are not intimate and household. We shrug our shoulders and are not a whit
the worse for them. Thus, for want of grieving, and caring, and fretting,
we are happy enough to grow--come, I will use an epithet to please
you--hard-hearted! We congeal into philosophy; and are we not then wise
in adopting this life of isolation and indifference?"

Godolphin, wrapt in reflection, scarcely heeded the voluptuary, but
Saville continued: he had grown to that height in loneliness that he even
loved talking to himself.

"Yes, wise! For this world is so filled with the selfish, that he who is
not so labours under a disadvantage. Nor are we the worse for our apathy.
If we jest at a man's misfortune, we do not do it to his face. Why not
out of the ill, which is misfortune, extract good, which is amusement?
Three men in this room are made cheerful by a jest at a broken leg in the
next. Is the broken leg the worse for it? No; but the three men are made
merry by the jest. Is the jest wicked, then? Nay, it is benevolence.
But some cry, 'Ay, but this habit of disregarding misfortunes blunts your
wills when you have the power to relieve them.' Relieve! was ever such
delusion? What can we relieve in the vast mass of human misfortunes? As
well might we take a drop from the ocean, and cry, 'Ha, ha! we have
lessened the sea!' What are even your public charities? what your best
institutions? How few of the multitude are relieved at all; how few of
that few relieved permanently! Men die, suffer, starve just as soon, and
just as numerously; these public institutions are only trees for the
public conscience to go to roost upon. No, my dear fellow, everything I
see in the world says, Take care of thyself. This is the true moral of
life; every one who minds it gets on, thrives, and fattens; they who
don't, come to us to borrow money, if gentlemen; or fall upon the parish,
if plebeians. I mind it, my dear Godolphin; I have minded it all my life;