Imatges de pàgina
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and she is a ready accountant. Her chief view, ever, is to serve her mother and lighten her cares. She holds cleanness and neatness to be indispensible in a woman; and that a slattern is disgusting, especially if beautiful.

The attention given to externals, does not make her overlook her more material duties. Sophia's understanding is solid, without being profound. Her sensibility is too great for a perfect equality of temper; but her sweetness renders that inequality harmless. A harsh word does not make her angry; but her heart swells, and she retires to disburden it by weeping. Recalled by her father and mother, she comes at the instant, wiping her eyes and appearing cheerful. She suffers with patience for any wrong she has done, and does it so cordially as to make it appear meritorious. If she happens to disoblige a companion, her joys and her caresses when restored to favour, show the burden that lay upon her heart.

The love of virtue is Sophia's ruling passion. She loves it because no other thing is so lovely: she loves it, because it is the glory of the female sex she loves it as the only road to happiness, misery being the sure attendant of a woman without virtue; she loves it, as dear to her respectable father and mother. These sentiments inspire her with a degree of enthusiasm, that elevates her soul, and subdues every irregular appetite.

Of the absent she never talks but with circumspection, her female acquaintance especially. She has remarked, that what rendered women prone to detraction, is talking of their own sex; and that they are more equitable with respect to the men. Sophia never talks of women, but to express the good she knows of them: of others she says nothing.

Without much knowledge of the world, she is attentive, obliging, and graceful in all she does. A good disposition does more for her, than art does for others. She possesses a degree of politeness, which void of ceremony, proceeds from a desire to please, and which consequently never fails to please.

Section V.

SENSIBILITY.

Dear sensibility! source inexhausted of all that's precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! thou chainest thy martyrs down upon this bed of straw, and it is thou who liftest him up to heaven. Eternal Fountain of our feelings! It is here I trace thee, and this is thy divinity which stirs within me : not, that in some sad and sickening moments, my soul shrinks back upon herself, and startles at destruction' -mere pomp of words !—but that I feel some generous joys and generous cares beyond myself-all comes from thee, great, great Sensorium of the world! which vibrates, if a hair of our head but falls upon the ground, in the remotest desert of thy creation.

Touched with thee, Eugenius draws my curtain when I languish; hears my tale of symptoms, and blames the weather for the disorder of his nerves. Thou givest a portion of it sometimes to the roughest peasant, who traverses the bleakest mountain.-He finds the lacerated lamb of another's flock. This moment I beheld him leaning with his head against his crook, with pitious inclination looking down upon it.-Oh! had I come one moment sooner!-it bleeds to death-his gentle heart bleeds with it.

Peace to thee, generous swain! I see thou walkest off with anguish-but thy joys shall balance it; for happy is thy cottage, and happy is the sharer of it, and happy are the lambs that sport about you.

Section VI.

LIBERTY AND SLAVERY.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still slavery! still thou art a bitter draught; and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. It is thou Liberty, thrice sweet and gracious goddess, whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till nature herself shall change no tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chymic power turn thy sceptre into iron-with thee to smile upon him who eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious Heaven! grant me but health, thou great bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion; and shower down thy mitres, if it seem good unto thy divine providence, upon those heads which are aching for them.

Pursuing these ideas, I sat down close by my table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and so I gave full scope to my imagination.

I was going to begin with the millions of my fellow-creatures born to no inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it nearer me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me

-I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in a dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door to take his picture.

I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish in thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood-he had seen no sun, no moon

in all that time-nor had the voice of friends or kinsman breathed through his lattice. His children-But here my heart began to bleed-and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait.

He was sitting upon the ground upon a little straw, in the further corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair and bed; a little calender of small sticks were laid at the head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed there-he had one of these little sticks in his hand, and with a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, then cast it down-shook his head, and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs, as he turned his body to lay his little sticks upon the bundle. He gave a deep sigh-I saw the iron enter into his soul-I burst into tears-I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn.

Section VII.

THE PALACE OF PLEASURE.

Methought I was suddenly transported into the Palace of Pleasure, which I had seen described the evening before; where, in spite of all the showy magnificence of the mansion, and all the specious charms of the goddess that struck at first sight, I discovered on a close attention, such a look of real distress in many of her votaries, ill concealed under artificial smiles, as, joined to the impressions remaining on me from my waking thoughts, soon convinced me that the whole was a cruel trick, to deceive and ruin unhappy men. Whereupon I broke away with a mixture of disdain and horror, and made what haste I could from the enchanted valley in which the

palace stood. When I was got to what I judged a safe distance, I began to lament in my own mind the misery of such as are taken in the snares of that wicked sorceress. I had not got far on, when I was met by that good old man whom I had read of a few hours before, as giving directions to those travellers that were willing to hearken to him, and who I remember was called the Genius of Education. Perceiving me in a pensive and melancholy mood, he addressed me very kindly, and enquired into the cause of it.

I told him where I had been, and what I had observed, with the sorrowful reflections I could not help making on the fate of numberless deluded wretches; and added, that being myself a young traveller in quest of Happiness, I was uncertain which way to take. He looked at me with generous compassion, and bade me follow him, promising to put me into the right road. He conducted me along a winding path up a hill, on the top of which dwelt a sedate and thoughtful man, well advanced in years, who he told me was a near relation of his. He lodged in an open pavilion, from whence there was a prospect of the whole country round, and appeared, as we approached, to sit in a musing posture, on a chair of polished metal, which cast an uncommon lustre about him, and reflected strong and full the images of surrounding objects. He held in his hand a large telescope of exquisite workmanship, by the help of which the most distant things might be easily and distinctly discerned.

My guide informed me, that his name was Contemplation; that he was one of the eldest sons of Wisdom, and that he was posted on that hill by the sovereign of a great adjoining empire, called Virtue, to direct those who were travelling towards her temple. Methought his aspect was hale, serene, and piercing. There was something majestic in his wrinkles and gray hairs. A transparent mantle hung loose

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