Scenes of Clerical Life

Shepperton Church was a very different-looking building five-and-twenty years ago. To be sure, its substantial stone tower looks at you through its intelligent eye, the clock, w...

It was happy for the Rev. Amos Barton that he did not, like us, overhear the conversation recorded in the last chapter. Indeed, what mortal is there of us, who would find his sa...

Outside, the moon is shedding its cold light on the cold snow, and the white-bearded fir-trees round Camp Villa are casting a blue shadow across the white ground, while the Rev....

I am by no means sure that if the good people of Milby had known the truth about the Countess Czerlaski, they would not have been considerably disappointed to find that it was v...

The Rev. Amos Barton, whose sad fortunes I have undertaken to relate, was, you perceive, in no respect an ideal or exceptional character; and perhaps I am doing a bold thing to...

One November morning, at least six months after the Countess Czerlaski had taken up her residence at the vicarage, Mrs. Hackit heard that her neighbour Mrs. Patten had an attack...

I dare say the long residence of the Countess Czerlaski at Shepperton Vicarage is very puzzling to you also, dear reader, as well as to Mr. Barton’s clerical brethren; the more...

The following Wednesday, when Mr. and Mrs. Hackit were seated comfortably by their bright hearth, enjoying the long afternoon afforded by an early dinner, Rachel, the housemaid,...

They laid her in the grave--the sweet mother with her baby in her arms--while the Christmas snow lay thick upon the graves. It was Mr. Cleves who buried her. On the first news o...

At length the dreaded week was come, when Amos and his children must leave Shepperton. There was general regret among the parishioners at his departure: not that any one of them...

When old Mr. Gilfil died, thirty years ago, there was general sorrow in Shepperton; and if black cloth had not been hung round the pulpit and reading-desk, by order of his nephe...

It is the evening of the 21st of June 1788. The day has been bright and sultry, and the sun will still be more than an hour above the horizon, but his rays, broken by the leafy...

The last chapter has given the discerning reader sufficient insight into the state of things at Cheverel Manor in the summer of 1788. In that summer, we know, the great nation o...

In three months from the time of Caterina’s adoption--namely, in the late autumn of 1773--the chimneys of Cheverel Manor were sending up unwonted smoke, and the servants were aw...

The inexorable ticking of the clock is like the throb of pain to sensations made keen by a sickening fear. And so it is with the great clockwork of nature. Daisies and buttercup...

The next morning, when Caterina was waked from her heavy sleep by Martha bringing in the warm water, the sun was shining, the wind had abated, and those hours of suffering in th...

Caterina tore herself from Anthony with the desperate effort of one who has just self-recollection enough left to be conscious that the fumes of charcoal will master his senses...

That evening Miss Assher seemed to carry herself with unusual haughtiness, and was coldly observant of Caterina. There was unmistakably thunder in the air. Captain Wybrow appear...

Meanwhile Mr. Gilfil, who had a heavy weight on his mind, had watched for the moment when, the two elder ladies having driven out, Caterina would probably be alone in Lady Cheve...

That evening Captain Wybrow, returning from a long ride with Miss Assher, went up to his dressing-room, and seated himself with an air of considerable lassitude before his mirro...

The following Sunday, the morning being rainy, it was determined that the family should not go to Cumbermoor Church as usual, but that Mr. Gilfil, who had only an afternoon serv...

‘Pray, what is likely to be the next scene in the drama between you and Miss Sarti?’ said Miss Assher to Captain Wybrow as soon as they were out on the gravel. ‘It would be agre...

The next morning the dreaded moment came. Caterina, stupified by the suffering of the previous night, with that dull mental aching which follows on acute anguish, was in Lady Ch...

‘Yes, Maynard,’ said Sir Christopher, chatting with Mr. Gilfil in the library, ‘it really is a remarkable thing that I never in my life laid a plan, and failed to carry it out....

It is a wonderful moment, the first time we stand by one who has fainted, and witness the fresh birth of consciousness spreading itself over the blank features, like the rising...

Before night all hope was gone. Dr Hart had said it was death; Anthony’s body had been carried to the house, and every one there knew the calamity that had fallen on them.

Some of Mrs. Sharp’s earliest thoughts, the next morning, were given to Caterina, whom she had not been able to visit the evening before, and whom, from a nearly equal mixture o...

At twelve o’clock, when all search and inquiry had been in vain, and the coroner was expected every moment, Mr. Gilfil could no longer defer the hard duty of revealing this fres...

The sad slow week was gone by at last. At the coroner’s inquest a verdict of sudden death had been pronounced. Dr Hart, acquainted with Captain Wybrow’s previous state of health...

