The Vicar of Wakefield | Page 4

Family use art, which is opposed with still greater
17. Scarce any virtue found to resist the power of long and pleasing
temptation 18. The pursuit of a father to reclaim a lost child to virtue
19. The description of a Person discontented with the present
government, and apprehensive of the loss of our liberties
20. The history of a philosophic vagabond, pursuing novelty, but losing
content
21. The short continuance of friendship among the vicious, which is
coeval only with mutual satisfaction
22. Offences are easily pardoned where there is love at bottom
23. None but the guilty can be long and completely miserable
24. Fresh calamities
25. No situation, however wretched it seems, but has some sort of
comfort attending it
26. A reformation in the gaol. To make laws complete, they should
reward as well as punish

27. The same subject continued
28. Happiness and misery rather the result of prudence than of virtue in
this life. Temporal evils or felicities being regarded by heaven as things
merely in themselves trifling and unworthy its care in the distribution
29. The equal dealings of providence demonstrated with regard to the
happy and the miserable here below. That from the nature of pleasure
and pain, the wretched must be repaid the balance of their sufferings in
the life hereafter
30. Happier prospects begin to appear. Let us be inflexible, and fortune
will at last change in our favour
31. Former benevolence now repaid with unexpected interest
32. The Conclusion
CHAPTER 1
The description of the family of Wakefield; in which a kindred likeness
prevails as well of minds as of persons
I was ever of opinion, that the honest man who married and brought up
a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only
talked of population. From this motive, I had scarce taken orders a year
before I began to think seriously of matrimony, and chose my wife as
she did her wedding gown, not for a fine glossy surfaces but such
qualities as would wear well. To do her justice, she was a good-natured
notable woman; and as for breeding, there were few country ladies who
could shew more. She could read any English book without much
spelling, but for pickling, preserving, and cookery, none could excel
her. She prided herself also upon being an excellent contriver in house-
keeping; tho' I could never find that we grew richer with all her
contrivances. However, we loved each other tenderly, and our fondness
encreased as we grew old. There was in fact nothing that could make us
angry with the world or each other. We had an elegant house, situated
in a fine country, and a good neighbourhood. The year was spent in

moral or rural amusements; in visiting our rich neighbours, and
relieving such as were poor. We had no revolutions to fear, nor fatigues
to undergo; all our adventures were by the fire-side, and all our
migrations from the blue bed to the brown.
As we lived near the road, we often had the traveller or stranger visit us
to taste our gooseberry wine, for which we had great reputation; and I
profess with the veracity of an historian, that I never knew one of them
find fault with it. Our cousins too, even to the fortieth remove, all
remembered their affinity, without any help from the Herald's office,
and came very frequently to see us. Some of them did us no great
honour by these claims of kindred; as we had the blind, the maimed,
and the halt amongst the number. However, my wife always insisted
that as they were the same flesh and blood, they should sit with us at
the same table. So that if we had not, very rich, we generally had very
happy friends about us; for this remark will hold good thro' life, that the
poorer the guest, the better pleased he ever is with being treated: and as
some men gaze with admiration at the colours of a tulip, or the wing of
a butterfly, so I was by nature an admirer of happy human faces.
However, when any one of our relations was found to be a person of
very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of,
upon his leaving my house, I ever took care to lend him a riding coat,
or a pair of boots, or sometimes an horse of small value, and I always
had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them. By
this the house was cleared of such as we did not like; but never was the
family of Wakefield known to turn the traveller or the poor dependent
out of doors.
Thus we lived several years in a state of