It includes two
populous villages, abounding in brickmakers, a race of men very
troublesome to a zealous parson who won't let men go rollicking to
the devil without interference. Hogglestock has full work for two
men; and yet all the funds therein applicable to parson's work is
this miserable stipend of one hundred and thirty pounds a year. It
is a stipend neither picturesque, nor time-honoured, nor feudal, for
Hogglestock takes rank only as a perpetual curacy.
Mr. Crawley has been mentioned before as a clergyman of whom Mr.
Robarts said, that he almost thought it wrong to take a walk out of
his own parish. In so saying Mark Robarts of course burlesqued his
brother parson; but there can be no doubt that Mr. Crawley was a
strict man,--a strict, stern, unpleasant man, and one who feared God
and his own conscience. We must say a word or two of Mr. Crawley and
his concerns. He was now some forty years of age, but of these he had
not been in possession even of his present benefice for more than
four or five. The first ten years of his life as a clergyman had
been passed in performing the duties and struggling through the life
of a curate in a bleak, ugly, cold parish on the northern coast of
Cornwall. It had been a weary life and a fearful struggle, made up
of duties ill requited and not always satisfactorily performed, of
love and poverty, of increasing cares, of sickness, debt, and death.
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