to do but be slovenly and selfish--read the newspaper,
watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate
does all the work, and the business of his own life is
to dine."

"There are such clergymen, no doubt, but I think they
are not so common as to justify Miss Crawford in esteeming
it their general character. I suspect that in this
comprehensive and (may I say) commonplace censure, you are
not judging from yourself, but from prejudiced persons,
whose opinions you have been in the habit of hearing.
It is impossible that your own observation can have given
you much knowledge of the clergy. You can have been
personally acquainted with very few of a set of men you
condemn so conclusively. You are speaking what you have
been told at your uncle's table."

"I speak what appears to me the general opinion;
and where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.
Though _I_ have not seen much of the domestic lives
of clergymen, it is seen by too many to leave any deficiency
of information."

"Where any one body of educated men, of whatever denomination,
are condemned indiscriminately, there must be a deficiency
of information, or (smiling) of something else.
Your uncle, and his brother admirals, perhaps knew little
of clergymen beyond the chaplains whom, good or bad,
they were always wishing away."