Sans Souci

“ Il y a quelque chose d’effrayante dans cette idée, qui jette un homme hors de toute la société, et qui le depouille, jusqu’à un certain point, non-seulement de son existence civile, mais encore de son propre caractère, et de son identité morale, pour le modeler sur la vie d’un autre. ”

“ Southey’s self-love, when challenged to the lists, does not launch out into the wide field of wit or argument: it retires into its own littleness, collects all its slender resources in one poor effort of pert, pettifogging spite, makes up by studied malice for conscious 211impotence, and attempts to mortify others by the angry sense of his own insignificance. He grows tenacious of his ridiculous pretensions, in proportion as they are given up by every body else. His self-complacency riots, with a peculiar and pointed gusto, in the universal contempt or compassion of friends and foes. ”

“ He first took possession of her hands and feet, to kiss and fondle them, despite her strenuous protests, and next he flattered her to the top of her bent, lauding both her bodily and mental charms to the very skies, until Zues was in a very paradise of self-glorification and satisfied vanity. Added to this was the solitude and the sense of security from curious and peering eyes in the leafy shade of the forest. Until at last Zues really lost the compass to which hitherto she had clung as her safe though rather selfish guide through life. ”

“ Yet in this scene of tumult one motive animates the whole, eagerness to engage with subordination to command; this preserves the dignity of action, and from a straggling rabble changes the figures to men whose legitimate contest interests our wishes.
This intuition into the pure emanations of nature, Raphael Sanzio possessed in the most enviable degree, from the utmost conflict of passions, to the enchanting round of gentler emotion, and the nearly silent hints of mind and character. ”

“ The woman that deliberates is lost. So it is with the effeminate soul of Mr. Southey. Any concession is fatal to his consistency; and he can only keep out of one absurdity by the tenaciousness with which he stickles for another. He calls to the aid of his disjointed opinions a proportionate quantity of spleen; and regularly makes up for the weakness of his own reasons, by charging others with bad motives. ”

“ But of late there seems to have crept into this nation a sort of spurious and barren philosophy, of which it was the object to decry these associations, to represent them as the illusions of ignorance, or frenzy, or falsehood, to curb the original play of nature, to inculcate coldness and selfishness upon system, and to substitute in the place of all that formed the delight of a higher philosophy, a spirit of lazy deliberation, conducted by apathy, and ending therefore in meanness and dishonour. ”

“ The will in my favor is in existence, in proper form, but a moment's anger may destroy it. We are ruined, we have no other resource. You will have to go to the hospital and I become a leader of brigands, if it escapes us."
"O mon Dieu!" I said, "we lived so inexpensively in Switzerland! Why is wealth a necessity to us? Now that we love each other so well, can we not live happily without committing any new villainy?" ”

“ His intellectual part had received all the improvement of which it was capable, and his moral nature had sustained no injury in the process; nor had his faith been shaken, but stood firm, resting upon a sure foundation. But the entail of humble safety had been, as it were, cut off; the birth-right—so to speak—had been renounced. His children, if God had given him children, must have mingled in the world, there to shape for themselves their lot of good or evil; and he knew enough of the world to know how manifold and how insidious are the dangers, which, in all its paths, beset us. ”

“ There, Susy, don't you cry," she added, applying a moral lesson to her sister's wounded feelings, like a healing plaster; "he's dreadful wicked, and one of these days he'll get hurt his own self; a horse'll strike him!"
"Yes, a horse'll strike him!" echoed Dotty Dimple.
"But what good will that do Wings?" moaned Susy. "Evil for evil only makes things worse." ”

“ But Justice is found to be so fast asleep that no calling can awaken her. Mors then advises her to summon Veritas; alas! unhappy Veritas enters complaining of pains from head to foot and in all the intermediate parts, within and without; she is dying and entreats that Nature will call some one to confess her. But who shall be applied to?—Kings? They will not come.—Nobles? Veritas is a hateful personage to them.—Bishops, or mitred Abbots? They have no regard for Truth.—Some Saint from the desert? Nature knows not where to find one! ”

“ It is by these observations, and a wary reasoning by analogy in that kind of argumentative process, which Suidas calls dialectick induction—that I draw and set up this position as most true and veritable;
That of these two luminaries so much of their irradiations are suffered from time to time to shine down upon us, as he, whose infinite wisdom which dispenses every thing in exact weight and measure, knows will just serve to light us on our way in this night of our obscurity ”

“ Wherein, when roused to the recollection of my duty, have I shrunk from the performance of it? I hold my life and my feeble feelings as ready sacrifices to justice—καυκάω ὑπορᾶς γάρ. I dismiss a subject so painful to me as self-vindication; painful to me only as addressing you on whose esteem and affection I have rested with the whole weight of my soul.
Southey! I must tell you that you appear to me to write as a man who is aweary of the world because it accords not with his ideas of perfection. Your sentiments look like the sickly offspring of disgusted pride. ”

“ I admit that such an improved condition of society as you contemplate is possible, and hath ought always to be kept in view: but the error of supposing it too near, of fancying that there is a short road to it, is, of all the errors of these times, the most pernicious, because it seduces the young and generous, and betrays them imperceptibly into an alliance with whatever is flagitious and detestable. The fact is undeniable that the worst principles in religion, in morals, and in politics, are at this time more prevalent than they ever were known to be in any former age. ”

