Gerald Cavanagh and his wife were certainly persons of
the strictest integrity and virtue. Kind, charitable, overflowing with
hospitality, and remarkable for the domestic virtues and affections
in an extraordinary degree, they were, notwithstanding, extremely
weak-minded, and almost silly, in consequence of an over-weening
anxiety to procure "great matches" for their children. Indeed it may be
observed, that natural affection frequently assumes this shape in the
paternal heart, nor is the vain ambition confined to the Irish peasant
alone. On the contrary, it may be seen as frequently, if not more so, in
the middle and higher classes, where it has ampler scope to work, than
in humbler and more virtuous life. It is this proud and ridiculous
principle which consigns youth, and beauty, and innocence, to the arms
of some dissipated profligate of rank, merely because he happens to
inherit a title which he disgraces. There is, we would wager, scarcely
an individual who knows the world, but is acquainted with some family
laboring under this insane anxiety for connection. Sometimes it is to
be found on the paternal side, but, like most of those senseless
inconsistencies which entail little else than ridicule or ruin, and
sometimes both, upon those who are the object of them, it is, for the
most part, a female attribute.
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