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Perhaps, after too much of our florid literature, we find an adventitious charm in what is so different; and while the big drums are beaten every day by perspiring editors over the loss of a cock-boat or the rejection of a clause, and nothing is heard that is not proclaimed with sound of trumpet, it is not wonderful if we retire with pleasure into old books, and listen to authors who speak small and clear, as if in a private conversation.
"I am content if the others are willing not that for me the pleasure of playing against you needs any such er adventitious stimulus." Miss Gabriel appealed to Mr. Rogers. Mr. Rogers thought it would be great fun. "Come along, Vigoureux," he almost shouted, "you can't refuse a lady's challenge!" What could the poor Commandant do?
Trevanion to himself, and perhaps he was right in believing that nothing but a deep and true affection one which was founded on no adventitious circumstances, but on the immovable basis of esteem could have enabled her to resist the blandishments which surrounded her in her present position.
In most novels, for instance, the attempt is made to interest us in worthless, commonplace people, whom, if we had our choice, we would far rather not meet at all, by surrounding them with peculiar and extraordinary circumstances; but this is a low source of interest. Wordsworth was determined to owe nothing to such an adventitious cause.
The plastic arts begin, therefore, with adventitious ornament and with symbolism. The aesthetic pleasure is in the richness of the material, the profusion of the ornament, the significance of the shape in everything, rather than in the shape itself. We have accordingly, in works of art two independent sources of effect.
Whether this incongruous friendship friendship! no, I will not so far sully the sacred name as thus to term the unnatural union that subsisted between us; whether this intimacy, then, sprang from the adventitious circumstance of our being more frequently thrown together as officers of the same company, for we were both attached to the grenadiers, or that my wild spirit was soothed by the bland amenity of his manners, I know not.
But Marcius, having a more passionate inclination than any of that age for feats of war, began from his very childhood to handle arms; and feeling that adventitious implements and artificial arms would be of small use to such as have not their natural weapons well prepared for services, he so exercised and inured his body to all sorts of activity and accouter, that, besides the lightness of a racer, he had a weight in close seizures and wrestlings with an enemy, from which it was hard for anybody to disengage himself; so that his competitors at home in displays of bravery, loath to own themselves inferior in that respect, were wont to ascribe their deficiencies to his strength of body, which they said no resistance and no fatigue could exhaust.
A fraction of the present wealth which was in the possession of some of the leading families of the nobility may have been purely adventitious, the result of the lucky accident of command and conquest amidst a wealthy and pliant people.
But such is the adventitious charm of fancy, that we find men who have violated the best principles of society, and ruined their fame and their fortune, that they might possess a woman of rank. It would not be proper to record the particulars of such a conversation in moments of unreserved frankness, when nobody was present on whom it could have any hurtful effect.
It suffices that a vivid impression should once have cut its way into the mind and settled there in a fertile soil; it will entwine itself at once with its chance neighbours and these adventitious relations will pass henceforth for a part of the fact. Repetition, however, is a good means of making or keeping impressions vivid and almost the only means of keeping them unchanged.
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