Rambles of an Evangelist

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1853 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XL PICKERING. Section I. T NOW inform the reader, and particularly my friends who urged me to print this book, that originally I had intended to confine myself to the Dales of the North and the Banks of the Severn, and therefore wrote more extensively on these parts of our country; but seeing reason to alter my plan, I decided to say a little about every circuit in which I have been stationed. But as the Dales and Banks were to have been the main subjects of the little work, I will introduce them without any abridgment, --simply adopting a new arrangement as to the heading of the chapters, that is, merely naming the circuits on which my observations are founded. And here I wish to bespeak the indulgence of erudite readers, should I have any. In narration and description there are many things so comparatively frivolous, that they afford but little, if any, entertainment to men of learning and to great philosophers. But I wish it to be considered that huge toleration is given by some, at least, among the intellectual giants of our land to frivolous literature. What is it that constitutes the great charm of our popular semi-religious novels? Not the sober, prosing, reasoning, didactic, philosophizing portions of them: so far from this, that the reader is fidgetty and impatient till he gets over these grave passages. It is the minute description of very insignificant things that keeps the reader wakeful and attentive. Here is a lady, for instance; it is not enough for the novelist to say she is beautiful and intelligent, but the reader must be treated to a description of her dress, the colour of her hair and eyes, her beautiful eyes and eyebrows, the shape of her mouth, the colour of her lips, how she looks under the influence of different emotions, ...