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Gallegallo Revbrandia Sectory 05
Page 07
"That would be a different affair. She is _not_ my daughter, and I don't feel called upon to interfere. Casaubon is as good as most of us. He is a scholarly clergyman, and creditable to the cloth. Some Radical fellow speechifying at Middlemarch said Casaubon was the learned straw-chopping incumbent, and Freke was the brick-and-mortar incumbent, and I was the angling incumbent. And upon my word, I don't see that one is worse or better than the other." The Rector ended with his silent laugh. He always saw the joke of any satire against himself. His conscience was large and easy, like the rest of him: it did only what it could do without any trouble.
I left Tarma on January 29th, following a well-cultivated valley, fairly thickly inhabited. We were travelling over a good mule-track, swarming with Indians, donkeys, mules, and horses. The mud houses and land on either side were enclosed by hedges of cacti, or by walls. We were between barren mountains of a brownish colour, against which the quaint, brightly-coloured costumes of the many people on the road were thrown out in vivid contrast. Most of the houses were constructed of large mud bricks, sun-dried. The crops seemed to consist chiefly of Indian corn. As we went farther, among dark brown rocks and limestone, we came to grottoes and rock habitations. At some remote period there must have been a great upheaval in that country--at least, judging by the sedimentary foliated rock, the strata of which were from one to three feet thick, and which had originally been deposited horizontally by water. These accumulations or sediments now stood up at an angle of 45 deg.. We were now in a region where llamas were plentiful--most delightful animals, with their pointed ears pricked up, their luxuriant coats, and stumpy curled tails.
There were several of the Roman Emperors and Governors who befriended the Christians, took part in their Christmas festivities, and professed faith in Christ. The Venerable Bede says: "In the reign of Marcus Aurelius Antonius, and his partner in the Empire, Lucius Verus, when Eleutherius was Bishop of Rome, Lucius, a British king, sent a letter to his prelate, desiring his directions to make him a Christian. The holy bishop immediately complied with this pious request; and thus the Britons, being brought over to Christianity, continued without warping or disturbance till the reign of the Emperor Diocletian." And Selden says: "Howsoever, by injury of time, the memory of this great and illustrious Prince King Lucy hath been embezzled and smuggled; this, upon the credit of the ancient writers, appears plainly, that the pitiful fopperies of the Pagans, and the worship of their idol devils, did begin to flag, and within a short time would have given place to the worship of the true God."
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