"Well! But they were not to marry him," said I impatiently.
"No; but they did not like Miss Matty to marry below her rank. You know, she was the rector's daughter, and somehow they are related to Sir Peter Arley; Miss Jenkyns thought a deal of that."
"Poor Miss Mattie!" said I.
—CRANFORD (Mrs. Gaskell).
The plentiful experiments, by various nations of late, in the difficult science of government by a democracy, have left some of us strongly of opinion that the ideal form of rule would be the despotism of the angel.
Failing the angel, however, one is reluctantly forced to the conclusion that despotism of any other kind is the very ... well, exactly the other thing.
The despotism of Mrs. Cooper was growing hard for Melicent to bear.
It was curious to watch the infatuated complacency with which she daily presided over that tableful of turbulent young lives, of whose springs of action she knew, and wished to know, nothing.
What she exacted was submission: nothing more. She did not desire to convince her children's understandings; only to hinder them from giving expression to their thoughts. As they sat in empty silence around her, while she prattled of trivialities, she congratulated herself on their docility. Like the Roman conquerors of old—"she made a solitude, and called it peace."
Miss Lathom had had the wit to see, within a week of her first arrival, the kind of service which was required of her. It was not asked that she should approve Mrs. Cooper's judgment; merely that she should not question it. So long as she kept the girls at lessons for the required number of hours, it did not matter how little they learned.