“This, however, was an evil, which, though frequent, I saw with less pain, because I could relieve it.  Yet some have refused my bounties; more offended with my quickness to detect their wants, than pleased with my readiness to succour them:  and others, whose exigencies compelled them to admit my kindness, have never been able to forgive their benefactress.  Many, however, have been sincerely grateful, without the ostentation of gratitude, or the hope of other favours.”

CHAP.  XXVI.

THE PRINCESS CONTINUES HER REMARKS UPON PRIVATE LIFE.

Nekayah, perceiving her brother’s attention fixed, proceeded in her narrative.

“In families, where there is, or is not, poverty, there is commonly discord:  if a kingdom be, as Imlac tells us, a great family, a family, likewise, is a little kingdom, torn with factions, and exposed to revolutions.  An unpractised observer expects the love of parents and children to be constant and equal; but this kindness seldom continues beyond the years of infancy; in a short time the children become rivals to their parents.  Benefits are allayed by reproaches, and gratitude debased by envy.

“Parents and children seldom act in concert:  each child endeavours to appropriate the esteem, or fondness of the parents; and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children; thus some place their confidence in the father, and some in the mother, and, by degrees, the house is filled with artifices and feuds.

“The opinions of children and parents, of the young and the old, are naturally opposite, by the contrary effects of hope and despondence, of expectation and experience, without crime or folly on either side.  The colours of life, in youth and age, appear different, as the face of nature, in spring and winter.  And how can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false?

“Few parents act in such a manner, as much to enforce their maxims, by the credit of their lives.  The old man trusts wholly to slow contrivance and gradual progression:  the youth expects to force his way by genius, vigour, and precipitance.  The old man pays regard to riches, and the youth reverences virtue.  The old man deifies prudence:  the youth commits himself to magnanimity and chance.  The young man, who intends no ill, believes that none is intended, and, therefore, acts with openness and candour:  but his father, having suffered the injuries of fraud, is impelled to suspect, and, too often, allured to practise it.  Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.  Thus parents and children, for the greatest part, live on to love less and less:  and, if those whom nature has thus closely united are the torments of each other, where shall we look for tenderness and consolation?”

“Surely,” said the prince, “you must have been unfortunate in your choice of acquaintance:  I am unwilling to believe, that the most tender of all relations is thus impeded, in its effects, by natural necessity.”