The Cornhill Magazine (Vol. I, No. 5, May 1860)Various
General
The Cornhill Magazine (Vol. I, No. 5, May 1860)
Various
England -- Periodicals; English literature -- Periodicals; Short stories, English -- Periodicals
There is a parish called Hogglestock lying away quite in the northern
extremity of the eastern division of the county—lying also on the borders
of the western division. I almost fear that it will become necessary,
before this history be completed, to provide a map of Barsetshire for
the due explanation of all these localities. Framley is also in the
northern portion of the county, but just to the south of the grand
trunk line of railway from which the branch to Barchester strikes off
at a point some thirty miles nearer to London. The station for Framley
Court is Silverbridge, which is, however, in the western division of the
county. Hogglestock is to the north of the railway, the line of which,
however, runs through a portion of the parish, and it adjoins Framley,
though the churches are as much as seven miles apart. Barsetshire taken
altogether is a pleasant green tree-becrowded county, with large bosky
hedges, pretty damp deep lanes, and roads with broad grass margins
running along them. Such is the general nature of the county; but just
up in its northern extremity this nature alters. There it is bleak and
ugly, with low artificial hedges and without wood; not uncultivated, as
it is all portioned out into new-looking large fields, bearing turnips
and wheat and mangel, all in due course of agricultural rotation; but it
has none of the special beauties of English cultivation. There is not
a gentleman’s house in the parish of Hogglestock besides that of the
clergyman; and this, though it is certainly the house of a gentleman,
can hardly be said to be fit to be so. It is ugly, and straight, and
small. There is a garden attached to the house, half in front of it and
half behind; but this garden, like the rest of the parish, is by no
means ornamental, though sufficiently useful. It produces cabbages, but
no trees: potatoes of, I believe, an excellent description, but hardly
any flowers, and nothing worthy of the name of a shrub. Indeed the whole
parish of Hogglestock should have been in the adjoining county, which is
by no means so attractive as Barsetshire;—a fact well known to those few
of my readers who are well acquainted with their own country.
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