“ Montesinos.—Very much what it has long been with regard to the moral pestilence of this unhappy age, and the condition of this country more especially. I saw the danger in its whole extent and relied on the mercy of God.
Sir Thomas More.—In all cases that is the surest reliance: but when human means are available, it becomes a Mahommedan rather than a Christian to rely upon Providence or fate alone, and make no effort for its own preservation. Individuals never fall into this error among you, drink as deeply as they may of fatalism ”

“ Now that the wretched father and husband was dead, the wife for whom the bread was stolen had become a great lady, the boy was at length to receive the aid that wealth could give him. Poor George Claude Sonsius has nothing to do with our story, but his fate led to the alleviation of a great deal of misery that otherwise might have been in store for millions of human beings. ”

“ People might choose to close their eyes, but the force of truth must dispel the wilful blindness; they might choose to shut their ears, but the voice of a suffering nation must sooner or later be heard. He still retained his objections to every part of the system which he had so often condemned; he still deprecated that wanton waste of money and of all the public resources, when it was more necessary than ever to husband them with the most provident care. ”

“ I sometimes think that one reason why God has made so many lame and deaf and blind people, is to teach them to praise him for what mercies he has given, and to teach us who have feet and eyes and ears and hands to praise Him with our hearts and our lives for His goodness to us."
"How can we praise Him with our lives?" asked Susy.
"Why, by obeying Him and trying to please Him. If you had been blind all your life, and I at last gave you my eyes, what do you think would be the first use you should make of them?"
"O mamma! I should want to look at you the first thing, to see how you looked. ”

“ That men should act thus and be perfectly unconscious the while that they are acting a cowardly and rascally part,—and that society should not punish them for it by looking upon them as men who have lost their caste, would be surprizing if we did not too plainly see to what a degree the moral sense, not only of individuals but of a whole community, may be corrupted. ”

“ With distress came disaffection, and interested men were not backward in fanning the embers into a flame, and in preaching insubordination and irreligion. Their pernicious doctrines spread to the most retired nooks and corners of the land. "A club of atheists met twice a-week at an alehouse at Keswick, and the landlady of their way of thinking." And this state of things was general. Southey combated the policy of disaffection with unfaltering energy, and the invective with which he was assailed sufficiently testifies to the dread he inspired, and the good it was feared he would effect. ”

“ But how can you be sure that, when Nick wants a change, you’ll consider it for his advantage to have one?”
It was the point that had always secretly tormented Susy; she often wondered if it equally tormented Nick.
“I hope I shall have enough common sense—” she began.
“Oh, of course: common sense is what you’re both bound to base your argument on, whichever way you argue.” ”

“ To found it upon sense-impressions and feelings is to found it upon shifting quicksands. My feelings and sensations are binding upon no man but myself, and therefore a universally valid law cannot be founded upon them. Yet the Sophists identified morality with the feelings of the individual. Whatever I think right is right for me. Whatever you think right is right for you. Whatever each man, in his irrational self-will, chooses to do, that is, for him, legitimate. ”

“ On such points, where humanity has not become obnoxious, where liberty has not passed into a by-word, Mr. Southey is still liberal and humane. The elasticity of his spirit is unbroken: the bow recoils to its old position. He still stands convicted of his early passion for inquiry and improvement. ”

“ Southey is or that he does best, is independent, spontaneous, free as the vital air he draws—when he affects the courtier or the sophist, he is obliged to put a constraint upon himself, to hold in his breath, he loses his genius, and offers a violence to his nature. ”

“ If a man is to be condemned because he has a calm conviction of his own undeniable merits, no case can be made out for Southey. His self-confidence is written in the very character of his face. He fancies that his friend Bedford may attribute one of his humours to the 'cut of his nose,' Certainly, it is impossible to look at Southey's portrait without admitting that a man with such a nose was predestined to a dogmatic self-complacency. ”

“ He knew he should never starve; he had even begun to believe again in his book. What he wanted to think of was Susy—or rather, it was Susy that he could not help thinking of, on whatever train of thought he set out.
Again and again he fancied he had established a truce with the past: had come to terms—the terms of defeat and failure with that bright enemy called happiness. And, in truth, he had reached the point of definitely knowing that he could never return to the kind of life that he and Susy had embarked on. ”

“ They could have had none of those hallowing influences both of society and solitude to act upon them, which had imbued his heart betimes, and impressed upon his youthful mind a character that no after circumstances could corrupt. They must inevitably have been exposed to more danger, and could not have been so well armed against it. ”

“ With a good conscience, therefore, the new society proceeded to deal with all vicious and criminal persons as morally insane, and to segregate them in places of confinement, there to spend their lives--not, indeed, under punishment, or enduring hardships of any sort beyond enough labor for self-support, but wholly secluded from the world--and absolutely prevented from continuing their kind. ”

“ But there is an original pravity which deserves to be so called in the darkest import of the term,—an inborn and incurable disease of the moral being, manifested as soon as it has strength to show itself; and wherever this is perceived in earliest youth, it may too surely be predicted what is to be expected when all controul of discipline is removed. Of those that bring with them such a disposition into the world, it cannot be said that they fall into sin, because it is too manifest that they seek and pursue it as the bent of their nature. ”

“ I know it well; your motives could only be excellent ones,” replied the Jesuit. “Why then did you take this resolution, so much called in question? Was it to brave established etiquette? no! for you respected them until the hate of Mme. de Saint-Dizier forced you to withdraw yourself from her unbearable guardianship. Was it to live alone, to escape the eyes of the world? no! you would be a hundred times more open to observation in this than any other condition. Was it to make a bad use of your liberty? no, ah, no! those who design evil seek for darkness and solitude ”