Idylls and Rambles

The English or French essay has been in many ways the most delightful of literary expressions. Moreover, the essay has been particularly adapted to Christianity, to its concreteness, to its awareness of the importance not just of ideas or thoughts, but of little things, particular moments wherein salvation and joy more especially take place. Idylls and Rambles takes its title from the two journals of Samuel Johnson, The Idler and The Rambler. Johnson was the most insightful and original of men. Too, this book takes its form, the number of its chapters, from Belloc who loved the essay and who wrote so charmingly and profoundly about everything he saw. These particular essays are moments Father Schall has seen, people he has known. They are often lightsome, yet they bear the sense that it is in joy that our most perplexing moments occur for joy, more than sadness perhaps, leads to the highest things in which we exist.