388 The Golden City. [OCT. 



Mannings was a pathetic love of brute pets. The sitting-room, into 

 which Maurice was ushered, contained two old dogs and a puppy, a 

 parrot, a cat without a tail, and a lamb ; Juliet was nursing a kitten, 

 and three of her brothers were in tears William, because his last 

 pigeon was just dead, and John and Thomas, because the tame hawk of 

 the one had slain the tame mouse of the other. In short, it was impos- 

 sible to walk across the room, much less to approach the fire, without 

 breaking the tail or the leg of some antiquated favourite, and such an 

 accident was certain to call forth so much tenderness of feeling, that 

 the author of it wished he had only murdered all the family. The pre- 

 sent spectacle was deeply interesting. Juliet looked pleased, and wel- 

 comed her lover : but she could not rise without disturbing the kitten ; 

 her brothers sat bemoaning themselves with undiminished grief, and 

 the dogs lay luxuriously on the hearth-rug : but shortly after the scene 

 was wholly changed ; the mourners leaped up and dried their tears ; 

 the kitten was laid aside in a little bed, and the dogs raised their un- 

 wieldy bodies upon their insufficient legs. Maurice did not at first 

 comprehend the reason, but was speedily informed that Mr. Manning 

 had just sounded a horn, to intimate that he was awaiting them at the 

 pond to entertain their tender sensibilities with the diversion of a duck- 

 hunt. He accompanied them, and witnessed the sport, which was highly 

 satisfactory ; the duck, indeed, died from exhaustion, but, as it was not 

 a pet, its sufferings excited no commiseration, and its death no sorrow. 



In a happier frame of mind, Maurice would have excused the incon- 

 sistency and thoughtless cruelty which he witnessed, but he had be- 

 gan to despise the actors in the scene, and therefore felt little tender- 

 ness for their failings. Juliet, in particular, he condemned with unmea- 

 sured severity, and contrasted the unbridled gaiety of her demeanour 

 with the calm dignity of the ladies at Nutbridge-park, till he concluded 

 that she was vulgar as well as silly, and combined ill-breeding with a 

 want of sensibility. As he had once erred in exalting her foibles to 

 the rank of virtues, so he now did by exaggerating them to the dignity 

 of crimes. 



Hundreds imagine themselves persons of refined taste or excellent 

 morality, when they are, in fact, only ill-tempered ; they feel contempt 

 because they are bilious ; and when they are overwhelmed with spleen, 

 they dignify their ailments with the idea of conscious superiority, 

 pity their friends, and write satires. Such, at least, was the foundation 

 of the discontent of Maurice. He struggled to conceal the change in his 

 sentiments, but was not so far successful as to avoid wounding the feel- 

 ings of Juliet ; for his attentions were less spontaneous than usual, and 

 his thoughts so abstracted, that when, by way of experiment, she drop- 

 ped her glove, she was compelled, half- weeping with mortification, to 

 pick it up again with her own hand. 



He concluded his visit, little pleased with his friends, and far less 

 with himself; and as he rode home, he wrought himself up to the reso- 

 lution, that he would without delay seek his fortune in that El Dorado, 

 which had raised so far above him persons whom he had once deemed 

 little more than his equals. 



Mr. Johnson was a man who had no idea of arguing, and whether 

 right or wrong, he always got into a passion ; whence it arose, that the 

 urgency of Maurice in pressing the execution of his plan a plan, of 

 which he saw the folly more clearly than he could explain it led to an 



