But I know the
rascal, and despise him, as he deserves."
Harley began to despise him too, and to conceive some indignation at
having sat with patience to hear such a fellow speak nonsense. But
he corrected himself by reflecting that he was perhaps as well
entertained, and instructed too, by this same modest gauger, as he
should have been by such a man as he had thought proper to
personate. And surely the fault may more properly be imputed to
that rank where the futility is real than where it is feigned: to
that rank whose opportunities for nobler accomplishments have only
served to rear a fabric of folly which the untutored hand of
affectation, even among the meanest of mankind, can imitate with
success.
CHAPTER XX--HE VISITS BEDLAM.--THE DISTRESSES OF A DAUGHTER
Or those things called Sights in London, which every stranger is
supposed desirous to see, Bedlam is one. To that place, therefore,
an acquaintance of Harley's, after having accompanied him to several
other shows, proposed a visit. Harley objected to it, "because,"
said he, "I think it an inhuman practice to expose the greatest
misery with which our nature is afflicted to every idle visitant who
can afford a trifling perquisite to the keeper; especially as it is
a distress which the humane must see, with the painful reflection,
that it is not in their power to alleviate it.
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