No peace of families is violated--for no family
ties exist among them. No purity of the marriage bed is stained--for
none is supposed to have a being. No deep affections are disquieted,
no holy wedlock bands are snapped asunder--for affection's depth and
wedded faith are not of the growth of that soil. There is neither right
nor wrong,--gratitude or its opposite,--claim or duty,--paternity or
sonship. Of what consequence is it to Virtue, or how is she at all
concerned about it, whether Sir Simon or Dapperwit steal away Miss
Martha; or who is the father of Lord Froth's or Sir Paul Pliant's
children?
The whole is a passing pageant, where we should sit as unconcerned at
the issues, for life or death, as at the battle of the frogs and mice.
But, like Don Quixote, we take part against the puppets, and quite as
impertinently. We dare not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme out of
which our coxcombical moral sense is for a little transitory ease
excluded. We have not the courage to imagine a state of things for
which there is neither reward nor punishment.
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