Leisure Hours in a Country Parsonage; Or Strictures on Men, Manners, and Books

Front Cover

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 6 - It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter,* that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.
Page 84 - Ay, but to die, and go we know not where ; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot ; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod...
Page 73 - I have brought back no money," cried Moses again. "I have laid it all out in a bargain, and here it is...
Page 9 - I was the only historian that had at once neglected present power, interest, and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices; and as the subject was suited to every capacity, I expected proportional applause. But miserable was my disappointment: I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation; English, Scotch, and Irish, Whig and Tory, churchman and sectary, free-thinker and religionist, patriot and courtier, united in their rage against the man who had presumed to shed...
Page 89 - How charming is divine Philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, Where no crude surfeit reigns.
Page 21 - The essays professedly serious, if I have been able to execute my own intentions, will be found exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity, without any accommodation to the licentiousness and levity of the present age.
Page 103 - Sir, he was a scoundrel, and a coward : a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality ; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death...
Page 118 - ... keys of the holy church extend, I remit to you all punishment which you deserve in purgatory on their account ; and I restore you to the holy sacraments of the church, to the unity of the faithful, and to that innocence and purity which...
Page 35 - Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls : Who steals my purse, steals trash ; 'tis something, nothing ; 'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands : But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him, And makes me poor indeed, Oth.
Page 118 - May our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy upon thee, and absolve thee by the merits of his most holy passion. And I, by his authority, that of his blessed apostles, Peter and Paul, and of the most holy pope, granted and committed to me in these parts, do absolve thee, first from all ecclesiastical censures, in whatever manner they have been incurred ; then from all thy sins, transgressions, and...

Bibliographic information