Search -
Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil, Brother Jacob and Scenes of Clerical life
Silas Marner The Lifted Veil Brother Jacob and Scenes of Clerical life Author:George Eliot Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE SAD FOETUSES OF THE KEVEEEKD AMOS BAETON. CHAPTER I. Shepperton Church was a very different looking building five-and-twenty years ago. To be sur... more »e, its substantial stone tower looks at you through its intelligent eye, the clock, with the friendly expression of former days; but in everything else what changes! Now there is a wide span of slated roof flanking the old steeple, the windows are tall and symmetrical; the outer doors are resplendent with oak-graining, the inner doors reverentially noiseless with a garment of red baize; and the walls, you arc convinced, no lichen will ever again effect a settlement on—they are smooth and innutrient as the summit of the Reverend Amos Barton's head, after ten years of baldness and supererogatory soap. Pass through the baize doors and you will see the nave filled with well-shaped benches, understood to be free seats; while in certain eligible corners, less directly under the fire of the clergyman's eye, there are pews reserved for the Shepperton gentility. Ample galleries are supported on iron pillars and in one of them stands the crowning glory, the very clasp or aigrette of Shepperton church adornment—namely, an organ, not very much out of repair, on which a collector of small rents, differentiated by the force of circumstances into an organist, will accompany the alacrity of your departure after the blessing, by a sacred minuet or an easy " Gloria." Immense improvement! says the well-regulated mind, which unintermittingly rejoices in the New Police, the Tithe Commutation Act, the penny-post, and all guarantees of human advancement, and has no moments when conservative-reforming intellect takes a nap, while imagination does a little Toryism by the sly, revelling in regret that dear, old, brown, crumbling, picturesque ine...« less