The Recreations of a Country ParsonBoyd, Andrew Kennedy Hutchison
General
The Recreations of a Country Parson
Boyd, Andrew Kennedy Hutchison
Clergy -- Anecdotes; Country life -- England; Rural clergy -- England
And while talking of disappointment and success in courts of law.
let me remark, that petty success sometimes produces, in vulgar
natures, manifestations which are inexpressibly disgusting. Did
you ever remark the exultation of some low attorney when he had
succeeded in snapping a verdict in some contemptible case which
he had taken up and carried en upon speculation? I have witnessed
such a thing, and cannot but say that it appeared to me one of
the most revolting and disgusting phases which it is possible that
human nature should assume. I think I see the dirty, oily-looking
animal, at once servile and insolent, with trickery and rascality
in every line of his countenance, rubbing his hands in the hour of
his triumph, and bustling about to make immediate preparation for
availing himself of it. And following him, also sneakily exulting,
I see an object more dirty, more oily-looking, than the low attorney;
it is the low attorney's clerk. And on such an occasion, glancing
at the bench, when the judgment-seat was occupied by a judge who
had not yet learned never to look as if he thought or felt anything
in particular, I have discerned upon the judicial countenance an
expression of disgust as deep as my own.
Pleasanter scenes come up this afternoon with the mention of summer
days. I see depths of wood, where all the light is coolly green,
and the rippling brook is crystal clear. I see vistas through pines,
like cathedral vaults; the space enclosed looks on a sunshiny day
almost black, and a bit of bright blue sky at the end of each is
framed by the trees into the likeness of a Gothic window. I see
walls of gray rock on either side of a river, noisy and brawling
in winter time, but now quiet and low. For two or three miles the
walls of rock stretch onward; there are thick woods above them,
and here and there a sunny field: masses of ivy clothe the rock
in places; long sprays of ivy hang over. I walk on in thought till
I reach the opening of the glen; here a green bank slopes upward
from a dark pool below, and there is a fair stretch of champaign
country beyond the river; on the summit of the green bank, on
this side, mouldering, grey, ivied, lonely, stand the ruins of the
monastery, which has kept its place here for seven hundred years.
I see the sky-framing eastern window, its tracery gone. There are
masses of large daisies varying the sward, and the sweet fragrance
of young clover is diffused through all the air. I turn aside, and
walk through lines of rose-trees in their summer perfection. I hear
the drowsy hum of the laden bees. Suddenly it is the twilight, the
long twilight of Scotland, which would sometimes serve you to read
by at eleven o'clock at night. The crimson flush has faded from the
bosom of the river; if you are alone, its murmur begins to turn to
a moan; the white stones of the churchyard look spectral through the
trees. I think of poor Doctor Adam, the great Scotch schoolmaster
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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