Great Britain -- History -- Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649-1660 -- Fiction; Historical fiction
The features of the Wanderer were harsh as ever, but his red shock
peruke, for such it proved, was laid aside, his sable elf-locks were
trained, by a little of Joceline’s assistance, into curls, and his fine
black eyes shone from among the shade of these curls, and corresponded
with the animated, though not handsome, character of the whole head. In
his conversation, he had laid aside all the coarseness of dialect which
he had so strongly affected on the preceding evening; and although he
continued to speak a little Scotch, for the support of his character as
a young gentleman of that nation, yet it was not in a degree which
rendered his speech either uncouth or unintelligible, but merely
afforded a certain Doric tinge essential to the personage he
represented. No person on earth could better understand the society in
which he moved; exile had made him acquainted with life in all its
shades and varieties;—his spirits, if not uniform, were elastic—he had
that species of Epicurean philosophy, which, even in the most extreme
difficulties and dangers, can, in an interval of ease, however brief,
avail itself of the enjoyments of the moment—he was, in short, in youth
and misfortune, as afterwards in his regal condition, a good-humoured
but hard-hearted voluptuary—wise, save where his passions
intervened—beneficent, save when prodigality had deprived him of the
means, or prejudice of the wish, to confer benefits—his faults such as
might often have drawn down hatred, but that they were mingled with so
much urbanity, that the injured person felt it impossible to retain the
full sense of his wrongs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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