It is not love that steals the heart from love;
'Tis the hard world and its perplexing cares,
Its petrifying selfishness, its pride,
Its low ambition, and its paltry aims.
There was none of that “petrifying selfishness” in the little circle which lost so much when Deborah was removed from her father's parsonage. In order that that loss might be less painfully felt, it was proposed by Mr. Allison that Sunday should always be kept at the Grange when the season or the weather permitted. The Doctor came if he could; but for Mrs. Dove it was always to be a holiday.
“The pleasures of a volatile head,” says Mrs. Carter, “are much less liable to disappointment, than those of a sensible heart.” For such as can be contented with rattles and raree-shows, there are rattles and raree-shows in abundance to content them; and when one is broken it is mighty easily replaced by another. But the pleasures arising from the endearments of social relations, and the delicate sensibilities of friendly affection, are more limited, and their objects incontrovertible; they are accompanied with perpetual tender solicitude, and subject to accidents not to be repaired beneath the Sun. It is no wonder however that the joys of folly should have their completion in a world with which they are to end, while those of higher order must necessarily be incompleat in a world where they are only to begin.1
1 From the writing of the latter paragraph I should judge this to be one of the latest sentences Southey ever wrote.—In the MS. it was to have followed c. cxxxv. vol. iv. p. 361.
FRAGMENT WHICH WAS TO HAVE ANSWERED THE QUESTION PROPOSED IN THE TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-SECOND CHAPTER.
Io udii già dire ad un valente uomo nostro vicino, gli uomini abbiano molte volte bisogno sì di lagrimare, come di ridere; e per tal cagione egli affermava essere state da principio trovate le dolorose favole, che si chiamarono Tragedie, accioche raccontate ne' teatri, come in qual tempo si costumava di fare, tirassero le lagrime agli occhi di coloro, che avevano di ciò mestiere; e cosi eglino piangendo della loro infirmita guarissero. Ma come ciò sia a noi non istà bene di contristare gli animi delle persone con cui favelliamo; massimamente colà dove si dimori per aver festa e sollazzo, e non per piagnere; che se pure alcuno è, che infermi per vaghezza di lagrimare, assai leggier cosa fia di medicarlo con la mostarda forte, o porlo in alcun luogo al fumo.
GALATEO, DEL M. GIOVANNI DELLA CASA.