aling,
which Nature has placed in the bosoms of the young in order that her
great law, the passing away of the old, may not leave too lasting and
keen a wound, had softened her first anguish at her father's death, the
remembrance of Clifford again resumed its ancient sway in her heart. The
loneliness of her life, the absence of amusement, even the sensitiveness
and languor which succeed to grief, conspired to invest the image of her
lover in a tenderer and more impressive guise. She recalled his words,
his actions, his letters, and employed herself whole hours, whole days
and nights, in endeavouring to decipher their mystery. Who that has been
loved will not acknowledge the singular and mighty force with which a
girl, innocent herself, clings to the belief of innocence in her lover?
In breasts young and unacquainted with the world, there is so pure a
credulity in the existence of unmixed good, so firm a reluctance to
think that where we love there can be that which we would not esteem, or
where we admire there can be that which we ought to blame, that one may
almost deem it an argument in favour of our natural power to attain
a greater eminence in virtue than the habits and arts of the existing
world will allow us to reach. Perhaps it is not paradoxical to say that
we could scarcely believe perfection in others, were not the germ of
perfectibility in our own minds! When a man has lived some years among
the actual contests of faction without imbibing the prejudice as well
as the experience, how wonderingly be smiles at his worship of former
idols, how different a colour does history wear to him, how cautious is
he now to praise, how slow to admire, how prone to cavil! Human nature
has become the human nature of art; and he estimates it not from what it
may be, but from what, in the corruptions of a semi-civilization, it is!
But in the same manner as the young student clings to the belief that
the sage or the minstrel, who has enlightened his reason or chained his
imagination, is in character as in genius elevated above the ordinary
herd, free from the passions, the frivolities, the little meannesses,
and the darkening vices which ordinary flesh is heir to, does a woman
who loves for the first time cling to the imagined excellence of him she
loves. When Evelina is so shocked at the idea of an occasional fit
of intoxication in her "noble, her unrivalled" lover, who does not
acknowledge how natural were her feelings? Had Evel