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Borrow, George Henry, 1803-1881

"The Romany Rye"

The writer
would say much more on these points, but want of room prevents him;
he must therefore request the reader to have patience until he can
lay before the world a pamphlet, which he has been long meditating,
to be entitled "Remarks on the strikingly similar Effects which a
Love for Gentility has produced, and is producing, amongst Jews,
Gypsies, and Quakers."
The Priest in the book has much to say on the subject of this
gentility-nonsense; no person can possibly despise it more
thoroughly than that very remarkable individual seems to do, yet he
hails its prevalence with pleasure, knowing the benefits which will
result from it to the church of which he is the sneering slave.
"The English are mad after gentility," says he; "well, all the
better for us; their religion for a long time past has been a plain
and simple one, and consequently by no means genteel; they'll quit
it for ours, which is the perfection of what they admire; with
which Templars, Hospitalers, mitred abbots, Gothic abbeys, long-
drawn aisles, golden censers, incense, et cetera, are connected;
nothing, or next to nothing, of Christ, it is true, but weighed in
the balance against gentility, where will Christianity be? why,
kicking against the beam--ho! ho!" And in connection with the
gentility-nonsense, he expatiates largely, and with much contempt,
on a species of literature by which the interests of his church in
England have been very much advanced--all genuine priests have a
thorough contempt for everything which tends to advance the
interests of their church--this literature is made up of pseudo
Jacobitism, Charlie o'er the waterism, or nonsense about Charlie
o'er the water.


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