We wonder why clergymen do not oftener write accounts of their parishes;
not mere statistical accounts, though these are most valuable, as witness
the contributions of the Scottish Clergy to the truly patriotic Sir John
Sinclair's work; but accounts comprehending every thing interesting to all
human beings, whatever be their political or religious creed. A
description of a church that has principally ceased to exist, is in
general very, very, very dry; inscriptions on tombstones, without comment,
or moral, are hard reading; an old pan dug up among rubbish proves a sore
affliction in the hands of the antiquary, and twenty pages quarto, with
plates, about a rusty spur without a rowel, is, in our humble opinion, an
abuse of the art of printing. But how easy--how pleasant, to mix up
together all sorts of information in due proportions into one whole, in
the shape of an octavo--epitomizing every kind of history belonging to the
parish, from peer's palace to peasant's hut! What are clergymen
perpetually about? Not always preaching and praying; or marrying,
christening, and burying people. They ought to tell us all about it; to
moralize, to poetize, to philosophize; to paint the manners living as they
rise, or dead as they fall; to take Time by the forelock, and measure the
marks of his footsteps; to show us the smoke curling up from embowered
chimneys; or, since woods must go down, to record the conquests of the
biting axe; to celebrate the raising of every considerable roof-tree, to
lament all dilapidations and crumbling away of ivied walls; to inform us
how many fathoms deep is the lake with its abbeyed island--why the pool
below the aged bridge gets shallower and shallower every year, so that it
can no more shelter a salmon--what are the sports, and games, and pastimes
of the parishioners--what books they read, if any--if the punishment of
the stocks be obsolete--or the stang--or the jougs--if the bowels of the
people yearn after strange doctrine--if the parish has produced any good
or great murderer, incendiary, or other criminal. In short, why might not
the history of each of the twenty or thirty thousand parishes of Great
Britain--we speak at random--be each a history of human nature, at once
entertaining and instructive? How infinitely better such books than
pamphlets on political economy, for example, now encumbering the whole
land! Nay, even than single sermons, or bundles of sermons, all like so
many sticks--strong when tied all together, but when taken separately,
weak and frush. We have no great opinion of county histories in general,
though we believe there are some goodish ones, from which we purpose, ere
long, to construct some superior articles. A county history, to be worth
much, should run from sixty to six hundred volumes. No library could well
stand that for many years. But a judicious selection might be made from
the thirty thousand parish histories--that would afford charming reading
to the largest family during the longest nights--in the intervals between
the Scotch Novels. Form the circle round the fire--when winter crimps and
freezes--or round the open bow-window, now that summer roasts and broils,
and get her whose voice is like a silver bell to read it up, right on from
beginning to end, only skipping a few lists of names now and then, and we
pledge our credit on the prediction, that you will be delighted as on a
summer ramble, now in sunlight and now in moonlight, over hill and dale,
adorned with towers, turrets, pinnacles of halls and churches, and the low
roofs,--blue or brown, slated or strawed.--
"Of huts where poor men lie!"
_Blackwood's Magazine._
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