"Indeed! and why so?" demanded Blanche, half afraid that she had touched upon some delicate subject.
"Simply because we differ on politics," answered Burrel. "Can there be a more mortal offense given or received?"
"As we are speaking of poets, however," continued Miss Delaware, "I will ask you one more question, Mr. Burrel: Do you know Wordsworth?"
"I am not so fortunate," answered Burrel; "for, though we should as certainly differ as we met, upon nine points out of ten, yet I should much like to know him."
"Then you know and esteem his works, of course?" said Miss Delaware.
"I know them well," replied Burrel; "but I do not like them so much as you do."
"Nay, nay!" said Blanche Delaware. "I have said nothing in their favor. What makes you believe I admire them more than yourself?"
"Simply because every body of taste must esteem them highly," replied Burrel; "and women who do esteem them will always esteem more than men can do. A woman's heart and mind, Miss Delaware, by the comparative freshness which it retains more or less through life, can appreciate the gentle, the sweet, and the simple, better than a man's; and thus, while the mightier and more majestic beauties of Wordsworth's muse affect your sex equally with ours, the softer and finer shades of feeling--the touches of artless nature and simplicity, which appear almost too weak for us, have all their full effect on you."
"But if you own that, and feel that," said Blanche Delaware, "why can not you admire the same beauties!"
"For this reason," replied Burrel--"man's mental taste, like his corporeal power of tasting, gets corrupted, or rather paralyzed, in his progress through the world, by the various stimulants he applies to it. He drinks his bottle of strong and heady wine, which gradually loses its effect, and he takes more, till at length nothing will satisfy him but Cayenne pepper."
"But if he appreciates gentler pleasures," said Captain Delaware, "he must be able in some degree to enjoy them."
"Of course," replied Burrel, "there are moments when the cool and pleasant juice of a peach, or the simple refreshment of a glass of lemonade will be delightful; and in such moments it is, that he feels he has stimulated away a sense, and a delightful one. Thus with poetry, and literature in general; the mind, by reading a great many things it would be better without, loses its relish for every thing that does not excite and heat the imagination, which is neither more nor less than the mental palate; and though there are moments when the heart, softened and at ease, finds joys in all the sweet simplicity which would have charmed it forever in an unsophisticated state, yet still it returns to Cayenne pepper, and only remembers the other feelings, as of pleasures lost forever. With regard to Wordsworth's poetry, perhaps no one ever did him more injustice than I did once. With a very superficial knowledge of his works, I fancied that I despised them all; and it was only from being bored about them by his admirers, that I determined to read them every line, that I might hate them with the more accuracy."