THE LATE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 138, 24 December 1875, Page 16

THE LATE VICAR OF MORWENSTOW.

The London correspondent of the ' Western Morning News' pays the following charming tribute to the late venerable Vicar for more than forty years of Morwenstow, in Cornwall : — "There has just passed away," says the writer, "an aged country clergyman -who had a great deal more than a local reputation, and deserves notice in the press generally. The Rev. R. S. Hawker, Vicar of Morwenstow, though he lived on the coast of the most inaccessible part of Cornwall, was not unknown in London literary circles. Not that he often visited London. Probably many years have passed since he lust paced the streets of the capital, yet he was known and esteemed there both for himself and his works. He has written some of the best Church poetry of the day ; he had published some {of the best local legendary stones ever penned ; and, above all, ho had "given to the world ballads so perfect that even that acute ciitic, Lord Maeaulay, was deceived by one of them, and attributed to an unknown seventeenth century writer the verses ' Shall Trelawny Die ?' which were really written by this just deceased clergyman in the nineteenth century ! And well might Maeaulay be deceived, for Mr. Hawker had an almost unrivalled faculty for projecting himself back into past ages, and losing his identity in the people of whom he wrote. Nor was he known by his books merely. The man himself was unique. There — where he could hear only the thundering surges of the Atlantic, and the wild, plantive cry of the sea-bird — in that remote land beyond railways, fay more inaccessible than the Land's End itself — he lived the life of an English parson, such as parsons used to be in the days of George Herbert and Bishop Ken. His charming parsonage, in a snug and sheltered covo, was open to all comers, and to all offered hospitality, to young and to old, to gentle and to simple. Tho living is worth <£3G5 a year, and so Mr. Hawker engraved above his door porch the following quaint linos :— " 'A church, v house, and a iwuiul a day, A pleiiMint place to wiitch and pnu ; Be true to the Church and kind to "the poor, 0 Ministur foi emihore.' " It is a dozen years almost this very day since, weary and footsore on a walking tour through Cornwall, 1 found myself in this charming spot, and tasted its owner's hospitality. One rarely looks upon a finer man than he was then, with his venerable silver j hair, and mighty chest and shoulders, always clad in tho clerical ; cassock. Close to the vicarage is tho church, one of the most ancient and interesting in Cornwall, and which he did much to restore. It used to be open all clay, and the parson himself would toll the bell for daily prayer. Altogether it was a bit of seven- 1 teenth century England interlaced with tho latter half of the nineteenth. Mr. Hawker lived for forty-one years in that secluded spot, rarely going out of his parish, but frequently visited by friends from London. With them he occasionally had correspondence, and it was impossible not to distinguish his large, bold handwriting from all others. He married twice; on the first occasion a lady old enough to be his mother, and who really had been a mother to him, for she had paid all his expenses at the University. His second wife was young enough to be his daughter. "Thus far had I written." says the London correspondent of our western contemporary, evidently with no little anguish in writing these additional words, " when the startling statement met my eye that he was received into the Catholic Church on the day before his death. This statement surprises as much as it grieves me. But," he add 3, in an effort to console himself, " one should not attach too much importance to death-bed conversions, especially when the convert is of great ago and has been long ill. At the same time," says lie, naively, " it is not pleasant to think there may be other clergymen of the English Church, presumedly loyal sons and faithful ministers, who are yet so doubtful in their allegijmce that they are awaiting only a sudden moment to take their departure-"

An eclipse is the interception of light from one heavenly body to another. An eclipse of tlie moon is the passage of the moon into the shadow of the ea.rth. This can only happen when the moon is full. Solar eclipses are caused by thu earth passing into the shadow of the moon. Both the earth and moon throw shadows behind them in a direction opposito to the sun. Eclipses were generally regarded by the ancients as omens of terrible public calamities, and although the theory of eclipses is said to have been known to the Chinese Jl5O 8.C., yet to this day the majority of Chinese imagine that tho3e phenomena are caused by the attempts of a dragon to devour the sun and the moon, and they assemble with drums and other instruments, believing that with the noise they may prevent him from accomplishing his object. The first eclipse on record is one of the moon, observed at liabylon 7:!1 b.c. Among the most remarkable eclipses of the sun recorded in history, may be mentioned that which happened at the crucifixion of our Saviour, and then in 119], and 1715, when the darkness -was so groat thai the birds went to roost, tlowers closed their petals, as at nightfall, and the stars snone bright at midday. The Sanctity of the Dead.— Archbishop Lynch of Toronto, in a letter to the press, on the Guihord case, says :— " The Catholic idea of the sanctity that hallows tho body after death is based upon the words of St. Paul, • Know ye not thatyour members are temples of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom you b:i.ve from God, and you are not your own. For you .ire bought with a great price ; glorify and bear God in your body' (1 Cor., vi. IS, 20). And again. • If any man violate the temple of God, him shall God destroy, for the temple of God is holy, -which you arc' (1 Cor., iii. 17). And .-.gain, ' I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day I shall bo clothed again in my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God ' (Job, 19). Hence the bodies of tho just will be joined to their glorified souls and enjoy the beatific vision of God; hence our reverence for the bodies of the dead ; hence the vice of impurity is so execrable to God."