"I believe," he says,
"at that period (the very beginning of the century) it was about the
most retired village in England not of a mountainous district. No
turnpike road went through the parish. It lay in the line of no
thoroughfare. The only inhabitants of education were the clergyman, a
man of great simplicity of character, who had never been at the
University, and my great-uncle, of above fourscore, and a recluse. The
people were uneducated to an extent now unusual. Nearly all the letters
of the village were written by my uncle's gardener, a Scotchman, who,
having the degree of education usual with his countrymen of the
profession, and who being very good natured, had abundant occupation for
his evenings, and being, moreover, a prudent man, and _safe_, became the
depository of nine-tenths of the family secrets of the inhabitants.
Being thus ignorant generally, and few of them ever having been twenty
miles from the place, I may consider the parish fifty years behind the
rest of the world when I went there, so that it now furnishes
recollection of rural people, of manners and intelligence, dating back a
hundred years from the present time. It was indeed a very primitive
race; and it is curious to recall the many indications afforded in that
obscure village of unmitigated ignorance. With all this were found in
full exercise also the more violent and vindictive passions of our
nature.
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