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Untitled Article
and that my friend himself is personally acquainted with a gentleman who has been in both the navy and army , but is now a dignitary of the cathedral of T , in Ireland , and has never preached a sermon in his life—as the God of peace forbid he ever should .
Again , even in a financial , or mere profit-and-loss point of view , the present arrangements do not appear to me equitable . The expenses of a regular clerical education are great , at the very lowest estimate , and become ruinously so—as in my case—where the whole property of the individual is expended on them . The fair interest of this money is by no means obtained by the average
sums given to curates throughout the kingdom , most of whom are necessarily industrious , and continue curates to the end of their days . If the individual be sent to college from some charitable foundation , his subsequent claim to a sufficient maintenance is still greater , because his being sent there free of expense is entirely owing to his distinguished merit . The bounty is fairly earned , and I think the purpose of it ought to be carried out efficiently .
I will not intrude on your lordship s most valuable time by a detailed account of my difficulties and privations . I educated my eldest born and only son with great care , in a knowledge of first principles , as well as I could in scholastic acquirements , and above all , in the practical piety of a generous humanity , as advocated by our great lawgiver and founder , Jesus Christ . The rest of my children were daughters , four in number . To the
intelligent and useful education given them by their amiable mother , I could add very little that was fit for them , and their probable stations in future life ; to the mediocrity ( at best ) of which , a lofty range of abstract ideas of beauty and power—could I have imparted such—would only induce aspirations that must eventually lead to disappointment and dissatisfaction . My son being now
nineteen years of age—a generous and high-spirited youth—and a little property devolving to us at the death of my wife ' s father , I was enabled to place him in an office of considerable trust in the city of Oxford , depositing the above sum as a security to his employers , who were to appropriate the interest for the first two years in payment of his board .
Amidst the unnumbered difficulties wherewith I have had to contend , it may be readily imagined that among other means of bettering my condition , I should have recourse to some literary project—the most futile of all projects for that purpose . Many years ago I had cultivated a taste for dramatic literature in its
highest walks : I allude of course to the tragedies of our great masters of the Elizabethan age ; modern tragedies being things to smile at in reading , as no doubt they must be slept over in representation . In pursuing these studies of human passion , with a definite view to the beneficial moral tendency arising from vivid
Untitled Article
464 Letter from a Country Curate
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1834, page 464, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2635/page/4/
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