A person must work like a horse,
now-a-days, to succeed at all; and Lynedale's a desperately particular
fellow, with all sorts of _outre_ notions about people's duties and
vocations and heaven knows what."
"Well," I said, "my dear cousin, and have you no high notions of a
clergyman's vocation? because we--I mean the working men--have. It's just
their high idea of what a clergyman should be, which makes them so furious
at clergymen for being what they are."
"It's a queer way of showing their respect to the priesthood," he answered,
"to do all they can to exterminate it."
"I dare say they are liable, like other men, to confound the thing with its
abuses; but if they hadn't some dim notion that the thing might be made a
good thing in itself, you may depend upon it they would not rave against
those abuses so fiercely." (The reader may see that I had not forgotten my
conversation with Miss Staunton.) "And," thought I to myself, "is it not
you, and such as you, who do so incorporate the abuses into the system,
that one really cannot tell which is which, and longs to shove the whole
thing aside as rotten to the core, and make a trial of something new?"
"Well, but," I said, again returning to the charge, for the subject was
altogether curious and interesting to me, "do you really believe the
doctrines of the Prayer-book, George?"
"Believe them!" he answered, in a tone of astonishment, "why not? I was
brought up a Churchman, whatever my parents were; I was always intended for
the ministry.
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