"O majestic night! "Nature's great ancestor! Day's elder-born! "And fated to survive the transient sun! "By mortals, and immortals, seen in awe“A starry crown thy raven brow adorns, "An azure zone, thy waist; clouds, in heaven's loom "Wrought through varieties of shape and shade, "In ample folds of drapery divine "Thy flowing mantle form; and heav'n throughout "Voluminously pour thy pompous train : "Thy gloomy grandeurs (nature's most august "Inspiring aspect !) claim a grateful verse; "And, like a sable curtain starr'd with gold, "Drawn o'er my labours past, shall close the scene." CHAP. V. "Sorrow breaks seasons, and reposing hours, "Makes the night morning, and the noon-tide night." "Thy heart is big; get thee apart and weep: “Passion, I see, is catching; for mine eyes, "Seeing those beads of sorrow stand in thine, "Begin to water 'You seem affected, my dear friend,' said the good clergyman as he made a long pause in this part of his interesting detail; ‘ and if you had been as well acquainted with the virtues of that angelic maid as I am, your tears would not only have been of compassion for the woes of a fellow-being, but also of regret that the world had lost so bright an ornament of society. But I have not yet recited all the misfortunes of that ill-fated family. I have yet to shock your feelings by two more instances of the dreadful effects of seduction, which is a vice that appears to me to be productive of more ill consequences than any other in the catalogue of human depravity. How ardently do I wish it was in my power, by the relation of this sad story, to awaken in others, as I have done in you, the tear of compassionate tenderness towards the sufferings of our fellow-creatures, because it is making rapid progress towards the eradication of evil, when we can truly lament its fatal effects. We must first learn to feel, before we can be instrumental in the removal of any vice; but it is extremely difficult to convince a dissipated people, that misery is the certain consequence of vicious pursuits, and that happiness is the result only of virtue and intellectuality. There is certainly a powerful fascination in most illicit pleasures, which has a great effect upon weak minds, and too often influences the conduct of men whose intellect, though superior, has not been able entirely to govern their passions. But if any man, who is not altogether lost to the voice of reason, would only attend to that secret disquietude which at times is certain to steal over the minds of those whom dissipation has rendered languid, he would soon find, that he had been pursuing the fickle light of an ignis fatuus, instead of the steady splendour of truth, which alone can be productive of true happiness, and which those who have cultivated the finer feelings of the heart, and have, according to their ability, ranged through the bright regions of intellectuality, perpetually enjoy. The great misfortune is, that those who speak or write upon these subjects are seldom able to arrest and fix the attention of their hearers or readers sufficiently strong to produce the proper effect perhaps the reason is, that their appeal is not made immediately to the heart; and without that it is in vain to expect reformation. These efforts are perhaps considered as religious cant, or some other term equally contemptuous is bestowed upon the exertions of a few individuals who, being feelingly alive to the miseries of their fellow-creatures, labour to convince the rest of mankind that they are yet in a state of comparative barbarism and ignorance. Like the faint cry of the affrighted sea-mew, whose feeble notes of distress endeavour in vain to appease the storms that agitate the mighty waters of the great deep, so does the plaintive voice of insulted virtue fruitlessly strive to arouse the attention of an iniquitous and a slumbering world. Clouds of mental darkness yet obscure the sun of knowledge, which at this period of the world surely ought to have been high on itsmeridian, dispensing light and glory to the inhabitants of the earth: but century after century have passed away, and generation has succeeded generation in countless multitude, and yet man's ungoverned passions, leading to vice and folly of every description, like tempestuous whirlwinds, sweep their maddened course over all the plains of the earth. "Fie on't!-O fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, "That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature "Possess it merely If, after a long and a painful search, you have found a rose, and are greatly struck by its beauty, but strip off the blooming leaves that decorate its outward form, and to your disappointment and grief you find a nest of noxious insects devouring its vitality:—if, on the dangerous pilgrimage of life, you have been beset by storms, and weary and overladen you seek for some friendly bank on which to repose, you have scarcely confided yourself in imagined security upon its bosom, than some treacherous serpent steals upon your unguarded moments, and with envenomed gripe pours its fatal poison into your soul, robbing you |