-
Articles/Ads
Article LONDON PLATITUDES. ← Page 6 of 13 →
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
London Platitudes.
PLATITUDE THE THIRD . I AM not one of that thoughtless class who permit good resolutions to long pine in their bosom-depositories . The seeds of good determinations soon ripen with me , and it is no flattery to myself to say that they sin-out up sometimes into
goodly trees . Many a man may have a holy and Christianlike thought playing at hide-and-seek in his heart , and so easily bestowed in its soft place that its entertainer shall be all but unconscious of it . However , we have Bacon ' s authority that good intentions , though God accept them , have but as little moment to man as good dreams ; and a non-realized
resolution , excellent though it be , has as little practical value as the noblest sermons in stones , preached to the most immediately accessible thereto , on Salisbury Plain . The good resolutions to which I thus indistinctly refer , bore relation to a certain visit to the Low Countries , which had long lain ripening in my mind . Like of this
pears , purposes kind are not the worse for being left a considerable time to ripen . If walls have ears , as we are assured they have by some sages who might have put their ears to better purpose than to ascertain so profitless a fact , walls may bear pears of purpose , and sun them into disintegration or dropping . Many things conduced to my desire to visit that ancient
land which sent its ships to cover the ocean with their whiteness . I have many things to say of these Low Lands , and lest I should say them all at once ( no slight infliction to the reader , and all the less considerate , too , since he is by no means yet prepared for it ); lest I should be tempted to make upon them at once , like " men in metal , " I say , I will draw myself suddenly up , arrest the thick-coming fancies , and , in the first instance , speak of a few of the things " of this world . "
It happened , a day or two after my rencontre with the crossing-sweeper , and while the means " wherewith" I should make the transit lay soddening in my mind , that I received an invitation to dine in that reverend and somewhat oldfashioned neighbourhood which boasts Cavendish-square as its sort of Capitol . Not being Michaelmashoweverthere
, , were no geese . My umbrella was seized by a sort of hybrid flunkey , neither man nor boy , the watercress binding to whose coat had not yet expanded into the three-leaved majesty of the lace of " a full footman . " This " briskly juvenal"
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
London Platitudes.
PLATITUDE THE THIRD . I AM not one of that thoughtless class who permit good resolutions to long pine in their bosom-depositories . The seeds of good determinations soon ripen with me , and it is no flattery to myself to say that they sin-out up sometimes into
goodly trees . Many a man may have a holy and Christianlike thought playing at hide-and-seek in his heart , and so easily bestowed in its soft place that its entertainer shall be all but unconscious of it . However , we have Bacon ' s authority that good intentions , though God accept them , have but as little moment to man as good dreams ; and a non-realized
resolution , excellent though it be , has as little practical value as the noblest sermons in stones , preached to the most immediately accessible thereto , on Salisbury Plain . The good resolutions to which I thus indistinctly refer , bore relation to a certain visit to the Low Countries , which had long lain ripening in my mind . Like of this
pears , purposes kind are not the worse for being left a considerable time to ripen . If walls have ears , as we are assured they have by some sages who might have put their ears to better purpose than to ascertain so profitless a fact , walls may bear pears of purpose , and sun them into disintegration or dropping . Many things conduced to my desire to visit that ancient
land which sent its ships to cover the ocean with their whiteness . I have many things to say of these Low Lands , and lest I should say them all at once ( no slight infliction to the reader , and all the less considerate , too , since he is by no means yet prepared for it ); lest I should be tempted to make upon them at once , like " men in metal , " I say , I will draw myself suddenly up , arrest the thick-coming fancies , and , in the first instance , speak of a few of the things " of this world . "
It happened , a day or two after my rencontre with the crossing-sweeper , and while the means " wherewith" I should make the transit lay soddening in my mind , that I received an invitation to dine in that reverend and somewhat oldfashioned neighbourhood which boasts Cavendish-square as its sort of Capitol . Not being Michaelmashoweverthere
, , were no geese . My umbrella was seized by a sort of hybrid flunkey , neither man nor boy , the watercress binding to whose coat had not yet expanded into the three-leaved majesty of the lace of " a full footman . " This " briskly juvenal"