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"And Rashleigh indulged your propensity to learning?" "Why, he wished to have me for his scholar, and he could but teach me that which he knew himself he was not likely to instruct me in the mysteries of washing lace-ruffles, or hemming cambric handkerchiefs, I suppose." "I admit the temptation of getting such a scholar, and have no doubt that it made a weighty consideration on the tutor's part."
"It may be supposed," answered Harley, "that inspiration of old was an article of religious faith; in modern times it may be translated a propensity to compose; and I believe it is not always most readily found where the poets have fixed its residence, amidst groves and plains, and the scenes of pastoral retirement.
These are so many constant temptations in their way to revert to their former heathenish principles and savage manners, to which they have always a strong natural propensity; and when this propensity is continually inflamed by the solicitations of their unconverted brethren, or the arrival of new companions from the coast of Guinea, it frequently becomes very difficult to be resisted, and counteracts, in a great degree, all the influence and exhortations of their religious teachers.
Some of them have become publicans, others coach-proprietors, and not a few of them smugglers on the coasts and frontiers,—a propensity, however, to which they have always been addicted, even in the times of their greatest prosperity. We have spoken of the ultramontanism of the Spanish clergy.
"But, Doctor," said Sir John, "pray what remedy do you recommend against this natural, I had almost said this invincible, propensity to over-value the world?
If our friend has been a wit in his youth, the propensity to jocularity still survives; but the jests are generally such as you meet with in the very earliest editions of Mr Joseph Miller, though, for the sake of variety, they are often ascribed to the late facetious Mr Joseph Jekyll, or Mr Henry Erskine, or to some other of the Fogie's early contemporaries, if indeed the Fogie himself is not the hero of the tale.
He, who on this principle performs an action, though it may be highly disagreeable to him, or abstains from another though it may be highly desirable, is a conscientious man. Such a man, under the influence of habit, comes to act more and more easily under the suggestions of conscience, and to be more and more set free from every feeling and propensity that is opposed to it.
'Do you know what that proves? said Tom, with an arch subsmile lighting on his eyes and mouth; and as a glow awoke on her pale cheek, he added, 'and won't you believe, too, that my propensity to "contemptuous irony" was all from my instinctive fear of what you could do to me! 'Oh, don't repeat that! I have been so bitterly ashamed of it! 'I am sure I have.
Delicious tears sprang to her eyes; she perceived that Matilda was indeed a different creature; that she had not only conquered a disgraceful propensity, but acquired a habit of generous attention to others, of which there was at one period no hopes in her character.
"I am afraid," it goes, "I have almost ruined one source, the principal one, indeed, of my former happiness the eternal propensity I always had to fall in love. My heart no more glows with feverish rapture; I have no paradisiacal evening interviews." Even the process of "battering" has failed him, you perceive.
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