though reclaimed by her firmness and the judicious studies which she enforced, still did he repugn the idea of making the Church his profession. Initiated into some of those enlightened notions of farming then at their faint dawn, he again entered into a series of earnest remonstrances with his maternal tyrant, against taking the office of private tutor in a family of some consequence, which the kind offices of the dean had obtained for him, as an advantageous occupation of the time intervening between taking his degree and his ordination. His remonstrances were unattended to He was told that as he was a child in worldly experience, it would be well if he showed himself in filial obedience: and that his repugnance to enter into the duties of tutor to the sons of Sir John Aston almost approached the nature of idiocy; seeing that it was the post all others the most desirable for him.

The first few months spent in the family of John Aston, proved to Roger the wisdom of his mother's decision. Those months, and all the succeeding time, spent in household where splendour and high intellect were rivalled by an unceasing observance of all the sweet courtesies of life brought more happiness than he believed could be experienced on this side of eternity.

True to the usual failing of happy days, they came to an end. The two pupils were to go to the University, and Roger Vyse was free to go his way, having secured the warmest sentiments of good will from his distinguished employers.

A letter now reached Mrs. Vyse, written with an enthusiasm, an urgency, winning supplicating tone that almost forced an affirmative out of her. The letter told her that, when on the eve of parting Sir John Aston had inquired into his views for the future, and on learning the decided bias of his inclinations, had placed at his disposal a most compact farm in the immediate neighbourhood, which he would let to him at a mere nominal rent for the first seven years. Roger told his mother that he considered his fortune made, and that the thousand pounds he could call his own would be more than ample for carrying on business in a manner that would insure success. Such, however, was his sense of what he owed to her affection, he could not reconcile to himself the acceptance of Sir John's offer without her consent. He now most earnestly besought her not to oppose what he felt secure was to be a source of enjoyment and prosperity: and then, as a make-weight, playfully informed her that the small paved terrace, where the shade could never be wet, and that the village church, perfect cathedral in antiquity and architecture, was at their very gate.