Page:Books and men.djvu/117

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
THE DECAY OF SENTIMENT.
107

was in fun. Yet all his life this mocking critic cherished in his secret soul of souls a real affection for those hysterical old romances which had been the delight of his boyhood, and which were even then rapidly disappearing before the cold scorn of an enlightened world. Miss Austen, in Sense and Sensibility, had impaled emotionalism on the fine shafts of her delicate satire, and Macaulay was Miss Austen's sworn champion; but nevertheless he contrived to read and reread Mrs. Meek's and Mrs. Cuthbertson's marvelous stories, until he probably knew them better than he did Emma or Northanger Abbey. When an old edition of Santa Sebastiano was sold at auction in India, he secured it at a fabulous price,—Miss Eden bidding vigorously against him,—and he occupied his leisure moments in making a careful calculation of the number of fainting-fits that occur in the course of the five volumes. There are twenty-seven in all, so he has recorded, of which the heroine alone comes in for eleven, while seven others are distributed among the male characters. Mr. Trevelyan has kindly preserved for us the description of a single catastrophe, and we can no longer