on Clive's
behalf. If my gentle reader has had sentimental disappointments, he or she is
aware that the friends who have given him most sympathy under these calamities
have been persons who have had dismal histories of their own at some time of
their lives; and I conclude Colonel Newcome in his early days must have suffered
very cruelly in that affair of which we have a slight cognizance, or he would
not have felt so very much anxiety about Clive's condition.
    A few chapters back and we described the first attack, and Clive's manful
cure. Then we had to indicate the young gentleman's relapse, and the noisy
exclamations of the youth under this second outbreak of fever. Calling him back
after she had dismissed him, and finding pretext after pretext to see him, why
did the girl encourage him, as she certainly did? I allow, with Mrs. Grundy and
most moralists, that Miss Newcome's conduct in this matter was highly
reprehensible; that if she did not intend to marry Clive, she should have broken
with him altogether; that a virtuous young woman of high principle, etc., etc.,
having once determined to reject a suitor, should separate from him utterly then
and there - never give him again the least chance of a hope, or reillume the
extinguished fire in the wretch's bosom.
    But coquetry, but kindness, but family affection, and a strong, very strong
partiality for the rejected lover - are these not to be taken in account, and to
plead as excuses for her behaviour to her cousin? The least unworthy part of her
conduct, some critics will say, was that desire to see Clive and be well with
him. As she felt the greatest regard for him, the showing it was not blamable;
and every flutter which she made to escape out of the meshes which the world had
cast about her, was but the natural effort at liberty. It was her prudence which
was wrong, and her submission wherein she was most culpable. In the early church
story, do we not read how young martyrs constantly had to disobey worldly papas
and mammas, who would have had them silent, and not utter their dangerous
opinions? how their parents locked them up, kept them on bread and water,
whipped and tortured them, in order to enforce obedience? Nevertheless they
would declare the truth; they would defy the gods by law established, and
deliver themselves up to the lions or the tormentors. Are not there Heathen
Idols enshrined among us still? Does not the world worship them, and persecute
those who