Coelebs in Search of a Wife; Comprehending Observations on Domestic Habits and Manners, Religion and Morals

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1810 edition. Excerpt: ... Sir, the more you will admire them ; for their good qualitics are kept back, by the beat quality of all, their modesty." This candid and liberal praise did not sink the fair culogist herself in my esteem. CHAP. xvn. I HAD now becn above threc wecks at the Grove. Ever since my arrival I had contracted the habit of pouring out mv heart to Mr. and .Mrs. Stanley, with grateful affection and filial confidence. I still continucd to do it on all subjects except one. The more I saw of Lucilla, the more difficult I found it to resist her numberless attractions. I could not persuade myself that either prudence or duty demanded that I should guard my heart agamst such a combmation of amiable virtucs and gentle graces; virtucs and graces, which, as I observed before, my mind had long bcen combining as a delightful idea, and which I now saw realized in a form more engaging than even my own imagination had allowed itself to picture. I did not fecl courage suffieicnt to risk the happiness I actually enjoyed by aspiring too suddenly to a happiness more perfect. I dared not yet avow to the parents, or the daughter, feclings which, my fears told me, might possibly be diseouraged, and which, if diseouraged, would at once dash to the ground a fabric of felicity that my heart, not my fancy, had erected, and which my taste, my judgment, and my principles equally approved, and delighted to contemplate. The great critic of antiquity, in his treatise on the drama, observes that the introduction of a new person is of the next importance to a new incident. Whether the introduction of two interlocutors is equal in importance so two incidents, Aristotle has forgotten to establish. This dramatic rule was illustrated by the arrival of Sir John and Lady Belfield, who,...