The English Church in the Eighteenth Century
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. The claim which the intellectual and religious life of England in the eighteenth century has upon our interest has been much more generally acknowledged of late years than was the case heretofore. There had been, for the most part, a disposition to pass it over somewhat slightly, as though the whole period were a prosaic and uninteresting one. Every generation is apt to depreciate the age which has so long preceded it as to have no direct bearing on present modes of life, but is yet not sufficiently distant as to have emerged into the full dignity of history. Besides, it cannot be denied that the records of the eighteenth century are, with two or three striking exceptions, not of a kind to stir the imagination. It was not a pictorial age; neither was it one of ardent feeling or energetic movement. Its special merits were not very obvious, and its prevailing faults had nothing dazzling in them, nothing that could be in any way called splendid; on the contrary, in its weaker points there was a distinctly ignoble element. The mainsprings of the religious, as well as of the political, life of the country were
[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 53]
"Oh!" said Mr. Fosbrooke, for it was he; "ah, I remember you now! I
suppose the old bird was your governor. ~He~ seemed to think it
any thing but a pleasure, being driven by Four-in-hand Fosbrooke."
"Why, pap - my father - is rather nervous on a coach," replied
Verdant: "he was bringing me to college for the first time." "Then
you are the man that has just come into Smalls' old rooms? Oh, I
see. Don't you ever drink with your dinner? If you don't holler for
your rascal, he'll never half wait upon you. Always bully them well
at first, and then they learn manners."
So, by way of commencing the bullying system without loss of time,
our hero called out very fiercely "Robert!" and then, as Mr. Filcher
glided to his side, he timidly dropped his tone into a mild "Glass of
water, if you please, Robert."
He felt rather relieved when dinner was over, and retired at once to
his own rooms; where, making a rather quiet and sudden entrance, he
found them tenanted by an old woman, who wore a huge bonnet tilted on
the top of her head, and was busily and dubiously engaged at one of
his open boxes. "Ahem!" he coughed, at which note of warning the old
lady jumped round very quickly, and said, - dabbing curtseys where
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. The claim which the intellectual and religious life of England in the eighteenth century has upon our interest has been much more generally acknowledged of late years than was the case heretofore. There had been, for the most part, a disposition to pass it over somewhat slightly, as though the whole period were a prosaic and uninteresting one. Every generation is apt to depreciate the age which has so long preceded it as to have no direct bearing on present modes of life, but is yet not sufficiently distant as to have emerged into the full dignity of history. Besides, it cannot be denied that the records of the eighteenth century are, with two or three striking exceptions, not of a kind to stir the imagination. It was not a pictorial age; neither was it one of ardent feeling or energetic movement. Its special merits were not very obvious, and its prevailing faults had nothing dazzling in them, nothing that could be in any way called splendid; on the contrary, in its weaker points there was a distinctly ignoble element. The mainsprings of the religious, as well as of the political, life of the country were