If the vile work had been represented as being done by
cloudy, sombre, relentless creatures, it would have been more
tolerable. But these fantastic imps, as lively as grigs and full to
the brim of wicked laughter, are certainly enjoying themselves with
an extremity of delight of which no trace is to be seen in the
mournful and heavily lined faces of the faithful. Autres temps,
autres moeurs! Perhaps the simple, coarse mental palates of the
village folk were none the worse for this realistic treatment of
sin. One wonders what the saintly and refined Keble, who spent many
years of his life as his father's curate here, thought of it all.
Probably his submissive and deferential mind accepted it as in some
ecclesiastical sense symbolical of the merciless hatred of God for
the desperate corruption of humanity. It gave me little pleasure to
connect the personality of Keble with the place, patient, sweet-
natured, mystical, serviceable as he was. It seems hard to breathe
in the austere air of a mind like Keble's, where the wind of the
spirit blows chill down the narrow path, fenced in by the high,
uncompromising walls of ecclesiastical tradition on the one hand,
and stern Puritanism on the other.
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