'
I confess that when those Right Reverend Prelates come up to the gates
of Paradise with their probates of wills in their hands, I think that
their chance is.... But the gates of Paradise is a far way to follow
their Lordships; so let us trip down again lest awkward questions be
asked there about our own favourite vices too.
And don't let us give way to the vulgar prejudice, that clergymen are an
over-paid and luxurious body of men. When that eminent ascetic, the
late Sydney Smith--(by the way, by what law of nature is it that so many
Smiths in this world are called Sydney Smith?)--lauded the system of
great prizes in the Church,--without which he said gentlemen would
not be induced to follow the clerical profession, he admitted most
pathetically that the clergy in general were by no means to be envied
for their worldly prosperity. From reading the works of some modern
writers of repute, you would fancy that a parson's life was passed
in gorging himself with plum-pudding and port-wine; and that his
Reverence's fat chaps were always greasy with the crackling of tithe
pigs. Caricaturists delight to represent him so: round, short-necked,
pimple-faced, apoplectic, bursting out of waistcoat, like a
black-pudding, a shovel-hatted fuzz-wigged Silenus. Whereas, if you take
the real man, the poor fellow's flesh-pots are very scantily furnished
with meat.
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