, he little
thought to what, or considered how; but still his feeling towards her, such as
it was, remained as at first. She had the grand demerit of unaccountably putting
herself in opposition to the recognition of his vast importance, and to the
acknowledgment of her complete submission to it, and so far it was necessary to
correct and reduce her; but otherwise he still considered her, in his cold way,
a lady capable of doing honour, if she would, to his choice and name, and of
reflecting credit on his proprietorship.
    Now, she, with all her might of passionate and proud resentment, bent her
dark glance from day to day, and hour to hour - from that night in her own
chamber, when she had sat gazing at the shadows on the wall, to the deeper night
fast coming - upon one figure directing a crowd of humiliations and
exasperations against her; and that figure, still her husband's.
    Was Mr. Dombey's master-vice, that ruled him so inexorably, an unnatural
characteristic? It might be worth while, sometimes, to inquire what Nature is,
and how men work to change her, and whether, in the enforced distortions so
produced, it is not natural to be unnatural. Coop any son or daughter of our
mighty mother within narrow range, and bind the prisoner to one idea, and foster
it by servile worship of it on the part of the few timid or designing people
standing round, and what is Nature to the willing captive who has never risen up
upon the wings of a free mind - drooping and useless soon - to see her in her
comprehensive truth!
    Alas! are there so few things in the world, about us, most unnatural, and
yet most natural in being so! Hear the magistrate or judge admonish the
unnatural outcasts of society; unnatural in brutal habits, unnatural in want of
decency, unnatural in losing and confounding all distinctions between good and
evil; unnatural in ignorance, in vice, in recklessness, in contumacy, in mind,
in looks, in everything. But follow the good clergyman or doctor, who, with his
life imperilled at every breath he draws, goes down into their dens, lying
within the echoes of our carriage wheels and daily tread upon the pavement
stones. Look round upon the world of odious sights - millions of immortal
creatures have no other world on earth - at the lightest mention of which
humanity revolts, and dainty delicacy living in the next street, stops her ears,
and lisps »I don't believe it!« Breathe the
