Country life -- England -- Fiction; England -- Social conditions -- 19th century -- Fiction; Rural poor -- England -- Fiction
But now for the rest; and Squire Lavington first. He is a very fair
sample of the fate of the British public; for he is dead and buried:
and readers would not have me extricate him out of that situation.
If you ask news of the reason and manner of his end, I can only
answer, that like many others, he went out--as candles do. I
believe he expressed general repentance for all his sins--all, at
least, of which he was aware. To confess and repent of the state of
the Whitford Priors estate, and of the poor thereon, was of course
more than any minister, of any denomination whatsoever, could be
required to demand of him; seeing that would have involved a
recognition of those duties of property, of which the good old
gentleman was to the last a staunch denier; and which are as yet
seldom supposed to be included in any Christian creed, Catholic or
other. Two sermons were preached in Whitford on the day of his
funeral; one by Mr. O'Blareaway, on the text from Job, provided for
such occasions; 'When the ear heard him, then it blessed him,' etc.
etc.: the other by the Baptist preacher, on two verses of the
forty-ninth Psalm--
'They fancy that their houses shall endure for ever, and call the
lands after their own names.
'Yet man being in honour hath no understanding, but is compared to
the beasts that perish.'
Waiving the good taste, which was probably on a par in both cases,
the reader is left to decide which of the two texts was most
applicable.
Mrs. Lavington is Mrs. Lavington no longer. She has married, to the
astonishment of the world in general, that 'excellent man,' Mr.
O'Blareaway, who has been discovered not to be quite as young as he
appeared, his graces being principally owing to a Brutus wig, which
he has now wisely discarded. Mrs. Lavington now sits in state under
her husband's ministry, as the leader of the religious world in the
fashionable watering-place of Steamingbath, and derives her notions
of the past, present, and future state of the universe principally
from those two meek and unbiased periodicals, the Protestant Hue-
and-Cry and the Christian Satirist, to both of which O'Blareaway is
a constant contributor. She has taken such an aversion to Whitford
since Argemone's death, that she has ceased to have any connection
with that unhealthy locality, beyond the popular and easy one of
rent-receiving. O'Blareaway has never entered the parish to his
knowledge since Mr. Lavington's funeral; and was much pleased, the
last time I rode with him, at my informing him that a certain
picturesque moorland which he had been greatly admiring, was his own
possession. . . . After all, he is 'an excellent man;' and when I
met a large party at his house the other day, and beheld dory and
surmullet, champagne and lachryma Christi, amid all the glory of the
Whitford plate . . . (some of it said to have belonged to the altar
of the Priory Church four hundred years ago), I was deeply moved by
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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