In less than a week from that time, Caterina was persuaded to travel in a comfortable carriage, under the care of Mr. Gilfil and his sister, Mrs. Heron, whose soft blue eyes and...

On the 30th of May 1790, a very pretty sight was seen by the villagers assembled near the door of Foxholm Church. The sun was bright upon the dewy grass, the air was alive with...

‘No!’ said lawyer Dempster, in a loud, rasping, oratorical tone, struggling against chronic huskiness, ‘as long as my Maker grants me power of voice and power of intellect, I wi...

The conversation just recorded is not, I am aware, remarkably refined or witty; but if it had been, it could hardly have taken place in Milby when Mr. Dempster flourished there,...

It was quite as warm on the following Thursday evening, when Mr. Dempster and his colleagues were to return from their mission to Elmstoke Rectory; but it was much pleasanter in...

Mr. Tryan was right in saying that the ‘row’ in Milby had been preconcerted by Dempster. The placards and the caricature were prepared before the departure of the delegates; and...

It was half-past nine o’clock in the morning. The midsummer sun was already warm on the roofs and weathercocks of Milby. The church-bells were ringing, and many families were co...

Most people must have agreed with Mrs. Raynor that the Confirmation that day was a pretty sight, at least when those slight girlish forms and fair young faces moved in a white r...

Mr. Dempster did not stay long at the Red Lion that evening. He was summoned home to meet Mr. Armstrong, a wealthy client, and as he was kept in consultation till a late hour, i...

The next day, Friday, at five o’clock by the sun-dial, the large bow-window of Mrs. Jerome’s parlour was open; and that lady herself was seated within its ample semicircle, havi...

Mr. Tryan showed no such symptoms of weakness on the critical Sunday. He unhesitatingly rejected the suggestion that he should be taken to church in Mr. Landor’s carriage--a pro...

History, we know, is apt to repeat herself, and to foist very old incidents upon us with only a slight change of costume. From the time of Xerxes downwards, we have seen general...

Mr. Tryan’s most unfriendly observers were obliged to admit that he gave himself no rest. Three sermons on Sunday, a night-school for young men on Tuesday, a cottage-lecture on...

In her occasional visits to her near neighbour Mrs. Pettifer, too old a friend to be shunned because she was a Tryanite, Janet was obliged sometimes to hear allusions to Mr. Try...

The loss of Mr. Jerome as a client proved only the beginning of annoyances to Dempster. That old gentleman had in him the vigorous remnant of an energy and perseverance which ha...

The last week in March--three weeks after old Mrs. Dempster died--occurred the unpleasant winding-up of affairs between Dempster and Mr. Pryme, and under this additional source...

The stony street, the bitter north-east wind and darkness--and in the midst of them a tender woman thrust out from her husband’s home in her thin night-dress, the harsh wind cut...

Janet lay still, as she had promised; but the tea, which had warmed her and given her a sense of greater bodily ease, had only heightened the previous excitement of her brain. H...

When Dempster awoke in the morning, he was at no loss to account to himself for the fact that Janet was not by his side. His hours of drunkenness were not cut off from his other...

It was dusk, and the candles were lighted before Mr. Tryan knocked at Mrs. Pettifer’s door. Her messenger had brought back word that he was not at home, and all afternoon Janet...

‘Yes, I will send for her,’ said Janet. ‘But I would rather not go to my mother’s yet, because my husband is sure to think I am there, and he might come and fetch me. I can’t go...

On Sunday morning the rain had ceased, and Janet, looking out of the bedroom window, saw, above the house-tops, a shining mass of white cloud rolling under the far-away blue sky...

‘It’s very odd,’ said Kitty, the housemaid, as she trimmed her next week’s cap, while Betty, the middle-aged cook, looked on with folded arms. ‘Do you think as Mrs. Raynor was i...

It was probably a hard saying to the Pharisees, that ‘there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance....

The next morning Janet was so much calmer, and at breakfast spoke so decidedly of going to her mother’s, that Mrs. Pettifer and Mrs. Raynor agreed it would be wise to let her kn...

Day after day, with only short intervals of rest, Janet kept her place in that sad chamber. No wonder the sick-room and the lazaretto have so often been a refuge from the tossin...

The faces looked very hard and unmoved that surrounded Dempster’s grave, while old Mr. Crewe read the burial-service in his low, broken voice. The pall-bearers were such men as...

That was the last terrible crisis of temptation Janet had to pass through. The goodwill of her neighbours, the helpful sympathy of the friends who shared her religious feelings,...

In less than a week Mr. Tryan was settled at Holly Mount, and there was not one of his many attached hearers who did not sincerely rejoice at the event.

It soon came--the blessed day of deliverance, the sad day of bereavement; and in the second week of March they carried him to the grave. He was buried as he had desired: there w...