Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Presbyterian prison cottages

"It is astonishing,” he says, "how little idea Presbyterians have of pastoral beauty; the Catholic has ten times more fancy — but a Presbyterian minds only the main chance. If he builds a cottage, it is a prison in miniature; if he has a lawn, it is only grass ; the fence of his grounds is a stone wall, seldom a hedge. ... A Presbyterian has a sluggish imagination : it may be awakened by the gloomy or terrific, but seldom revels in the beautiful."

– Gamble's Sketches of History, Politics and Manners in Dublin and the North of Ireland in 1810

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