e to
agree to be useful to one another. The lady brings the means, and the
gentleman avails himself of them. My boy's wife brings the horse, and
begad Pen goes in and wins the plate. That's what I call a sensible
union. A couple like that have something to talk to each other about
when they come together. If you had Cupid himself to talk to--if Blanche
and Pen were Cupid and Psyche, begad--they'd begin to yawn after a few
evenings, if they had nothing but sentiment to speak on."

As for Miss Amory, she was contented enough with Pen as long as there
was nobody better. And how many other young ladies are like her?--and
how many love-marriages carry on well to the last?--and how sentimental
firms do not finish in bankruptcy?--and how many heroic passions don't
dwindle down into despicable indifference, or end in shameful defeat?

These views of life and philosophy the Major was constantly, according
to his custom, inculcating to Pen, whose mind was such that he could
see the right on both sides of many questions, and, comprehending the
sentimental life which was quite out of the reach of the honest Major's
intelligence, could understand the practical life too, and accommodate
himself, or think he could accommodate himself, to it. So it came to
pass that during the spring succeeding his mother's death he became a
good deal under the influence of his uncle's advice, and domesticated
in Lady Clavering's house; and in a measure was accepted by Miss Amory
without being a suitor, and was received without being engaged. The
young people were extremely familiar, without being particularly
sentimental, and met and parted with each other in perfect good-humour.
"And I," thought Pendennis, "am the fellow who eight years ago had a
Grand passion, and last year was raging in a fever about Briseis!"

Yes, it was the same Pendennis, and time had brought to him, as to the
rest of us, its ordinary consequences, consolations, developments.
We alter very little. When we talk of this man or that woman being no
longer the same person whom we remember in youth, and remark (of course
to deplore) changes in our friends, we don't, perhaps, calculate that
circumstance only brings out the latent defect or quality, and does not
create it. The selfish languor and indifference of to-day's possession
is the consequence of the selfish ardour of yesterday's pursuit: the
scorn and weariness which cries vanitas vanitatum is but the lassitude
of the sick ap