ce at a dinner party at which I was
present, insulted his wife (a young pretty simple believer in his
awful immunities from the ordinary terms that keep men in
order)--brought the tears into her eyes and sent her from the room ...
purely to 'show off' in the eyes of his guests ... (all males,
law-friends &c., he being a lawyer.) This feat accomplished, he, too,
left us with an affectation of compensating relentment, to 'just say a
word and return'--and no sooner was his back to the door than the
biggest, stupidest of the company began to remark 'what a fortunate
thing it was that Mr. So-and-so had such a submissive wife--not one of
the women who would resist--that is, attempt to resist--and so
exasperate our gentleman into ... Heaven only knew what!' I said it
_was_, in one sense, a fortunate thing; because one of these women,
without necessarily being the lion-tressed Bellona, would richly give
him his desert, I thought--'Oh, indeed?' No--_this_ man was not to be
opposed--wait, you might, till the fit was over, and then try what
kind argument would do--and so forth to unspeakable nausea. Presently
we went up-stairs--there sate the wife with dried eyes, and a smile at
the tea-table--and by her, in all the pride of conquest, with her hand
in his, our friend--disposed to be very good-natured of course. I
listened _arrectis auribus_, and in a minute he said he did not know
somebody I mentioned. I told him, _that_ I easily conceived--such a
person would never condescend to know _him_, &c., and treated him to
every consequence ingenuity could draw from that text--and at the end
marched out of the room; and the valorous man, who had sate like a
post, got up, took a candle, followed me to the door, and only said in
unfeigned wonder, 'What _can_ have possessed you, my _dear_ B?'--All
which I as much expected beforehand, as that the above mentioned man
of the whip keeps quiet in the presence of an ordinary-couraged dog.
All this is quite irrelevant to _the_ case--indeed, I write to get rid
of the thought altogether. But I do hold it the most stringent duty of
all who can, to stop a condition, a relation of one human being to
another which God never allowed to exist between Him and ourselves.
_Trees_ live and die, if you please, and accept will for a law--but
with us, all commands surely refer to a previously-implanted
conviction in ourselves of their rationality and justice. Or why
declare that 'the Lord _is_ holy, just and good'