Chapter 3 - Page 2

condemn, Sir George Templemore, because they know that
perfection is hopeless, and because they feel it to be unsafe and
unwise to eulogize defects, and they are attached, because near views
of other countries have convinced them that, comparatively at last,
bad as we are, we are still better than most of our neighbours."

"I can assure you," said Grace, "that many of the opinions of Mr John
Effingham, in particular, are not at all the opinions that are most
in vogue here; he rather censures what we like, and likes what we
censure. Even my dear uncle is thought to be a little heterodox on
such subjects."

"I can readily believe it," returned Eve, steadily. "These gentlemen,
having become familiar with better things, in the way of the tastes,
and of the purely agreeable, cannot discredit their own knowledge so
much as to extol that which their own experience tells them is
faulty, or condemn that which their own experience tells them is
relatively good. Now, Grace, if you will reflect a moment, you will
perceive that people necessarily like the best of their own tastes,
until they come to a knowledge of better; and that they as
necessarily quarrel with the unpleasant facts that surround them;
although these facts, as consequences of a political system, may be
much less painful than those of other systems of which they have no
knowledge. In the one case, they like their own best, simply because
it is their own best; and they dislike their own worst, because it is
their own worst. We cherish a taste, in the nature of things, without
entering into any comparisons, for when the means of comparison
offer, and we find improvements, it ceases to be a taste at all;
while to complain of any positive grievance, is the nature of man, I
fear!"

"I think a republic odious!"

"_Le republique est une horreur!_"

Grace thought a republic odious, without knowing any thing of any
other state of society, and because it contained odious things; and
Mademoiselle Viefville called a republic _une horreur_, because heads
fell and anarchy prevailed in her own country, during its early
struggles for liberty. Though Eve seldom spoke more sensibly, and
never more temperately, than while delivering the foregoing opinions,
Sir George Templemore doubted whether she had all that exquisite
_finesse_ and delicacy of features, that he had so much admired; and
when Grace burst out in the sudden and senseless exclamation we have
recorded, he turned towards her sweet and animated countenance,
which, for the moment, he fancied the loveliest of the two.

Eve Effingham had yet to learn that she had just entered into the
most intolerant society, meaning