Crotchet Castle

Оглавление

Thomas Love Peacock. Crotchet Castle

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I. THE VILLA

CHAPTER II. THE MARCH OF MIND

CHAPTER III. THE ROMAN CAMP

CHAPTER IV. THE PARTY

CHAPTER V. CHARACTERS

CHAPTER VI. THEORIES

CHAPTER VII. THE SLEEPING VENUS

CHAPTER VIII. SCIENCE AND CHARITY

CHAPTER IX. THE VOYAGE

CHAPTER X. THE VOYAGE, CONTINUED

CHAPTER XI. CORRESPONDENCE

CHAPTER XII. THE MOUNTAIN INN

CHAPTER XIII. THE LAKE—THE RUIN

CHAPTER XIV. THE DINGLE

CHAPTER XV. THE FARM

CHAPTER XVI. THE NEWSPAPER

CHAPTER XVII. THE INVITATION

CHAPTER XVIII. CHAINMAIL HALL

CONCLUSION

Отрывок из книги

In one of those beautiful valleys, through which the Thames (not yet polluted by the tide, the scouring of cities, or even the minor defilement of the sandy streams of Surrey) rolls a clear flood through flowery meadows, under the shade of old beech woods, and the smooth mossy greensward of the chalk hills (which pour into it their tributary rivulets, as pure and pellucid as the fountain of Bandusium, or the wells of Scamander, by which the wives and daughters of the Trojans washed their splendid garments in the days of peace, before the coming of the Greeks); in one of those beautiful valleys, on a bold round-surfaced lawn, spotted with juniper, that opened itself in the bosom of an old wood, which rose with a steep, but not precipitous ascent, from the river to the summit of the hill, stood the castellated villa of a retired citizen.  Ebenezer Mac Crotchet, Esquire, was the London-born offspring of a worthy native of the “north countrie,” who had walked up to London on a commercial adventure, with all his surplus capital, not very neatly tied up in a not very clean handkerchief, suspended over his shoulder from the end of a hooked stick, extracted from the first hedge on his pilgrimage; and who, after having worked himself a step or two up the ladder of life, had won the virgin heart of the only daughter of a highly respectable merchant of Duke’s Place, with whom he inherited the honest fruits of a long series of ingenuous dealings.

Mr. Mac Crotchet had derived from his mother the instinct, and from his father the rational principle, of enriching himself at the expense of the rest of mankind, by all the recognised modes of accumulation on the windy side of the law.  After passing many years in the Alley, watching the turn of the market, and playing many games almost as desperate as that of the soldier of Lucullus, the fear of losing what he had so righteously gained predominated over the sacred thirst of paper-money; his caution got the better of his instinct, or rather transferred it from the department of acquisition to that of conservation.  His friend, Mr. Ramsbottom, the zodiacal mythologist, told him that he had done well to withdraw from the region of Uranus or Brahma, the Maker, to that of Saturn or Veeshnu, the Preserver, before he fell under the eye of Jupiter or Seva, the Destroyer, who might have struck him down at a blow.

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Mr. Mac Quedy.—I have read the sublime Kant, sir, with an anxious desire to understand him, and I confess I have not succeeded.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—He wants the two great requisites of head and tail.

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