Читать книгу Dr. Wainwright's Patient. A Novel онлайн

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Did not the fairest of the fair Common grow, and wearisome, ere /Ever a month had passed away?

Middle-aged man has other aims, other resources, other objects. The "court, camp, grove, the vessel and the mart," fame, business, ambition--all of these have claims upon his time, claims which he is compelled to recognise in their proper season; and, worst of all, he has recovered from the attacks of the "cruel madness of love," a youthful disorder, seldom or never taken in middle life; the glamour which steeped all surrounding objects in roseate hues no longer exists, and it is impossible to get up any spurious imitations of it. Time has taught him common sense; he has made friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; and instead of wandering about the grounds begging Maud to come out to him, and singing rapturous nonsense to the flowers, he is indoors dining with the Tory squires. But the young have but one idea in the world. They are entirely of opinion, with Mr. Coleridge's hero, that all thoughts, "all passions, all delights that stir this mortal frame," are "ministers of love," and "feed his sacred flame." Perpetually to play at that sweet game of lips, to alternate between the heights of hope and the depths of despair, to pine for a glance and to be made happy by a word, to have no care for anything else, to ignore the friends in whose society you have hitherto found such delight, to shut your eyes knowingly, wilfully, and resolutely to the sight of everything but one object, and to fall down and persistently adore that object in the face of censure, contempt, and obloquy, is granted to but few men over thirty years of age. Let them not be ashamed of the weakness, rather let them congratulate themselves on its possession: it will give a zest and flavour to their middle life which but few enjoy.