bstinate blindness of Professor Wilson
to the meanness and _parvanimity_[45] of Bonaparte (a blindness which
in him, as in all other worshippers of false idols, is connected at
the moment with intense hatred for those who refuse to partake in it),
a wandering regret comes over me that we should have missed so fine an
opportunity for gathering in our own persons some of those redundant
bounties which the Corsican's 'magnanimity' at that time scattered
from his cornucopia of malice to the English name upon all his
unfortunate prisoners of that nation.

[Footnote 45: I coin this word _parvanimity_ as an adequate antithesis
to _magnanimity_; for the word _pusillanimity_ has received from usage
such a confined determination to one single idea, viz. the defect of
spirit and courage, that it is wholly unfitted to tie the antipode to
the complex idea of magnanimity.]

But enough of this; an event soon occurred in Mr. Wilson's life which
made it a duty to dismiss for ever all travelling schemes that were
connected with so much hazard as this. The fierce _acharnement_ of
Bonaparte so pointedly directed to everything English, and the
prostration of the Continent, which had enabled him absolutely to seal
every port of Europe against an Englishman, who could now no longer
venture to stray a mile beyond the range of the ship's guns, which had
brought him to the shore, without the certainty of being arrested as a
spy,--this unheard-of condition of things had at length compelled all
English gentlemen to reconcile themselves for the present to the
bounds of their own island; and, accordingly, in the spring of 1809,
we three unhanged friends had entirely weaned our minds from the
travelling scheme which had so completely occupied our thoughts in
1808. Mr. Wilson in particular gave himself up to the pleasures and
occupations furnished by the neighbourhood of Windermere, which at
that time were many and various; living myself at a distance of nine
miles from Elleray, I did not see much of him through this year 1809;
in 1810 he married a young English lady, greatly admired for her
beauty and the elegance of her manners, who was generally supposed to
have brought him a fortune of about ten thousand pounds. In saying
_that_, I violate no confidence at any time reposed in me, for I rely
only on the public voice--which, in this instance, I have been told by
well-informed persons, was tolerably correct. Be that as it may,
however, in other res