On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
ventures through apparently inevitable death to save lifp ^ -rwuh no further , not an atom of interest in that life , beyond simple a # d gracious feelings towards a felloe-creature ; no stimulant of reward ; UQ prospect of fame ; no hope of recompensing adiniration : it is ungai > landed , private , and silent ; so it lives and so it dies . Yea , I am prouder of him than if he had planned those fields of strife , on which in if
his country ^ enemies were swept down masses , than bad led millions to victory , or mowed Europe •' over with a conqueror ' s scythe . But he was a poor man , one who gained a livelihood by earning some twenty shillings per week . Little probability wag there of his rising to honour , if he had outaged Methuselah , instead of dying in tha
vigour of years , a young man ; for to the crime of poverty he added & yet sorer and equally dangerous jnoral turpitude—intellectual ( Jaring . Th $ words were not upon his lips , but , '' fiat justitia r \ iat cceluirt regulated his heart ' s pulsations . Yes , I am proud pf xny poor father ! I haye more disgraces to heap upon myself * which will gain for me the * * cut direct / where I have been hailed with ' How are yqu , Pel . V for
years . The hall or passage will limit my footsteps in those dwellings in which the drawing-room has hitherto been niy place of reception or audience . In one or two I shall yet be ushered stealthily infp the library . —I am proud pf my father—and J am content to be exiled frpm society My dog will wag his tail in spite of all the contumely which rnay he cast upon me . Had his ( not my dog ' s ) grandfather possessed $ larger portion pf common sense , ajiglice , wordly-rnindedness ,
attention to jnoney getting , for that is the verity of the English meaning , self-interest and its economies , I might perhaps have written ' Gent . * at the end of my narcje , or something bigger before it—Sir Peregrine Verjuice ! How it would have swung along a hall , and through tljfii corridors , under and ground arid over the lamps and chandeliers , hissing at its tail end , into the ears of the assembly . How ipany or which of my forefathers were hanged I could never learn , such wa » the family pride ! There is a rumour that tvyo were ' made shorter
by the head / for the reason that those heads contained stuff which would not cut to the fashion , of the party which happened then to be strong enough to exercise this process of diminishing a roan ' s stature . In truth , th-e djrecjt line h ^ s been somewhat obstinate , seldom sailing with the currents of opinion , merely because they % vere the currents , of opinion ; they had a curiosity to look into the why and wherefore , This is all my inheritance from them ; and it came to me without thq
usual luck of entails , for X received it in all its yigour on attaining my majority , or rather , like our poverty , it has increased by descent . Oh , I had ancetsors ! and as fpr my poor mother , —Hajfc : of family antiquity , indeed—there is not one pf f > er kindred , her qon except ed , who will not spin for centuries beyond the oldest family in the English peerage ; and though I truly val ue the rnatter aq a wisp qf rotten 9 traw , she could do so without straining her vvits to poetry . On this theme she would talk with enthusiasm to the bedevilrnent of the hog's puddings which it was her business to fry for my father ' * dinner . When her blood wae pn the carpet ( our sanded floor ) what a race it ran ! ' There had been princes in her famil y / sp there had been , and one of their descendants was then skunrning a pot of mutton broth , or darning my father ' s hose . Into the patrimonial acres ( into her share of tfrw »» t f least ) ft clftW , which nev ^ r re ^ es , i ( g grajp
Untitled Article
326 4 vtebi * fr * pfry qf-Pd , Ytryitice *
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1833, page 326, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2614/page/38/
-