[60] Eph. v. 33.

[61] Isa. xxxii. 17.

[62]

_Maria_. How can we love?--

_Giovanna_ (interrupting). Mainly, by hearing none
Decry the object, then by cherishing
The good we see in it, and overlooking
What is less pleasant in the paths of life.
All have some virtue if we leave it them
In peace and quiet, all may lose some part
By sifting too minutely good and bad.
The tenderer and the timider of creatures
Often desert the brood that has been handled,
Or turned about, or indiscreetly looked at.
The slightest touches, touching constantly,
Irritate and inflame.

LANDOR'S _Giovanna and Andrea_.

[63] Miss Edgeworth says that proverbs are vulgar because they are
common sense.

[64] Emerson.

LETTER VII.

ECONOMY.

Perhaps there is no lesson that needs to be more watchfully and
continually impressed on the young and generous heart than the difficult
one of economy. There is no virtue that in such natures requires more
vigilant self-control and self-denial, besides the exercise of a free
judgment, uninfluenced by the excitement of feeling.

To you this virtue will be doubly difficult, because you have so long
watched its unpleasant manifestations in a distorted form. You are
exposed to danger from that which has perverted many notions of right
and wrong; you have so long heard things called by false names that you
are inclined to turn away in disgust from a noble reality. You have been
accustomed to hear the name of economy given to penuriousness and
meanness, so that now, the wounded feelings and the refined tastes of
your nature having been excited to disgust by this system of falsehood,
you will find it difficult to realize in economy a virtue that joins to
all the noble instincts of generosity the additional features of
strong-minded self-control.

It will therefore be necessary, before I endeavour to impress upon your
mind the duty and advantages of economy, that I should previously help
you to a clear understanding of the real meaning of the word itself.

The difficulty of forming a true and distinct conception of the virtue
thus denominated is much increased by its being equally misrepresented
by two entirely opposite parties. The avaricious, those to whom the
expenditure of a shilling costs a real pang of regret, claim for their
mean vice the honour of a virtue that can have no existence, unless the
same pain and the same self-control w