THE COUNTRY CHURCH.
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<span style="crey">A gentleman!</span><span style="crey">What o the woolpack? or the sugar-chest?</span>
<span style="crey">Or lists of velvet? which is t, pound, or yard,</span>
<span style="crey">You vend yentry by?</span>
<span style="crey">BEGGARS BUSH.</span>
THERE are few places more favorable to the study of character than an English try church. I was once passing a few weeks at the seat of a friend who resided in, the viity of ohe appearance of which particularly struck my fancy. It was one of those rich morsels of quaint antiquity, which gives such a peculiar charm to English landscape. It stood in the midst of a try ?lled with a families, and tained within its cold and silent aisles the gregated dust of many noble geions. The interior walls were encrusted with mos of every age and style. The light streamed through windows dimmed with armorial bearings, richly emblazoned in stained glass. In various parts of the church were tombs of knights, and highborn dames, of geous workmanship, with their ef?gies in colored marble. On every side, t<s>?</s>he eye was struck with some instance of aspiring mortality, some haughty memorial which human pride had erected over its kindred dust in this temple of the most humble of all religions.
The gregation was posed of the neighb people of rank, who sat in pews sumptuously lined and cushioned, furnished with richly-gilded prayer-books, and decorated with their arms upon the pew doors; of the villagers and peasantry, who ?lled the back seats and a small gallery beside the an; and of the poor of the parish, who were ranged on benches in the aisles.
The service erformed by a snuf?ing, well-fed vicar, who had a snug dwellihe church. He rivileged guest at all the tables of the neighborhood, and had been the kee fox-hunter in the try, until age and good living had disabled him from doing anything more than ride to see the hounds throw off, and make o the hunting dinner.
Uhe ministry of such a pastor, I found it impossible to get into the train of thought suitable to the time and place; so, having, like many other feeble Christians, promised with my sce, by laying the sin of my own delinquency at another persons threshold, I occupied myself by making observations on my neighbors.
I was as yet a stranger in England, and curious to notice the manners of its fashionable classes. I found, as usual, that there was the least pretensiohere was the most aowledged title to respect. I articularly struck, for instance, with the family of a nobleman of high rank, sisting of several sons and daughters. Nothing could be more simple and unassuming than their appearahey generally came to chur the plai equipage, and often on foot. The young ladies would stop and verse in the ki manner with the peasantry, caress the children, and listen to the stories of the humble cottagers.
Their tenances <cite>99lｉｂ?</cite>were open aifully fair, with an expression of high re?, but at the same time a frank cheerfulness and engaging affability. Their brothers were tall, and elegantly formed. They were dressed fashionably, but simply--with strieatness and propriety, but without any mannerism or foppishness. Their whole demeanor was easy and natural, with that lofty grad noble frankness which bespeak free-born souls that have never been checked in their growth by feelings of inferiority. There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity, that never dreads tad union with others, however humble. It is only spurious pride that is morbid aive, and shrinks from every touch. I leased to see the manner in which they would verse with the peasantry about those rural s and ?eld-sports in which the gentlemen of the try so much delight. In these versations there was her haughtiness on the one part, nor servility oher, and you were only reminded of the difference of rank by the habitual respect of the peasant.
In trast to these was the family of a wealthy citizen, who had amassed a vast fortune, and, having purchased the estate and mansion of a ruined nobleman in the neighborhood, was endeav to assume all the style and dignity of an hereditary lord of the soil. The family always came to chur prihey were rolled majestically along in a carriage emblazoned with arms. The crest glittered in silver radiance from every part of the harness where a crest could possibly be placed. A fat an, in a three-ered hat richly laced and a ?axen wig, curling close round his rosy face, was seated on the box, with a sleek Danish dog beside him. Two footmen in geous liveries, with huge bouquets, and gold-headed es, lolled behind. The carriage rose and sunk on its long springs with a peculiar stateliness of motion. The very horses champed their bits, arched their necks, and glaheir eyes more proudly than on horses; either because they had caught a little of the family feeling, or were reined up more tightly than ordinary.
I could not but admire the style with which this splendid pageant was brought up to the gate of the churchyard. There was a vast effect produced at the turning of an angle of the wall--a great smag of the whip, straining and scrambling of the horses, glistening of harness, and ?ashing of wheels through gravel.
