Moi
qui vous parais leger, je ne ferai jamais rien qui puisse m'attirer
la desapprobation du monde. On peut se permettre de petites libertes,
d'aimables plaisanteries, qui annoncent de l'independance dans la
maniere d'agir; car, quand cela touche au serieux.'--'Mais le
serieux, repondit Lord Nelvil, 'c'est l'amour et le
bonheur.'"--_Corinne_, liv. ix. ch. 1.]
In reference to these passages, the Edinburgh reviewer remarks:
"Nothing can be more reasonable; and we should certainly live in a
more peaceful (if not more entertaining) world, if nobody in it
reproved another until he had so far identified himself with the
culprit as to be sure of the justice of the reproof; perhaps, also,
if a fiddler were rated higher in society than a duke without
accomplishments, and a carpenter far higher than either. But neither
reasoning nor gallantry will alter the case, nor prevail over the
world's prejudice against unequal marriages, any more than its
prejudices in favour of birth and fashion. It has never been quite
established to the satisfaction of the philosophic mind, why the rule
of society should be that 'as the husband, so the wife is,' and why a
lady who contracts a marriage below her station is looked on with far
severer eyes than a gentleman _qui s'encanaille_ to the same degree.
But these things are so,--as the next dame of rank and fortune, and
widow of an M.P., who, rashly relying on Mr. Hayward's assertion that
the world has grown wiser, espouses a foreign 'professional,' will
assuredly find to her cost, although she may escape the ungenerous
public attacks which poor Mrs.
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