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xiv |
INTROD UCTION. |
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he would have wished to love and marry, and as it was decidedly his conviction that the Christian priest should be a celibate, he wrote that "if Christ would graciously enable him to learn to live alone, he should prefer much, even with great self-denials, to live a virgin life and to die a virgin, as God had kept him so hitherto."
In 1841, Faber and his pupil left England for an extended tour on the Continent. In the following September, they were at Ambleside again. Faber's letters and diary are full of the most beautiful, poetic descriptions of the scenery and customs which they beheld. Graphic and vital, couched in exquisitely appropriate language, they are models of what a traveller's memorial should be; and after half a cenÂtury they have lost nothing of their vitality and interÂest. A portion of this material he embodied in a work entitled " Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches and among Foreign Peoples," which was dedicated to Wordsworth.
In the autumn of 1842, University College offered him the rectory of Elton, in Huntingdonshire; but before he entered upon his new duties he made a short visit to the Continent, proceeding leisurely through France, and reaching Rome in May. Here, being provided with many introductions to the chief Roman Catholic functionaries, he became more and more impressed with the satisfactory conditions of |
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