few seconds to his ear with an experienced
air, then put it in a dignified manner in his fob, touched the horse
with the solitary spur, put himself more erect, and proceeded with--as
he himself used to say, when condemning the pride of the curate--"all
the lordliness of the parochial priest."

The notions which the peasantry entertain of a priest's learning are as
extravagant as they are amusing, and such, indeed, as would be too
much for the pedantic vanity inseparable from a half-educated man to
disclaim. The people are sufficiently reasonable, however, to admit
gradations in the extent of knowledge acquired by their pastors; but
some of the figures and illustrations which they use in estimating their
comparative merits are highly ludicrous. I remember a young man, who,
at the age of twenty-two, set about preparing himself for the church. He
lived in the bosom of a mountain, whose rugged breast he cultivated
with a strength proportioned to the difficulty of subduing it. He was
a powerful young fellow, quiet and inoffensive in his manners, and
possessed of great natural talents. It was upon a Monday morning, in the
month of June, that the school-room door opened a foot and a half wider
than usual, and a huge, colossal figure stalked in, with a kind of
bashful laugh upon his countenance, as if conscious of the disproportion
betwixt his immense size and that of the other schoolboys. His figure,
without a syllable of exaggeration, was precisely such as I am about to
describe. His height six feet, his shoulders of an enormous breadth,
his head red as fire; his body-coat made after the manner of his
grandfather's--the skirts of it being near his heels--and the buttons
behind little less than eighteen inches asunder. The pockets were cut
so low, that when he stretched his arm to its full length, his fingers
could not get further than the flaps; the breast of it was about nine
inches longer than was necessary, so that when he buttoned it, he
appeared all body. He wore no cravat, nor was his shirt-collar either
pinned or buttoned, but lay open as if to disclose an immense neck and
chest scorched by the sun into a rich and healthy scarlet. His chin was
covered with a sole of red-dry bristles, that appeared to have been
clipped about a fortnight before; and as he wore neither shoe
nor stocking, he exhibited a pair of legs to which Rob Roy's were
drumsticks. They gave proof of powerful strength, and the thick fell of
bristly hair