Early Life and England
Clarke was born at East Bergholt, in Suffolk, the eldest child of William Clarke, schoolmaster, and his wife Sarah, née Branwhite. He received his early education at Dedham grammar school, and in 1817 entered Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1819 entered a poem for the Chancellor's Gold Medal; this was awarded to Macaulay, but Clarke's poem Pompeii, published in the same year, was judged second. He took his B.A. degree in 1821, and obtained his M.A. degree, in 1824. In 1821 he was appointed curate of Ramsholt in Suffolk, and he acted in his clerical capacity in other places until 1839. He was also master of the Free School of East Bergholt for about 18 months in 1830-1. Having become interested in geology through the teachings of Sedgwick, he utilized his opportunities and gathered many interesting facts on the geology of East Anglia which were embodied in a paper On the Geological Structure and Phenomena of Suffolk (Trans. Geol. Soc. 1837). He also communicated a series of papers on the geology of S.E. Dorset to the Magazine of Nat. Hist. (1837-1838).
Read more about this topic: William Branwhite Clarke
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or england:
“The conviction that the best way to prepare children for a harsh, rapidly changing world is to introduce formal instruction at an early age is wrong. There is simply no evidence to support it, and considerable evidence against it. Starting children early academically has not worked in the past and is not working now.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. What are threescore years and ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The real weakness of England lies, not in incomplete armaments or unfortified coasts, not in the poverty that creeps through sunless lanes, or the drunkenness that brawls in loathsome courts, but simply in the fact that her ideals are emotional and not intellectual.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)