For the Schoolmaster class are, in well-ordered States, as little permitted to marry as the Soldiery. In Conringius de Antiquitutibus Academicis, where in every leaf it is proved that all cloisters were originally schools, I hit upon the reason. Our schools are now cloisters, and consequently we endeavour to maintain in our teachers at least an imitation of the Three Monastic Vows. The vow of Obedience might perhaps be sufficiently enforced by School-Inspectors; but the second vow, that of Celibacy, would be more hard of attainment, were it not that, by one of the best political arrangements, the third vow, I mean a beautiful equality in Poverty, is so admirably attended to, that no man who has made it needs any farther testimonium paupertatis;—and now let this man, if he likes, lay hold of a matrimonial half, when of the two halves each has a whole stomach, and nothing for it but half-coins and half-beer!...
I know well, millions of my readers would themselves compose this Petition for the Conrector, and ride with it to Schadeck to his Lordship, that so the poor rogue might get the sheepfold, with the annexed wedding-mansion: for they see clearly enough, that directly thereafter one of the best Letter-Boxes would be written that ever came from such a repository.
Fixlein's Petition was particularly good and striking: it submitted to the Rittmeister four grounds of preference: 1. "He was a native of the parish: his parents and ancestors had already done Hukelum service; therefore he prayed," &c.
2. "The here-documented official debts of 135 florins, 41 kreutzers and one halfpenny, the cancelling of which a never-to-be-forgotten testament secured him, he himself could clear, in case he obtained the living, and so hereby give up his claim to the legacy," &c.
Voluntary Note by me. It is plain he means to bribe his Godfather, whom the lady's testament has put into a fume. But, gentle reader, blame not without mercy a poor, oppressed, heavy-laden school-man and school-horse for an indelicate insinuation, which truly was never mine. Consider, Fixlein knew that the Rittmeister was a cormorant towards the poor, as he was a squanderer towards the rich. It may be, too, the Conrector might once or twice have heard, in the Law Courts, of patrons, by whom not indeed the church and churchyard—though these things are articles of commerce in England—so much as the true management of them had been sold, or rather farmed to farming-candidates. I know from Lange,[51] that the Church must support its patron, when he has nothing to live upon: and might not a nobleman, before he actually began begging, be justified in taking a little advance, a fore-payment of his alimentary moneys, from the hands of his pulpit-farmer?—
[51] His Clerical Law, p. 551.
3. "He had lately betrothed himself with Fräulein von Thiennette, and given her a piece of gold, as marriage-pledge; and could therefore wed the said Fräulein were he once provided for," &c.
Voluntary Note by me. I hold this ground to be the strongest in the whole Petition. In the eyes of Herr von Aufhammer, Thiennette's genealogical tree was long since stubbed, disleaved, worm-eaten and full of millepedes: she was his Œconoma, his Castle-Stewardess and Legatess a Latere for his domestics; and with her pretensions for an alms-coffer, was threatening in the end to become a burden to him. His indignant wish that she had been provided for with Fixlein's legacy might now be fulfilled. In a word, if Fixlein become Parson, he will have the third ground to thank for it; not at all the mad fourth....
4. "He had learned with sorrow, that the name of his Shock, which he had purchased from an Emigrant at Leipzig, meant Egidius in German; and that the dog had drawn upon him the displeasure of his Lordship. Far be it from him so to designate the Shock in future; but he would take it as a special grace, if for the dog, which he at present called without any name, his Lordship would be pleased to appoint one himself."
My Voluntary Note. The dog then, it seems, to which the nobleman has hitherto been godfather, is to receive its name a second time from him!—But how can the famishing gardener's son, whose career never mounted higher than from the school-bench to the school-chair, and who never spoke with polished ladies, except singing, namely in the church, how can he be expected, in fingering such a string, to educe from it any finer tone than the pedantic one? And yet the source of it lies deeper: not the contracted situation, but the contracted eye, not a favourite science, but a narrow plebeian soul, makes us pedantic, a soul that cannot measure and separate the concentric circles of human knowledge and activity, that confounds the focus of universal human life, by reason of the focal distance, with every two or three converging rays; and that cannot see all, and tolerate all——In short, the true Pedant is the Intolerant.