Be sure, be
sure, that ever since the days of the Persians of old, effeminacy, if
not twin-sister of cowardice and dishonesty, has always gone hand in
hand with them. To that utter neglect of any exercises which call
out fortitude, patience, self-dependence, and daring, I attribute a
great deal of the low sensuality, the conceited vulgarity, the want
of a high sense of honour, which is increasing just now among the
middle classes; and from which the navigator, the engineer, the
miner, and the sailor are comparatively free.'
'And perhaps, too, that similar want of a high sense of honour, which
seems, from the religious periodicals, to pervade a large proportion
of a certain more venerable profession?'
'Seriously, Claude, I believe you are not far wrong. But we are
getting on delicate ground there: however I have always found, that
of whatever profession he may be--to travestie Shakspeare's words, -
"The man that hath not sporting in his soul,
Is fit for treason's direst stratagems" -
and so forth.'
'Civil to me!'
'Oh, you have a sporting soul in you, like hundreds of other
Englishmen who never handled rod or gun; or you would not be steering
for Exmoor to-day.
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