ing, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He would sing the
Commandments, and give an appropriate character to each prohibition.
His nation, in general, have not ever-sensible countenances. How
should they?--but you seldom see a silly expression among them.
Gain, and the pursuit of gain, sharpen a man's visage. I never heard
of an idiot being born among them.--Some admire the Jewish female
physiognomy. I admire it--but with trembling. Jael had those full dark
inscrutable eyes.
In the Negro countenance you will often meet with strong traits of
benignity. I have felt yearnings of tenderness towards some of these
faces--or rather masks--that have looked out kindly upon one in casual
encounters in the streets and highways. I love what Fuller beautifully
calls--these "images of God cut in ebony." But I should not like
to associate with them, to share my meals and my good-nights with
them--because they are black.
I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I venerate the Quaker
principles. It does me good for the rest of the day when I meet any
of their people in my path. When I am ruffled or disturbed by any
occurrence, the sight, or quiet voice of a Quaker, acts upon me as a
ventilator, lightening the air, and taking off a load from the bosom.
But I cannot like the Quakers (as Desdemona would say) "to live with
them." I am all over sophisticated--with humours, fancies, craving
hourly sympathy. I must have books, pictures, theatres, chit-chat,
scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a thousand whim-whams, which their
simpler taste can do without. I should starve at their primitive
banquet. My appetites are too high for the salads which (according to
Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel, my gusto too excited
To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse.
The indirect answers which Quakers are often found to return to a
question put to them may be explained, I think, without the vulgar
assumption, that they are more given to evasion and equivocating than
other people. They naturally look to their words more carefully, and
are more cautious of committing themselves. They have a peculiar
character to keep up on this head. They stand in a manner upon their
veracity. A Quaker is by law exempted from taking an oath. The custom
of resorting to an oath in extreme cases, sanctified as it is by all
religious antiquity, is apt (it must be confessed) to introduce into
the laxer sort of minds the notion of two kinds of truth--the one
applicable to the so
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