Henry Mackenzie

“ He sat with his face half turned from Harley, as if he would have hid the sorrow which he felt. Harley was in the same attitude himself; he durst not meet his eye with a tear, but gathering his stifled breath, “Let me entreat you, sir,” said he, “to hope better things. The world is ever tyrannical; it warps our sorrows to edge them with keener affliction. Let us not be slaves to the names it affixes to motive or to action. I know an ingenuous mind cannot help feeling when they sting. ”

“ When Harley heard the tread of his feet behind him, he could not help stealing back a glance at his fellow-traveller. He seemed to bend under the weight of his knapsack; he halted on his walk, and one of his arms was supported by a sling, and lay motionless across his breast. He had that steady look of sorrow, which indicates that its owner has gazed upon his griefs till he has forgotten to lament them; yet not without those streaks of complacency which a good mind will sometimes throw into the countenance, through all the incumbent load of its depression. ”

“ Your very nurseries are seminaries of falsehood; and what is called Fashion in manhood completes the system of avowed insincerity. Mankind, in the gross, is a gaping monster, that loves to be deceived, and has seldom been disappointed: nor is their vanity less fallacious to your philosophers, who adopt modes of truth to follow them through the paths of error, and defend paradoxes merely to be singular in defending them. These are they whom ye term Ingenious; ’tis a phrase of commendation I detest: it implies an attempt to impose on my judgment, by flattering my imagination ”

“ I have seen his master at work in this little spot with his coat off, and his dibble in his hand: it was a scene of tranquil virtue to have stopped an angel on his errands of mercy! Harley had contrived to lead a little bubbling brook through a green walk in the middle of the ground, upon which he had erected a mill in miniature for the diversion of Edwards’s infant grandson, and made shift in its construction to introduce a pliant bit of wood that answered with its fairy clack to the murmuring of the rill that turned it. ”

“ The object of History is to make the experience of past ages subservient to the use of the present; and the object of Education to enable the existing generation to take advantage of the experience so afforded. But if that portion of History most rich in traits of nature, most prolific in change, most useful in developing the workings of unsophisticated mind, be neglected, it were absurd to imagine that the present age could derive the benefit such [Pg 3] period affords from other sources, which are undeniably less adequate to bestow it. ”

“ To Offa then, as the preserver, and to a certain extent the instructor, of the first sole monarch of England, the present age must look back with gratitude as the founder of the limited monarchy of the land; but as he is said by one of his historians [21] to have been a man in whom virtue and vice were so mingled, as to render it difficult to say whether of the twain were predominant—so in the legacy of spiritual slavery which he bequeathed to his kingdom, it is a question whether the advantages arising from unity in political government were not more than counterbalanced. ”

“ On something like a bed, lay a man, with a face seemingly emaciated with sickness, and a look of patient dejection. A bundle of dirty shreds served him for a pillow, but he had a better support—the arm of a female who kneeled beside him, beautiful as an angel, but with a fading languor in her countenance, the still life of melancholy, that seemed to borrow its shade from the object on which she gazed. There was a tear in her eye—the sick man kissed it off in its bud, smiling through the dimness of his own—when she saw Mountford, she crawled forward on the ground, and clasped his knees. ”

“ Men will put on the most forbidding aspect in nature, and tell him of the beauty of virtue.
“I have not, under these grey hairs, forgotten that I was once a young man, warm in the pursuit of pleasure, but meaning to be honest as well as happy. I had ideas of virtue, of honour, of benevolence, which I had never been at the pains to define; but I felt my bosom heave at the thoughts of them, and I made the most delightful soliloquies. It is impossible, said I, that there can be half so many rogues as are imagined. ”

“ No sooner had Offa been established, not less by the hearts of his subjects than by the acts of his power or the [Pg 7] will of his predecessor, upon the throne of Mercia, than he applied himself to the duties of a barbaric sovereign, confirming his dominions and extending the limits of his territory. Brave and ambitious, endowed with personal vigour and mental abilities unequalled by any of his age and country, he gradually directed his powers against the neighbouring sovereigns. Circumstanced as the Saxon kingdoms in Britain were, nothing could be more easy than to find a pretext for offence ”

“ but the world is apt to make an erroneous estimate: ignorant of the dispositions which constitute our happiness or misery, they bring to an undistinguished scale the means of the one, as connected with power, wealth, or grandeur, and of the other with their contraries. Philosophers and poets have often protested against this decision; but their arguments have p. 20been despised as declamatory, or ridiculed as romantic. ”

“ The mind of the philosopher, the historian, and the poet, [Pg 25] must alike reflect with pain, that there was one gigantic genius who might lay claim to the laurels of all, and could yet allow his opinions to be so biassed by prejudice as to declare the records of the times to which we have been alluding to be worthless as a history of the contests of kites and crows! ”

