No offence is longer an offence when the grass is green over the
offender. Even faults then seem characteristic and individual. Even
Justice is appeased when the drop falls. How the old stories and plays
teem with the incident of the duel in which one gentleman falls, and,
in dying, forgives and is forgiven. We turn the page with a tear. How
much better had there been no offence, but how well that death wipes
it out.
It is not observed in history that families improve with time. It is
rather discovered that the whole matter is like a comet, of which the
brightest part, is the head; and the tail, although long and luminous,
is gradually shaded into obscurity.
Yet, by a singular compensation, the pride of ancestry increases in
the ratio of distance. Adam was valiant, and did so well at Poictiers
that he was knighted--a hearty, homely country gentleman, who lived
humbly to the end. But young Lucifer, his representative in the
twentieth remove, has a tinder-like conceit because old Sir Adam was
so brave and humble. Sir Adam's sword is hung up at home, and Lucifer
has a box at the opera.
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