PASSION AND PRINCIPLE CHAPTER I. "Our labours you with sickly eyes behold, DRYDEN. AMONGST the laborious, honourable, and ill-paid professions to which men of ability devote their time and talents, that of a schoolmaster is, perhaps, the most tiresome and worst rewarded. To expatiate here upou the continuous misery of hearing the same lessons repeated daily, for the whole course of one's natural life, enlivened only by the different occupations of correcting bad exercises or polishing nonsense verses, would be quite needless: first, because it would be impossible in terms' adequately strong to describe the horrors of such an existence; and secondly, because it is not to the professional labours of Mr. Rodney, of Somerville House Academy, that I have any disposition particularly to call the attention of my readers. Suffice it to say, that in a country town, (I hope it has been observed how carefully I conceal the names of places,) not more than fifty miles from the metropolis, my friend, Mr. Rodney, had for many years governed the school which, in compliance with the prevailing taste for fine names and elegant definitions, had of late years been dignified with the high-sounding title just mentioned; and had, during his lengthened dominion there |