Bungay Castle: A Novel. v. 1/2Bonhote, Mrs. (Elizabeth)
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Bungay Castle: A Novel. v. 1/2
Bonhote, Mrs. (Elizabeth)
English fiction -- 18th century
The life, which she fancied, under Providence, she had been the
humble means of preserving, she concluded it was now her duty to
render happy; therefore, to deprive it of its value, by affecting an
indifference she did not feel, was as far from her power as her
inclination; yet there were moments when she recollected, with the
severest anguish, how much her brother, as well as herself, was acting
in opposition to the designs and will of her parent. To deceive such
parents was a thought which, in her most impassioned moments, she
could not dwell upon, but love and sensibility had woven their webs
so close around her heart, that she struggled in vain to disentangle
herself from the bewitching snare.
Sensibility I have long thought, nine times out of ten, proves a
source of misery to the generous and benevolent, and as often is
merely the boast of the ignorant, who pretend to be overstocked with
the milk of human kindness, and whose feelings are equally excited
by the death of a husband or a lap-dog. I am satisfied there is no
blessing more earnestly to be wished for than a calm and composed
resignation to the events of this life, and all its complicated
concerns.--It appears rather an Irishism, that to be happy we must
become indifferent,--but so it is.
Real sensibility is of all burthens the heaviest to bear. Long
experience and careful observation have convinced me too painfully
of this truth. A thousand and a thousand times I have shed torrents
of tears, and felt the most tormenting anxiety for those who would
have seen me with the most stoical apathy begging through the street
for bread. The pleasures attending high-raised sensibility are so
much over-balanced by the painful effects they produce, that I protest
I had rather be an oak, or a cabbage, than alive to such every-varying
and corrosive feelings, which act upon the human mind as slow poison
would upon the body.
When Roseline was going to bed, the servant who attended her, and
who, from having lived some years in the family, was indulged in
the habit of conversing familiarly with the young ladies, determined
to get rid of a kind of confidential secret, which had been entrusted
to her by one of her fellow-servants.
"Laws, Miss Roseline, (said she,) what think you that frightful old
Baron comed here for?--As I live I should not have dreamed of any
thing so ludicurst!"--
"Came for? (replied Roseline,)--why he came to see my father to be
sure;--what else could be his inducement for visiting this
stupid place?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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