In person he was, as we have said, about or somewhat under the middle size.  In his gait he was very ungainly.  When walking, he drove forward as if his head was butting or boring its way through a palpable atmosphere, keeping his person, from the waist up, so far in advance that the a posteriori portion seemed as if it had been detached from the other, and was engaged in a ceaseless but ineffectual struggle to regain its position; or, in shorter and more intelligible words, the latter end of him seemed to be perpetually in pursuit of his head and shoulders, without ever being able to overtake them.  Whilst engaged in maintaining this compound motion, his elbows and arms swung from right to left, and vice versa, very like the movements of a weaver throwing the shuttle from side to side.  Turbot had one acknowledged virtue in a pre-eminent degree, we mean hospitality.  It is true he gave admirable dinners, but it would be a fact worth boasting of, to find any man at his table who was not able to give, and who did give, better dinners than himself.  The doctor’s face, however, in spite of his slinging and ungainly person, was upon the whole rather good.  His double chin, and the full, rosy expression of his lips and mouth, betokened, at the very least, the force of luxurious habits, and, as a hedge school-master of our acquaintance used to say, the smallest taste in life of voluptuousity; whilst from his black, twinkling eyes, that seemed always as if they were about to herald a jest, broke forth, especially when he conversed with the softer sex, something which might be considered as holding a position between a laugh and a leer.  Such was the Rev. Jeremiah Turbot, to whom we shall presently take the liberty of introducing the reader.

The parsonage, to which our friend Purcel is now making his approach, was an excellent and comfortable building.  It stood on a very pretty eminence, and consequently commanded a beautiful prospect both in front and rear; for the fact was, that in consequence of the beauty of the scenery for miles about it, some incumbent of good taste had given it a second hall door, thus enabling the inhabitants to partake of a double enjoyment, by an equal facility of contemplating the exquisite scenery of the country both in front and rear.  A beautiful garden lay facing the south, and a little below, in the same direction, stood a venerable old rookery, whilst through the rich, undulating fields flowed, in graceful windings, a beautiful river, on whose green and fertile banks sheep and black cattle were always to be seen, sometimes feeding or chewing the cud in that indolent repose which gives to the landscape, in the golden light of a summer’s evening, such a poetical and pastoral effect.