ou ever far off and away from
the beaten turnpike-road of life, through forests of enchantment, to
rescue beauty which you never saw, from knight-begirt and dragon-guarded
castles; and little thankful have you been when you have opened your eyes
awake in peace to the cold light of our misnamed utilitarian day, and
found all your enchantment broken, the knights discomfited, the dragon
killed, the drawbridge broken down, and the ladies free--all without your
help; and then, when you have gone forth, and in lieu of some rescued
paragon of her sex, you have met but the squire's daughter, in her trim
bonnet, tripping with her trumpery to set up her fancy-shop in Vanity-Fair,
for fops to stare at through their glasses, your imagination has felt the
shock, and incredulous of the improvement in manners and morals, and
overlooking all advancement of knowledge, all the advantages of their real
liberty, momentarily have you wished them all shut up in castles, or in
nunneries, to be the more adored till they may chance to be rescued. But
soon would the fit go off--and the first sweet, innocent, lovely smile
that greeted you, restored your gentleness, and added to your stock of
love. And once, when some parish shame was talked of, you never would
believe it common, and blamed the Overseer for bringing it to light--and
vindicated the sex by quoting from Pennant, how St Werberg lived
immaculate with her husband Astardus, copying her aunt, the great
Ethelreda, who lived for three years with not less purity with her good man
Tonberetus, and for twelve with her second husband the pious Prince Egfrid:
and the churchwarden left the vestry, lifting up his hands, and
saying--"Poor gentleman!"--and you laughed as if you had never laughed
before, when you heard it, and heartily shook him by the hand to convince
him you were in your senses; which action he nevertheless put to the
credit of the soundness of your heart, and not a bit to that of your head.
You saw it--and immediately, with a trifling flaw in the application quite
worthy yourself, reminded me of a passage in a letter from Lord
Bolingbroke to Swift, that "The truest reflection, and at the same time
the bitterest satire, which can be made on the present age, is this, that
to think as you think, will make a man pass for romantic. Sincerity,
constancy, tenderness, are rarely to be found. They are so much out of use,
that the man of mode imagines them to be out of nature." So insane and
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