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The haggard, unshaven face told the usual story of the derelict, but something in the face perhaps the abject fear that glowered in the eyes sounded before he knew it the depths of pity in the little clerk's heart. Mr. Neal tried to talk to him, but there was no ready beggar's tale to be poured into the ears of benevolence; there was only fear of the cold, and of misery, and of death.
But when the storm had passed, he was all benevolence, enduring all, forgiving all, like Lincoln. He compared himself with Don Quixote, and in many ways this comparison is the best. As Don Quixote, he created Dulcinea. It was not Don Quixote's fault that the lady of his thoughts, the ideal Dulcinea, proved to be just the uncouth peasant girl, Aldonza Lorenzo.
The modern reader is apt to indulge a smile when he reads in the ardent declamation of this time professions of a love of Virtue and praises of Universal Benevolence. We are impatient of abstractions and shy of capital letters. But it was no abstraction which carried a man with honour to the fevers and privations of Botany Bay, when he might have sought safety and fame in Paris.
Perhaps with Him, who regards equally the forlorn beggar stretched on the threshold, consumed by filth and disease, and the blooming beauty who avoids while she succours him, the offering of humanity scarcely expiates the involuntary disgust; yet such is the weakness of our nature, that there exists a degree of misery against which one's senses are not proof, and benevolence itself revolts at the appearance of the poor of Arras.
At the same time it was required that the capital stock should not be diminished. In the course of the debate over the law in 1796 considerable laissez faire sentiment was called out against the government's becoming a trader, notwithstanding that the purpose of the bill was benevolence and political advantage rather than financial gain.
I do not know whether you have seen him, but from the print I had imagined he was a large man, with dark eyes and hair, and a penetrating countenance. No such thing: he is a little, square, pale, flat-faced, good-natured-looking, fussy man, with very intelligent eyes, yet great credulity of countenance, and still greater benevolence.
When the uneasiness is either small in itself, or remote from us, it engages not the imagination, nor is able to convey an equal concern for the future and contingent good, as for the present and real evil Upon its acquiring greater force, we become so interested in the concerns of the person, as to be sensible both of his good and had fortune; and from that compleat sympathy there arises pity and benevolence.
It could not be said that Aram wanted benevolence, but it was dashed, and mixed with a certain scorn: the benevolence was the offspring of his nature; the scorn seemed the result of his pursuits.
His resentment for the imputations cast upon his country began to show itself soon after he had taken up his residence abroad. In "The Red Rover," which appeared in 1827, there are satirical references to the benevolence and piety of the moral missionaries which England had sent among us, and to the correctness and wisdom of current foreign opinion.
There is another similar antique charity in operation in Wiltshire, near Devizes, where, on one occasion, the dispenser of the benevolence, in the exercise of his privilege to feed the hungry, threw a loaf of bread into the carriage of George III. as the royal cortège passed the spot. The name of these post-mortem charities is legion.
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