The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray

Author:William Makepeace Thackeray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ManyBooks.net

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CHAPTER L

Contains a Great deal of the Finest Morality

When first we had the honour to be presented to Sir Miles Warrington at the King's drawing-room, in St. James's Palace, I confess that I, for one--looking at his jolly round face, his broad round waistcoat, his hearty country manner,--expected that I had lighted upon a most eligible and agreeable acquaintance at last, and was about to become intimate with that noblest specimen of the human race, the bepraised of songs and men, the good old English country gentleman. In fact, to be a good old country gentleman is to hold a position nearest the gods, and at the summit of earthly felicity. To have a large unencumbered rent-roll, and the rents regularly paid by adoring farmers, who bless their stars at having such a landlord as his honour; to have no tenant holding back with his money, excepting just one, perhaps, who does so in order to give occasion to Good Old Country Gentleman to show his sublime charity and universal benevolence of soul; to hunt three days a week, love the sport of all things, and have perfect good health and good appetite in consequence; to have not only good appetite, but a good dinner; to sit down at church in the midst of a chorus of blessings from the villagers, the first man in the parish, the benefactor of the parish, with a consciousness of consummate desert, saying, "Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners," to be sure, but only for form's sake, because the words are written in the book, and to give other folks an example--a G. O. C. G. a miserable sinner! So healthy, so wealthy, so jolly, so much respected by the vicar, so much honoured by the tenants, so much beloved and admired by his family, amongst whom his story of grouse in the gunroom causes laughter from generation to generation;--this perfect being a miserable sinner! Allons donc! Give any man good health and temper, five thousand a year, the adoration of his parish, and the love and worship of his family, and I'll defy you to make him so heartily dissatisfied with his spiritual condition as to set himself down a miserable anything. If you were a Royal Highness, and went to church in the most perfect health and comfort, the parson waiting to begin the service until your R. H. came in, would you believe yourself to be a miserable, etc.? You might when racked with gout, in solitude, the fear of death before your eyes, the doctor having cut off your bottle of claret, and ordered arrowroot and a little sherry,--you might then be humiliated, and acknowledge your own shortcomings, and the vanity of things in general; but, in high health, sunshine, spirits, that word miserable is only a form. You can't think in your heart that you are to be pitied much for the present. If you are to be miserable, what is Colin Ploughman, with the ague, seven

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