the mistress of a family—I suppose moved by some sentiment of compassion
for her being so employed,—if the cow would eat the corn if it were left
to itself: she smiled at his simplicity. It is indeed a melancholy thing
to see a full-grown woman thus waiting, as it were, body and soul devoted
to the poor beast; yet even this is better than working in a manufactory
the day through.
We came to a moorish tract; saw before us the hills of Loch Lomond, Ben
Lomond and another, distinct each by itself. Not far from the roadside
were some benches placed in rows in the middle of a large field, with a
sort of covered shed like a sentry-box, but much more like those boxes
which the Italian puppet-showmen in London use. We guessed that it was a
pulpit or tent for preaching, and were told that a sect met there
occasionally, who held that toleration was unscriptural, and would have
all religions but their own exterminated. I have forgotten what name the
man gave to this sect; we could not learn that it differed in any other
respect from the Church of Scotland. Travelled for some miles along the
open country, which was all without hedgerows, sometimes arable,
sometimes moorish, and often whole tracts covered with grunsel. {30}
There was one field, which one might have believed had been sown with
grunsel, it was so regularly covered with it—a large square field upon a
slope, its boundary marked to our eyes only by the termination of the
bright yellow; contiguous to it were other fields of the same size and
shape, one of clover, the other of potatoes, all equally regular crops.
The oddness of this appearance, the grunsel being uncommonly luxuriant,
and the field as yellow as gold, made William laugh. Coleridge was
melancholy upon it, observing that there was land enough wasted to rear a
healthy child.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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