Hurrah for good people! Hurrah for happy people, wherever we can find them! Hurrah for the man who never allows his domestic felicity to be disturbed by any outward circumstances,—let his condition of life be among the highest or the lowest in the land! Hurrah for him who has the least ambition to gratify, except that of doing good to his neighbour! Hurrah for a grateful heart wherever it can be found! But whilst we thus laud the domestic comfort of real good people, let us not forget that they must have passed through many troubles and trials to gain that peace and serenity of mind, which our happy trio, Geoffery Gambado, his wife, and daughter, enjoyed. They had no affected display of superior accomplishments to delight society, and had no flattering encomiums passed upon them for their gentility. They were gentle, well informed, quiet, loveable people. They spoke that which they considered right, and always did the right thing as it ought to be done. The law which their good and excellent pastor taught them, they never departed from, viz. "That of doing to others, as they would others should do to them."
They kept the holiest law of true goodness, Love one another, in its perfect sense.
Doctor Gambado well knew who gave him a wife; and when he married, he resolved to perform the solemn vow he then made, and he kept his vow,—so did his wife her's,—and they were as happy a couple as could well be seen or known upon the face of the earth.
In his time, God's blessing was sought to enable him to keep his vow. There was no law then permitting men to go and be married without any asking of God's blessing upon such a step. Marriage was not then degraded into the unholy thing it is now, and conscience merely made to answer to a legal contract, which difference of opinion, or quarrels, or contrariety of disposition, may get dissolved in a divorce court. "For better for worse, for richer for poorer, till death us do part," is no longer the sole and solemn bond of matrimony. But the Doctor was a Christian in the noblest sense, and in domestic life his religion was his conscience, his wisdom, and his happiness. As little parade as man could make of outward profession was his study, but his heart was in the right place.
Where that is the case, ignorance and presumption, imposition and folly, are unknown. Men may ridicule simplicity of life and manners; but there is an honesty of heart superior to all affectation, which need never be afraid.
The troubles of life are always borne well by those who observe the law of God; and those who do not, never get any real release from them. They may get riches; they may hide the blush of coveteousness; but they have very little real comfort within themselves, because of the very changes which they themselves and all things around them undergo.
Doctor Gambado enjoyed every change of life, and lost no good condition either. He could look upon the calm sea with delight, and with the serenity of one who had not lived in vain. He always entertained the kindliest feelings of a brother for his sincere friend, Doctor Cassock, who used to drop in with any new number of the Spectator, and enjoy it. The domestic evenings spent in classical friendship are among the purest scholastic as well as domestic enjoyments.
Envy he had none, and therefore was most to be envied of those who, like Mr. Deuce, or anyone else, never enjoyed the happiness of another. Promote the welfare of another, and you will find your own comfort increased. Detract from another, and nothing but envy will be your increase.
The object with which this book was begun, and is finished, is to let you see, reader, how to make something out of that which might to many appear worse than nothing.
Suppose that sixteen drawings of this character were given you, with nothing but the heading of each chapter written under them,—would you have made out a more comprehensive description of the probability of their truth? There is some profit in the labour, if your heart is in any way cheered by beholding the ingenuity of man.