Now that he is in his right, why does he look
blushingly uneasy, as if he would call on the curtains to hide him, and
the cushions to cover him? Have any mortals existed so good, or great,
or wise, as to be exempt from that dreadful poll-tax levied on all males
unprivileged to woo by proxy--the necessity of looking ridiculous from
the moment their engagement is announced to that when they leave the
church as Benedicts? I should like to have watched Burke, or Herschel,
or the Iron Duke, or _any_ Archbishop of Canterbury, through the ordeal
of a recognized courtship. Would the dignity of the statesman, the sage,
the soldier, or the saint have been sustained? I trow not.
In truth, it is a sight full of sad warning, that ever-recurring
spectacle of an engaged man (the lady is always provokingly at her ease)
in general society. His friends turn away in compassion and charity; the
girls, whom he ought to have married and--didn't, look on, exchanging
smiles with their mothers; it is their hour of savage triumph. The
French manage things more comfortably, I think. The promessi sposi meet
so seldom before the contract is signed--between sentence and execution
the time is so brief that there is little space for intermediate
terrors.
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