The Living Age Volume 124 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1875 Excerpt: ...It arouses the darkest suspicions, though every ocular appearance be calculated to inspire confidence. However spotless the outside may seem to the eye, the nose is not to be beguiled; there must be impurity somewhere. And surely there is something horrible about a thing that looks clean and yet smells badly. What pleases the sight is the more bound to gratify the nostrils. Noblesse oblige. Now, in connection with this circumstance, is to be taken another, the explanation of which will, I think, solve the whole mystery. If we pass from the clean exterior of a Saxon's house to its interior, we shall find his drawing-room somewhat less immaculate than his passage, his dining-room than his drawingroom, his bed-chamber than his diningroom; while he himself is by far the least immaculate of all, tried whether by nose or eye--there is no whited sepulchre about him, at all events. An evil odour is something which only inward cleanliness, working outward, can remove. Men are more apt to desire that their emanations, their works, their expressed and embodied thoughts, should appear pure, than that their proper selves should be so. Their surroundings, they argue, are more seen than they; and it is their continual delusion that though their actions, having once been acted, are no longer to be concealed, yet it is always easy to hide themselves. The Saxon, consequently, diligently expends his lustrative energies upon his street and stairway, but never thinks of washing his own shirt. Of the omnipresent evil odour he is never conscious, but it is the very essence and betrayal of the whole matter. Dogs are more sagacious; do not trust to ocular appearances; the cloven foot of the devil would not move them; but let them once get to leeward of him, and he stands convicted ...