Atlantic Monthly | Page 4

cannot have that individual charm which makes this or that countenance engaging to you, and to you only perhaps, you know not why. What gained the fair Gunnings titled husbands, who, after all, turned out very sorry wives? Popular repute."
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"It is a sore trial, when a daughter shall marry against her father's approbation. A little hard-heartedness, and aversion to a reconcilement, is almost pardonable. After all, Will Dockwray's way is, perhaps, the wisest. His best-loved daughter made a most imprudent match,--in fact, eloped with the last man in the world that her father would have wished her to marry. All the world said that he would never speak to her again. For months she durst not write to him, much less come near him. But, in a casual rencounter, he met her in the streets of Ware,--Ware, that will long remember the mild virtues of William Dockwray, Esq. What said the parent to his disobedient child, whose knees faltered under her at the sight of him? 'Ha, Sukey, is it you?' with that benevolent aspect with which he paced the streets of Ware, venerated as an angel,--'come and dine with us on Sunday'; then turning away, and again turning back, as if he had forgotten something, he added,--'and, Sukey, do you hear? bring your husband with you.' This was all the reproof she ever heard from him. Need it be added that the match turned out better for Susan than the world expected?"
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"'We read the "Paradise Lost" as a task,' says Dr. Johnson. Nay, rather as a celestial recreation, of which the dullard mind is not at all hours alike recipient. 'Nobody ever wished it longer';--nor the moon rounder, he might have added. Why, 'tis the perfectness and completeness of it which makes us imagine that not a line could be added to it, or diminished from it, with advantage. Would we have a cubit added to the stature of the Medicean Venus? Do we wish her taller?"
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"Amidst the complaints of the wide spread of infidelity among us, it is consolatory that a sect is sprung up in the heart of the metropolis, and is daily on the increase, of teachers of that healing doctrine which Pope upheld, and against which Voltaire directed his envenomed wit. We mean those practical preachers of Optimism, or the belief that _Whatever is best_, the cads of omnibuses, who, from their little back pulpits, not once in three or four hours, as those proclaimers of 'God and His prophet' in Mussulman countries, but every minute, at the entry or exit of a brief passenger, are heard, in an almost prophetic tone, to exclaim, (Wisdom crying out, as it were, in the streets,) 'ALL'S RIGHT!'"
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"Advice is not so commonly thrown away as is imagined. We seek it in difficulties. But, in common speech, we are apt to confound with it _admonition:_ as when a friend reminds one that drink is prejudicial to the health, etc. We do not care to be told of that which we know better than the good man that admonishes. M---- sent to his friend L----, who is no water-drinker, a two-penny tract 'Against the Use of Fermented Liquors.' L---- acknowledged the obligation, as far as to twopence. Penotier's advice was the safest, after all:--
"'I advised him'--
"But I must tell you. The dear, good-meaning, no-thinking creature had been dumbfounding a company of us with a detail of inextricable difficulties in which the circumstances of an acquaintance of his were involved. No clue of light offered itself. He grew more and more misty as he proceeded. We pitied his friend, and thought,--
"'God help the man so wrapt in error's endless maze!'
"when, suddenly brightening up his placid countenance, like one that had found out a riddle, and looked to have the solution admired,--
"'At last,' said he, 'I advised him'--
"Here he paused, and here we were again interminably thrown back. By no possible guess could any of us aim at the drift of the meaning he was about to be delivered of.
"'I advised him,' he repeated, 'to have some advice upon the subject.'
"A general approbation followed; and it was unanimously agreed, that, under all the circumstances of the case, no sounder or more judicious counsel could have been given."
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"A laxity pervades the popular use of words.
"Parson W---- is not quite so continent as Diana, yet prettily dissembleth his frailty. Is Parson W---- therefore a _hypocrite?_ I think not. Where the concealment of a vice is less pernicious than the barefaced publication of it would be, no additional delinquency is incurred in the secrecy.
"Parson W---- is simply an immoral clergyman. But if Parson W---- were to be forever haranguing on the opposite virtue,--choosing for his