This was the moment of triumph and vainglory to the an. The horses were urged and checked, until they were fretted into a foam. They threw out their feet in a prang trot, dashing about pebbles at every step. The crowd of villagers sauntering quietly to church opened precipitately to the right a, gaping in vat admiration. On reag the gate, the horses were pulled up with a suddehat produced an immediate stop, and almost threw them on their haunches.
There was araordinary hurry of the footmen to alight, pull doweps, and prepare everything for the dest oh of this august family. The old citizen ?rst emerged his round red face from out the door, looking about him with the pompous air of a man aced to rule on ge, and shake the Stock Market with a nod. His sort, a ?ne, ?eshy, fortable dame, followed him. There seemed, I must fess, but little pride in her position. She was the picture of broad, ho, vulgar enjoyment. The world went well with her; and she like.he world.
She had ?ne clothes, a ?ne house, a ?ne carriage, ?ne children--everything was ?ne about her: it was nothing but driving about and visiting aing. Life was to her a perpetual revel; it was one long Lord Mayors Day.
Two daughters succeeded to this goodly couple. They certainly were handsome, but had a supercilious air that chilled admiration and disposed the spectator to be critical. They were ultrafashionable in dress, and, though no one could deny the riess of their decorations, yet their appropriateness might be questioned amidst the simplicity of a try church. They desded loftily from the carriage, and moved up the line of peasantry with a step that seemed dainty of the soil it trod on.
They cast an excursive glance around, that passed coldly over the burly faces of the peasantry, until they met the eyes of the noblemans family, when their tenances immediately brightened into smiles, and they made the most profound and elegant courtesies, which were returned in a mahat showed they were but slight acquaintances.
I must not fet the two sons of this inspiring citizen, who came to chur a dashing curricle with outriders. They were arrayed iremity of the mode, with all that pedantry of dress which marks the man of questionable pretensions to style.
They kept entirely by themselves, eying every one askahat came hem, as if measuring his claims to respectability; yet they were without versation, except the exge of an occasional t phrase. They even moved arti?cially, for their bodies, in pliah the caprice of the day, had been disciplined into the absence of all ease and freedom. Art had done everything to aplish them as men of fashion, but Nature had dehem the nameless grace. They were vulgarly shaped, like men formed for the on purposes of life, and had that air of supercilious assumption which is never seen irue gentleman.
I have been rather minute in drawing the pictures of these two families, because I sidered them spes of what is often to be met with in this try--the uending great, and the arrogant little. I have no respect for titled rank, unless it be apanied with true nobility of soul; but I have remarked, in all tries where arti?cial distins exist, that the very highest classes are always the most courteous and unassuming.
Those who are well assured of their own standing are least apt to trespass on that of others; whereas, nothing is so offensive as the aspirings of vulgarity, which thinks to elevate itself by humiliating its neighbor.
As I have brought these families into trast, I must notice their behavior in church. That of the noblemans family was quiet, serious, and attentive. Not that they appeared to have any fervor of devotion, but rather a respect for sacred things, and sacred places, inseparable from good-breeding. The others, on the trary, were in a perpetual ?utter and whisper; they betrayed a tinual sciousness of ?nery, and the sorry ambition of being the wonders of a rural gregation.
The old gentleman was the only one really atteo the service. He took the whole burden of family devotion upon himself; standing bolt upright, and uttering the responses with a loud voice that might be heard all over the church. It was evident that he was one of these thh Churd-king men, who ect the idea of devotion and loyalty; who sider the Deity, somehow or other, of the gover party, and religion "a very excellent sort of thing, that ought to be tenanced a up."
When he joined so loudly in the service, it seemed more <u></u>by way of example to the lower orders, to show them that, though so great ahy, he was not above being religious; as I have seen a turtle-fed alderman swallow publicly a basin of charity soup, smag his lips at every mouthful and pronoung it "excellent food for the poor."
When the service was at an end, I was curious to withe several exits of my groups. The young noblemen and their sisters, as the day was ?ne, preferred strolling home across the ?elds, chatting with the try people as they went. The others departed as they came, in grand parade. Agaihe equipages wheeled up to the gate. There was again <q>.９９ｌib.</q>the smag of whips, the clattering of hoofs, and the glittering of harness. The horses started off almost at a bound; the villagers again hurried tht a; the wheels threw up a cloud of dust, and the aspirin family was rapt out of sight in a whirlwind.
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