aging marriage and denouncing
offspring, has insidiously crept into the very core of private families,
setting children against parents and parents against children, because a
cold expediency winks at the decay of morals, and all united social
influences strike at the sacrifice of Heart.

We are forgetting you, poor affectionate Maria, and yet will it comfort
your charity to listen. For the time is coming--yea, now is--when a more
generous, though poorer age will condemn the Mammon phrensy of that
which has preceded it. Boldly do we push our standards in advance,
pressing on the flying foe, certain that a gallant band will follow.
Fearlessly, here and there, is heard the voice of some solitary zealot,
some isolated missionary for love, and truth, and philanthropic good,
some dauntless apostle in the cause of Heart, denouncing selfish wealth
as the canker of society: and, hark! that voice is not alone; there is a
murmur on the breeze as the sound of many waters; it comes, it comes!
and the young have caught it up; and manhood hears the thrilling strain
that sinks into his soul; and old age, feebly listening, wonders (never
too late) that he had not hitherto been wiser; and the whole social
universe electrically touched from man to man, I hear them in their
new-born generosities, penitently shouting "God and Heart!" even louder
than they execrate the memory of Dagon.

CHAPTER IV.

EXCUSATORY.

It really may be numbered among doubts whether it is possible to
exaggerate the dangers into which a fictionist may fall. My marvel is,
that any go unstabbed. How on earth did Cervantes continue to grow old,
after having pointed the finger of derision at all grave Spain? There is
Boccaccio, too; he lived to turn threescore, in spite of the thousand
husbands and wives, who might pretty well imagine that he spoke of them.
Only consider how many villains, drawn to the life, Walter Scott
created. What! were there no heads found to fit his many caps, hats,
helmets, and other capillary properties? What! are we so blind, so few
of friends, that we cannot each pick out of our social circles Mrs.
Gore's Dowager, Mrs. Grey's Flirt, Mrs. Trollope's Widow, and Boz's Mrs.
Nickleby? Who can help thinking of his lawyer, when he makes
acquaintance with those immortal firms Dodson and Fogg, or Quirk, Snap,
and Gammon? Is not Wrexhill libellous, and Dr. Hookwell personal? Arise!
avenge them both, ye zealous congregations! Why slumber pist