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Untitled Article
Knotting how miserable she would be , insisted oti going , notwUfrstanding all that dould be Urged by the watermen , drby Mr . Marten * who earnestly entreated her to return So his house , and wait for bettet weather . Finding her resolutely bent to venture her life rather than disappoint a fond parent , he told her * as she had brought herself i # jU > that perilous situation on his account , he thought himself obliged , both
in honour and conscience , to share the danger with her ; and having , with difficulty , persuaded some watermen to attempt the passage , they got into the boat . Just as they put off , Mr . Marvell threw his goldheaded cane on shore , to some of his friends , who attended at the water-side , telling them , that as he could not suffer the young lady to go alone , and as ne apprehended the consequence might be fatal , if h& perished , he desired them to give that cane to his son , and bid him remember his father . Thus armed with innocence , and his fair charge
with filial duty , they set forward to meet their inevitable fate . Tba boat was upset , and they were both lost . " '—pp . 3 , 4 * This anecdote is worth dissecting , as a full * blown specimen of the false morality which passes current amongst good and respectable people * It is the prevailing morality of sermons , tracts , and catechisms ; it is the common-place morality of common-place biography ; and yet it is most silly , false , and mis *
chievous . The virtuous add sensible lady on the other side of the Humber , and the pious Mr . Marvell on the Kingston side of the Humber , and the dutiful young lady who took him with berself to the bottom of the Humber , were , so far as they figure in this narrative , something worse than all fools together ; they were all vicious together , if there be any rational standard of
virtue and vice , and should have been characterized by very different terms from those adopted by the biographer . He has tacked the wrong moral to the tale . We do not blame him for this—it is the Way in which most people talk—but they talk so because they have not learned to think . Morality will be better understood in a generation or two .
Now , first , as to the virtue and good sense' of the lady vho stood s 6 high in Mr . MarVelPs estimation . There is neither one nor the other in the sort of fondness for her daughter which is ascribed to her ; it is only a selfish and unreasoning attachment . Parental afffection is tit best but a folly , if its manifestations do not tend to expand the faculties and promote the happiness of its object : neither could be advanced by the exaction of Seclustoa which is here described . That the lady could not spare her
daughter , showed only that the lady loved herself very much better than she loved her daughter The affection of the daughter might induce her to deny herself the means of enjoyment and improvement , but it could not be affection that exacted of her the iself-denml . True affection looks first to the happiness of its Object , and only think * , ill the ^ second place , of its owi happiness in the object ; and there is something wrong , or imperfect , if the firstly and the secondly be nol coincident . O the tricks that * re
Untitled Article
On the 3 f ordUtp of Andrei Martdti Father . U 3
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1832, page 763, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1824/page/43/
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