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قراءة كتاب The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831

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The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831

The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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effusion of gurgling vanity. It is an instance, however, to what a degree that sentiment, when extreme, gets the better of all sense of propriety and decorum. She says, that even if Denon had not been such a person as she describes him, "still, he suited me, I suited him. There was between us that sympathy, in spite of the disparity of years and talents, which, whether in trifles or essentials,—between the frivolous or the profound,—makes the true basis of those ties, so sweet to bind, so bitter to break!" It is well for Sir Charles Morgan's peace of mind, that he is acquainted, as he must be, with his wife's frivolity and egotism. How, indeed, he could have allowed her to come before the world with such phraseology in her mouth, we cannot imagine, unless on the supposition that he is such a husband as La Bruyère has described. "Il ne sert dans sa famille qu' à montrer l'exemple, d'un silence timide et d'une parfaite soumission. Il ne lui est dû ni douaire ni conventions; mais à cela près, et qu'il n'accouche pas, il est la femme, et elle le mari."

After her Ladyship had "shuddered," and "felt as if she was throwing earth upon Denon's grave whilst drawing her pen across his precious and historical name," she spent about half an hour in weeping, "like a fair flower surcharged with dew," over the names of others of her departed friends, Guinguené, Talma, Langlois, Lanjuinais, &c., until she fortunately recollected that the climate of Paris is one that "developes a sensibility prompt, not deep." Lucky thought! She immediately threw down the visiting-book, threw up the window to let in the climate, wiped from her eyes the tears "which parted thence, as pearls from diamonds dropp'd," and began to think of "all that death had left her, of the 'greater still behind,'—of friends, each in his way, a specimen of that genius and virtue, which, in all regions, and in all ages, make the ne plus ultra of human excellence." Admire the delicacy of the method by which Miladi lets us into the secret of her being a ne plus ultra; it is not by a bold assertion, but by a modest inuendo. She keeps company with ne plus ultras—birds of the same feather flock together—ergo, she is a ne plus ultra herself. And so she is, but in her own way. "Il y a malheureusement," observes a French writer of the present day "plus d'une manière de se rendre célèbre,"—"there is, unfortunately, more than one method of becoming celebrated,"—and as this writer is an acquaintance of Lady Morgan, we are half inclined to think he committed that sentence to paper after returning from a visit to her Celebrityship.

We may as well cite here a few more instances of her ingenuity in communicating, obliquely, how distinguished a personage she is,—a quality she possesses in a degree that we do not recollect ever to have seen rivalled. We copy verbatim.

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