Essays Contributed to Blackwood's Magazine, 1857 (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from Essays Contributed to Blackwood's Magazine, 1857

In the old and easy way of repose, and taking things just as you find them, they are very comfortable resting-places for the indolent, or the young curate satisfied with few pleasures, and those mostly out of the parish.

The easy slipping and gliding into one of these ancient "settlements," with an improved stipend, and no greater liability to personal inspection and questionings than is incurred by annual archidiaconal and triennial Episcopal visitations, is justly a matter of self-congratulation to the unambitious inferior clergy (as we are called for distinction, and to obtain respect among our very ignorant parishioners, whose vocabulary may not contain words of six syllables). We take possession of house and orchard, fees and flock, if not with a patriarchal, with a classic feeling, and quote our Virgil for the last time -

"Et tandem antiquis Curetum allabimur oris."

Poor curates! the "working clergy" - for we must most of us work - we are not, and cannot all be so easily satisfied as these quoters of Virgil, the unencumbered with thought or family. A London gentleman's gentleman, whose delicate health required country air, sought the official situation of butler to the squire of a parish not far from mine. His manners were genteel - his views moderate - he took but two glasses of Madeira a-day. "And your wages?" quoth the squire. - " My salary" said he, with an emphasis, "only eighty guineas." Squire. "Considering, sir, that the country agrees with your health, and you take but two glasses of Madeira a-day, I think your salary is not very moderate; there are many of the 'inferior clergy' in this neighbourhood that have not so much."

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