The Life and Adventures of Paul Plaintive, Esq , by Martin Gribaldus Swammerdam

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Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012 M02 1 - 90 pages
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1811 Excerpt: ... money is added, how great and how lasting may not the effect be. Few, however, possess this character: it costs them less to give a guinea than to give an hour: but Mr. Walton, who knew the exact value of both, took care so to compound and unite them that they mutually assisted each other. What a delightful task it is to trace the character of a good man! the contemplation of his virtues seems to fill us with a love of virtue, which elevates our hearts and minds beyond their usual level. A gentle calm, a placid feeling of innocence, pervades our bosoms, and we turn from the subject with the same reluctance as an admirer of nature withdraws his yet unsatiated eye from the hills and vallies, the streams and woods of some enchanting prospect. I could enlarge much more upon the amiable qualities of Mr. Walton, but other matters are crouding upon me, and I must leave my reader's imagination to fill up, with its brightest colours, with its most delicate and happy touches, the interesting outline that I have traced. Do it boldly, you cannot err; paint him what your fancy would have a good man to be, and you will delineate his portrait. I never knew one more worthy of a master's hand; and if I had time, (you will call this vanity, and so perhaps it is) I would sit down to the task with morepleasure than an alderman does to his turtle soup. Ignoble comparison! let me mend it. Yes, I would sit down to the task with more heart-felt felicity, than the philosopher does to his experiments, the mathematician to his calculations, the poet to his desk, or the conqueror before a town which he is sure to take. This, perhaps, is not a muqh better illustration; but accept it as kindly as it is offered, and we shall not quarrel. Mr. Walton, as I have before said, suffered the f...

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