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It will scarcely be doubted that our hungry travellers did full justice to the fare set before them. When they had finished, they went into the public room, where were engaged some of the village worthies, intent on discussing the news and the political questions of the day. It was a time of considerable political excitement, and this naturally supplied the topic of conversation.
After a visit to Nearminster, where Miss Unity's library consisted of rows and rows of solemn old brown volumes, Pennie's stories were chiefly religious and biographical, taken, with additional touches of her own, from the lives of bygone worthies.
Profound capacity, indeed, undaunted courage, extensive enterprise; in these particulars, perhaps, the Roman do not much surpass the English worthies: but what a difference, when the discourse, conduct, conversation, and private as well as public behavior of both are inspected! Compare only one circumstance, and consider its consequences.
Having fairly pinned these worthies into a corner, and knowing that the only two small boats I had left on board would stand no chance with them in pulling, to make sure of my prizes I loaded the two foremost guns on each side, and, having no proper chart of the coast, proceeded under easy sail, feeling my way into the bay with the lead.
We did little day and night but listen for the sound of Sherman's guns and discuss what we would do when he came. We planned schemes of terrible vengeance on Barrett and Iverson, but these worthies had mysteriously disappeared whither no one knew. There was hardly an hour of any night passed without some one of us fancying that he heard the welcome sound of distant firing.
He then banteringly advised them to import six shiploads of hellebore of the very best quality, and on its arrival to distribute it among the citizens, at least seven pounds per head, but to the senators double that quantity, as they were bound to have an extra supply of sense. By the time these worthies discovered that they had been laughed at, Hippocrates was out of their reach.
Among these worthies a British eye soon distinguishes Sir Joshua Reynolds; a citizen of the world fastens his to Leonardo da Vinci. I have been out to dinner in the country near Prato, and what a charming, what a delightful thing is a nobleman's seat near Florence! How cheerful the society! how splendid the climate! how wonderful the prospects in this glorious country!
What a race of worthies, what patriots, what heroes must we expect from mothers of this make? I come in the next place to consider the ill consequences which gaming has on the bodies of our female adventurers. It is so ordered, that almost every thing which corrupts the soul decays the body. The beauties of the face and mind are generally destroyed by the same means.
It is quite impossible to over-state its worth. You lift it, and immediately the intervening years disappear, and you are in the presence of the Doctor. You are made free of the last century, as you are free of the present. You double your existence. The book is a letter of introduction to a whole knot of departed English worthies.
As the council is held, nominally at least, for the purpose of condolence, and as it necessarily revives the memory of the departed worthies of their republic, it is natural that the ceremonies throughout should be of a melancholy cast. They were doubtless so from the beginning, and before there was any occasion to deplore the decay of their commonwealth or the degeneracy of the age.
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