"
This pious lady's residence was a "serious Paradise;"
"As you entered at the gate gravity fell on you; and decorum
wrapped you in a garment of starch. The butcher boy who galloped
his horse and cart madly about the adjoining lanes and commons,
whistled wild melodies (caught up in abominable play-house
galleries) and joked with a hundred cook-maids,--on passing that
lodge fell into an undertaker's pace, and delivered his joints and
sweetbreads silently at the servant's entrance. The rooks in the
elms cawed sermons at morning and evening: the peacocks walked
demurely on the terraces; and the guinea-fowls looked more
quaker-like than those savoury birds usually do. The lodge-keeper
was serious, and a clerk at a neighbouring chapel. The pastors who
entered at that gate, and greeted his comely wife and children, fed
the little lambkins with tracts. The head-gardener was a Scotch
Calvinist, after the strictest order, only occupying himself with
the melons and pines provisionally, and until the end of the world,
which event, he could prove by infallible calculations was to come
off in two or three years at farthest."
In one place, a collision is represented between the old and young
schools of criticism:
"The Colonel heard opinions that amazed and bewildered him; he
heard that Byron was no great poet, though a very clever man; he
heard that there had been a wicked persecution against Mr.
Pages:
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263