een at college myself, I cannot say
whether he took the wisest course; I believe it is more easy to unmake
than to make a gentleman; I have known many gentlemanly youths go to
college, and return anything but what they went. Young Mr. Platitude did
not go to college a gentleman, but neither did he return one; he went to
college an ass, and returned a prig; to his original folly was superadded
a vast quantity of conceit. He told his father that he had adopted high
principles, and was determined to discountenance everything low and mean;
advised him to eschew trade, and to purchase him a living. The old man
retired from business, purchased his son a living, and shortly after
died, leaving him what remained of his fortune. The first thing the
Reverend Mr. Platitude did after his father's decease, was to send his
mother and sister into Wales to live upon a small annuity, assigning as a
reason that he was averse to anything low and that they talked
ungrammatically. Wishing to shine in the pulpit, he now preached high
sermons, as he called them, interspersed with scraps of learning. His
sermons did not, however, procure him much popularity; on the contrary,
his church soon became nearly deserted, the greater part of his flock
going over to certain dissenting preachers, who had shortly before made
their appearance in the neighbourhood. Mr. Platitude was filled with
wrath, and abused Dissenters in most unmeasured terms. Coming in contact
with some of the preachers at a public meeting, he was rash enough to
enter into argument with them. Poor Platitude! he had better have been
quiet, he appeared like a child, a very infant in their grasp; he
attempted to take shelter under his college learning, but found, to his
dismay, that his opponents knew more Greek and Latin than himself. These
illiterate boors, as he had supposed them, caught him at once in a false
concord, and Mr. Platitude had to slink home overwhelmed with shame. To
avenge himself he applied to the ecclesiastical court, but was told that
the Dissenters could not be put down by the present ecclesiastical law.
He found the Church of England, to use his own expression, a poor,
powerless, restricted Church. He now thought to improve his consequence
by marriage, and made up to a rich and beautiful young lady in the
neighbourhood; the damsel measured him from head to foot with a pair of
very sharp eyes, dropped a curtsey, and refused him. Mr. Platitude,
finding En