It was instantly and eagerly snatched from hand to hand by the gay couple; and young Burney had the unspeakable relief of perceiving that this impulsive trial was successful. With expansive smiles they examined and discussed the charm of the complexion, the beauty of the features, and the sensibility and sweetness conveyed by their expression: and what was then the joy, the pride of heart, the soul’s delight of the subject of these memoirs, when those fastidious judges, and superior self-possessors of personal attractions, voluntarily and generously united in avowing that they could no longer wonder at his captivation.
As a statue he stood fixed before them; a smiling one, indeed; a happy one; but as breathless, as speechless, as motionless.
Mr. Greville then, with a laugh, exclaimed, “But why, Burney, why don’t you marry her?”
Whether this were uttered sportively, inadvertently, or seriously, young Burney took neither time nor reflection to weigh; but, starting forward with ingenuous transport, called out, “May I?”
No negative could immediately follow an interrogatory that had thus been invited; and to have pronounced one in another minute would have been too late; for the enraptured and ardent young lover, hastily construing a short pause into an affirmative, blithely left them to the enjoyment of their palpable amusement at his precipitancy; and flew, with extatic celerity, to proclaim himself liberated from all mundane shackles, to her with whom he thought eternal bondage would be a state celestial.
From this period, to that of their exquisitely happy union,
“Gallopp’d apace the fiery-footed steeds,”
that urged on Time with as much gay delight as prancing rapidity; for if they had not, in their matrimonial preparations, the luxuries of wealth, neither had they its fatiguing ceremonies; if they had not the security of future advantage, they avoided the torment of present procrastination; and if they had but little to bestow upon one another, they were saved, at least, the impatiency of waiting for the seals, signatures, and etiquettes of lawyers, to bind down a lucrative prosperity to survivorship.
To the mother of the bride, alone of her family, was confided, on the instant, this spontaneous, this sudden felicity. Little formality was requisite, before the passing of the marriage act, for presenting at the hymeneal altar its destined votaries; and contracts the most sacred could be rendered indissoluble almost at the very moment of their projection: a strange dearth of foresight in those legislators who could so little weigh the chances of a minor’s judgment upon what, eventually, may either suit his taste or form his happiness, for the larger portion of existence that commonly follows his majority.
This mother of the bride was of a nature so free from stain, so elementally white, that it would scarcely seem an hyperbole to denominate her an angel upon earth—if purity of mind that breathed to late old age the innocence of infancy, and sustained the whole intervening period in the constant practice of self-sacrificing virtue, with piety for its sole stimulus, and holy hope for its sole reward, can make pardonable the hazard of such an anticipating appellation,—from which, however, she, her humble self, would have shrunk as from sacrilege.