I wish, with all my heart, I
could take you back to that "Once upon a time" in which the souls of our
grandmothers delighted,--the time which Dr. Johnson sat up all night to
read about in "Evelina,"--the time when all the celestial virtues, all
the earthly graces were revealed in a condensed state to man through the
blue eyes and sumptuous linens of some Belinda Portman or Lord Mortimer.
None of your good-hearted, sorely-tempted villains then! It made your
hair stand on end only to read of them,--dyed at their birth clear
through with Pluto's blackest poison, going about perpetually seeking
innocent maidens and unsophisticated old men to devour. That was the
time for holding up virtue and vice; no trouble then in seeing which
were sheep and which were goats! A person could write a story with a
moral to it, then, I should hope! People that were born in those days
had no fancy for going through the world with half-and-half characters,
such as we put up with; so Nature turned out complete specimens of each
class, with all the appendages of dress, fortune, _et cetera_, chording
decently.
Pages:
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190