An early Victorian, or perhaps a pre-Victorian, sentimentalist, looking
out of an upstairs window, I believe, at a street--perhaps Fleet Street
itself--full of people, is reported, by an admiring friend, to have wept
for joy at seeing so much life. These arcadian tears, this facile
emotion worthy of the golden age, comes to us from the past, with solemn
approval, after the close of the Napoleonic wars and before the series of
sanguinary surprises held in reserve by the nineteenth century for our
hopeful grandfathers. We may well envy them their optimism of which this
anecdote of an amiable wit and sentimentalist presents an extreme
instance, but still, a true instance, and worthy of regard in the
spontaneous testimony to that trust in the life of the earth, triumphant
at last in the felicity of her children. Moreover, the psychology of
individuals, even in the most extreme instances, reflects the general
effect of the fears and hopes of its time. Wept for joy! I should think
that now, after eighty years, the emotion would be of a sterner sort. One
could not imagine anybody shedding tears of joy at the sight of much life
in a street, unless, perhaps, he were an enthusiastic officer of a
general staff or a popular politician, with a career yet to make.
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