all his goods to feed the poor, he had that charity
which has sometimes been lacking to very illustrious
virtue—he was tender to other men’s
failings, and unwilling to impute evil. He was
one of those men, and they are not the commonest,
of whom we can know the best only by following them
away from the marketplace, the platform, and the pulpit,
entering with them into their own homes, hearing the
voice with which they speak to the young and aged
about their own hearthstone, and witnessing their
thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday
companions, who take all their kindness as a matter
of course, and not as a subject for panegyric.
Such men, happily, have lived in times when great
abuses flourished, and have sometimes even been the
living representatives of the abuses. That is
a thought which might comfort us a little under the
opposite fact—that it is better sometimes
not to follow great reformers of abuses beyond
the threshold of their homes.
But whatever you may think of Mr. Irwine now, if you
had met him that June afternoon riding on his grey
cob, with his dogs running beside him—portly,
upright, manly, with a good-natured smile on his finely
turned lips as he talked to his dashing young companion
on the bay mare, you must have felt that, however
ill he harmonized with sound theories of the clerical
office, he somehow harmonized extremely well with that
peaceful landscape.
See them in the bright sunlight, interrupted every
now and then by rolling masses of cloud, ascending
the slope from the Broxton side, where the tall gables
and elms of the rectory predominate over the tiny
whitewashed church. They will soon be in the parish
of Hayslope; the grey church-tower and village roofs
lie before them to the left, and farther on, to the
right, they can just see the chimneys of the Hall
Farm.
The Hall Farm
Evidently that gate is never opened, for the
long grass and the great hemlocks grow close against
it, and if it were opened, it is so rusty that the
force necessary to turn it on its hinges would be likely
to pull down the square stone-built pillars, to the
detriment of the two stone lionesses which grin with
a doubtful carnivorous affability above a coat of
arms surmounting each of the pillars. It would
be easy enough, by the aid of the nicks in the stone
pillars, to climb over the brick wall with its smooth
stone coping; but by putting our eyes close to the
rusty bars of the gate, we can see the house well enough,
and all but the very corners of the grassy enclosure.
It is a very fine old place, of red brick, softened
by a pale powdery lichen, which has dispersed itself
with happy irregularity, so as to bring the red brick
into terms of friendly companionship with the limestone
ornaments surrounding the three gables, the windows,
and the door-place. But the windows are patched
with wooden panes, and the door, I think, is like
the gate—it is never opened. How it
would groan and grate against the stone floor if it
were! For it is a solid, heavy, handsome door,
and must once have been in the habit of shutting with
a sonorous bang behind a liveried lackey, who had
just seen his master and mistress off the grounds
in a carriage and pair.
