On my way down to Shrewsbury some time since I read the Bishop of Carlisle’s _Walks in the Regions of Science and Faith_, { 31} then just published, and found the following on p. 129 in the essay which is entitled “Man’s Place in Nature.” After saying that young sparrows or robins soon lose sight of their fellow-nestlings and leave off caring for them, the bishop continues:—
“Whereas ‘children of one family’ are constantly found joined together by a love which only grows with years, and they part for their posts of duty in the world with the hope of having joyful meetings from time to time, and of meeting in a higher world when their life on earth is finished.”
I am sure my great-grandfather did not look forward to meeting his father in heaven—his father had cut him out of his will; nor can I credit my grandfather with any great longing to rejoin my great-grandfather—a worthy man enough, but one with whom nothing ever prospered. I am certain my father, after he was 40, did not wish to see my grandfather any more—indeed, long before reaching that age he had decided that Dr. Butler’s life should not be written, though R. W. Evans would have been only too glad to write it. Speaking for myself, I have no wish to see my father again, and I think it likely that the Bishop of Carlisle would not be more eager to see his than I mine.
“Writing to the Hon. Mrs. Watson in 1856, Charles Dickens says: ‘I have always observed within my experience that _the men who have left home very young_ have, _many long years afterwards_, had the tenderest regard for it. That’s a pleasant thing to think of as one of the wise adjustments of this life of ours.’” { 32a}
From the description of the meeting between Ulysses and Telemachus it is plain that Homer considered it quite as dreadful for relations who had long been separated to come together again as for them to separate in the first instance. And this is about true. { 32b}
He was a really happy man. He was without father, without mother and without descent. He was an incarnate bachelor. He was a born orphan.
Now [1893] when I am abroad, being older and taking less exercise, I do not want any breakfast beyond coffee and bread and butter, but when this note was written [1880] I liked a modest rasher of bacon in addition, and used to notice the jealous indignation with which heads of families who enjoyed the privilege of Cephas and the brethren of our Lord regarded it. There were they with three or four elderly unmarried daughters as well as old mamma—how could they afford bacon? And there was I, a selfish bachelor—. The appetising, savoury smell of my rasher seemed to drive them mad. I used to feel very uncomfortable, very small and quite aware how low it was of me to have bacon for breakfast and no daughters instead of daughters and no bacon. But when I consulted the oracles of heaven about it, I was always told to stick to my bacon and not to make a fool of myself. I despised myself but have not withered under my own contempt so completely as I ought to have done.