steeple-hunting

Updated: May 21, 2025

Roaming at full gallop over the heaths, especially when your heath was London, and English and European life, in the nineteenth century, he suffered much, and did comparatively little. I have known few creatures whom it was more wasteful to send forth with the bridle thrown up, and to set to steeple-hunting instead of running on highways!

Thomas Carlyle - Life of John Sterling

This, then, I suppose, was steeple-hunting, properly so called all this too was for love, at all events, not for money. The latter, indeed, was very scarce in this part of England. My predecessor had served the parish fourteen years, for twelve pounds per annum.

I. E. M. - Confessions of an Etonian