“ To him I owe my life, or at least the comfort of imploring your forgiveness before I die.”
“Pardon me, young gentleman,” said Atkins, “I fear my passion wronged you.”
“Never, never, sir,” said Harley “if it had, your reconciliation to your daughter were an atonement a thousand fold.” He then repeated his request that he might be allowed to conduct them to his lodgings, to which Mr. Atkins at last consented. He took his daughter’s arm.
“Come, my Emily,” said he, “we can never, never recover that happiness we have lost! but time may teach us to remember our misfortunes with patience.” ”

“ Or do you administer comfort in affliction—the motive is at hand; I have had it preached to me in nineteen out of twenty of your consolatory discourses—the comparative littleness of our own misfortunes.
“With vanity your best virtues are grossly tainted: your benevolence, which ye deduce immediately from the natural impulse of the heart, squints to it for its reward. There are some, indeed, who tell us of the satisfaction which flows from a secret consciousness of good actions: this secret satisfaction is truly excellent—when we have some friend to whom we may discover its excellence.” ”

“ I travelled, because it is the fashion for young men of my fortune to travel. I had a travelling tutor, which is the fashion too; but my tutor was a gentleman, which it is not always the fashion for tutors to be. His gentility, indeed, was all he had from his father, whose prodigality had not left him a shilling to support it.
“‘I have a favour to ask of you, my dear Mountford,’ said my father, ‘which I will not be refused. You have travelled as became a man; neither France nor Italy have made anything of Mountford, which Mountford, before he left England, would have been ashamed of. ”

“ There are never wanting to a young man some grave and prudent friends to set him right in this particular, if he need it; to watch his ideas as they arise, and point them to those objects which a wise man should never forget.
Harley did not want for some monitors of this sort. He was frequently told of men whose fortunes enabled them to command all the luxuries of life, whose fortunes were of their own acquirement: his envy was invited by a description of their happiness, and his emulation by a recital of the means which had procured it. ”

“ But it is not simply of the progress of luxury that we have to complain: did its votaries keep in their own sphere of thoughtless dissipation, we might despise them without emotion; but the frivolous pursuits of pleasure are mingled with the most important concerns of the state; and public enterprise shall sleep till he who should guide its operation has decided his bets at Newmarket, or fulfilled his engagement with a favourite mistress in the country. We want some man of acknowledged eminence to point our counsels with that firmness which the counsels of a great people require. ”

“ I would have given fifty times its value to have saved it from the sacrilege of that plough.”
“Dear sir,” replied Edwards, “perhaps they have left it from choice, and may have got another spot as good.”
“They cannot,” said Harley, “they cannot; I shall never see the sward covered with its daisies, nor pressed by the dance of the dear innocents: I shall never see that stump decked with the garlands which their little hands had gathered. ”

“ What must I do?’
“‘You see,’ replied the stranger, ‘a wretch, sunk in poverty, starving in prison, stretched on a sick bed. But that is little. There are his wife and children wanting the bread which he has not to give them! Yet you cannot easily imagine the conscious serenity of his mind. In the gripe of affliction, his heart swells with the pride of virtue; it can even look down with pity on the man whose cruelty has wrung it almost to bursting. ”

“ Harley admired the happiness of his vivacity, and, opposite as it was to the reserve of his own nature, began to be much pleased with its effects.
Though I am not of opinion with some wise men, that the existence of objects depends on idea, yet I am convinced that their appearance is not a little influenced by it. The optics of some minds are in so unlucky a perspective as to throw a certain shade on every picture that is presented to them, while those of others (of which number was Harley) , like the mirrors of the ladies, have a wonderful effect in bettering their complexions. ”

“ Fashion, Bon ton, and Vertù, are the names of certain idols, to which we sacrifice the genuine pleasures of the soul: in this world of semblance, we are contented with personating happiness; to feel it is an art beyond us. ”

“ Harley stood in the attitude of hesitation; which she, interpreting to her advantage, repeated her request, and endeavoured to force a leer of invitation into her countenance. He took her arm, and they walked on to one of those obsequious taverns in the neighbourhood, where the dearness of the wine is a discharge in full for the character of the house. From what impulse he did this we do not mean to enquire; as it has ever been against our nature to search for motives where bad ones are to be found. They entered, and a waiter showed them a room, and placed a bottle of claret on the table. ”

“ When they began to play, the old gentleman, somewhat to the surprise of Harley, produced ten shillings to serve for markers of his score. “He had no change for the beggar,” said Harley to himself; “but I can easily account for it; it is curious to observe the affection that inanimate things will create in us by a long acquaintance. If I may judge from my own feelings, the old man would not part with one of these counters for ten times its intrinsic value; it even got the better of his benevolence! ”

“ The company in the stage-coach consisted of a grocer and his wife, who were going to pay a visit to some of their country friends; a young officer, who took this way of marching to quarters; a middle-aged gentlewoman, who had been hired as housekeeper to some family in the country; and an elderly, well-looking man, with a remarkable old-fashioned periwig.
Harley, upon entering, discovered but one vacant seat, next the grocer’s wife, which, from his natural shyness of temper, he made no scruple to occupy, however aware that riding backwards always disagreed with him. ”