g 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 England a very stupid place, determined to travel;
he went to Italy; how he passed his time there he knows best, to other
people it is a matter of little importance. At the end of two years he
returned with a real or assumed contempt for everything English, and
especially for the Church to which he belongs, and out of which he is
supported. He forthwith gave out that he had left behind him all his
Church of England prejudices, and, as a proof thereof, spoke against
sacerdotal wedlock and the toleration of schismatics. In