The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886Ontario. Department of Education
General
The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886
Ontario. Department of Education
Readers (Secondary)
From the entrance into this unnatural war, his natural cheerfulness and
vivacity grew clouded, and a kind of sadness and dejection of spirit
stole upon him, which he had never been used to; yet being one of those
who believed that one battle would end all differences, and that there
would be so great a victory on one side, that the other would be
compelled to submit to any conditions from the victor--which supposition
and conclusion generally sunk into the minds of most men, and prevented
the looking after many advantages that might then have been laid hold
of--he resisted those indispositions. But after the king's return from
Brentford, and the furious resolution of the two Houses not to admit any
treaty for peace, those indispositions, which had before touched him,
grew into a perfect habit of uncheerfulness; and he, who had been so
exactly unreserved and affable to all men, that his face and countenance
was always present, and vacant, to his company, and held any cloudiness,
and less pleasantness of the visage, a kind of rudeness or incivility,
became, on a sudden, less communicable; and thence, very sad, pale, and
exceedingly affected with the spleen. In his clothes and habit, which he
had minded before always with more neatness, and industry, and expense,
than is usual to so great a soul, he was not now only incurious, but too
negligent; and in his reception of suitors, and the necessary or casual
addresses to his place, so quick, and sharp, and severe, that there
wanted not some men--strangers to his nature and disposition--who
believed him proud and imperious; from which no mortal man was ever more
free....
When there was any overture or hope of peace, he would be more erect and
vigorous, and exceedingly solicitous to press anything which he thought
might promote it; and sitting among his friends, often, after a deep
silence, and frequent sighs, would, with a shrill and sad accent,
ingeminate the word _Peace, Peace_; and would passionately profess,
"that the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and
desolation the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and
would shortly break his heart." This made some think, or pretend to
think, "that he was so much enamoured of peace, that he would have been
glad the king should have bought it at any price;" which was a most
unreasonable calumny. As if a man, that was himself the most punctual
and precise in every circumstance that might reflect upon conscience or
honor, could have wished the king to have committed a trespass against
either....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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