For in truth, as the
day fixed for his marriage came nearer, Mr. Casaubon did not find
his spirits rising; nor did the contemplation of that matrimonial
garden scene, where, as all experience showed, the path was to be
bordered with flowers, prove persistently more enchanting to him
than the accustomed vaults where he walked taper in hand. He did
not confess to himself, still less could he have breathed to another,
his surprise that though he had won a lovely and noble-hearted girl
he had not won delight,--which he had also regarded as an object
to be found by search. It is true that he knew all the classical
passages implying the contrary; but knowing classical passages,
we find, is a mode of motion, which explains why they leave
so little extra force for their personal application.
Poor Mr. Casaubon had imagined that his long studious bachelorhood
had stored up for him a compound interest of enjoyment, and that
large drafts on his affections would not fail to be honored; for we
all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors,
and act fatally on the strength of them. And now he was in danger
of being saddened by the very conviction that his circumstances
were unusually happy: there was nothing external by which he could
account for a certain blankness of sensibility which came over him
just when his expectant gladness should have been most lively,
just when he exchanged the accustomed dulness of his Lowick library
for his visits to the Grange.
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