that they should escape from a city circle. Having no mother, they ruled
their father's house and him, and were at least commanders of whatsoever
forces they could summon for the task.

It may be seen that they were sentimentalists. That is to say, they
supposed that they enjoyed exclusive possession of the Nice Feelings, and
exclusively comprehended the Fine Shades. Whereof more will be said; but
in the meantime it will explain their propensity to mount; it will
account for their irritation at the material obstructions surrounding
them; and possibly the philosopher will now have his eye on the source of
that extraordinary sense of superiority to mankind which was the crown of
their complacent brows. Eclipsed as they may be in the gross
appreciation of the world by other people, who excel in this and that
accomplishment, persons that nourish Nice Feelings and are intimate with
the Fine Shades carry their own test of intrinsic value.

Nor let the philosopher venture hastily to despise them as pipers to
dilettante life. Such persons come to us in the order of civilization.
In their way they help to civilize us. Sentimentalists are a perfectly
natural growth of a fat soil. Wealthy communities must engender them.
If with attentive minds we mark the origin of classes, we shall discern
that the Nice Feelings and the Fine Shades play a principal part in our
human development and social history. I dare not say that civilized man
is to be studied with the eye of a naturalist; but my vulgar meaning
might almost be twisted to convey: that our sentimentalists are a variety
owing their existence to a certain prolonged term of comfortable feeding.
The pig, it will be retorted, passes likewise through this training. He
does. But in him it is not combined with an indigestion of high German
romances. Here is so notable a difference, that he cannot possibly be
said to be of the family. And I maintain it against him, who have