THE FARRAGO.

Nº. VI.

In the highlands of Scotland, when a benighted traveller knocks at a cottage door, and is denied admittance by a female voice, he never dreams of grumbling at the refusal, if the Caledonian dame subjoin, in her country’s phrase, that she is a lone woman. Should some carping critic look through my lattice, and censure me for sameness of sentiment, or barrenness of fancy, I would reply, in an accent of deprecation—Mr. Zoilus, I am a lone author. In the periodical publications of Great Britain, the papers are usually furnished by the members of a literary society, who assemble at some coffee-house or tavern, and club their genius to amuse the public, as they club their cash to discharge their reckoning. Those speculations, which have improved, and have gladdened life, were rarely the fruit of a single brain, but the offspring of wit in conjunction. The union of abilities is almost as essential to the perfection of a miscellany, as the union of sexes to the formation of our being. Both Genius and Dullness are prone to court alliances.—Beaumont and Fletcher, composed comedies in company; and Sternhold, when he undertook a translation of David’s psalms, employed Hopkins to eke out his metre. Relying on his native strength, Dr. Johnson composed a series of lucubrations himself; but who is endowed with the comprehensive mind of the author of the Rambler? Like a poor man loaded with a fardel of debt, common writers are glad to borrow. Cursed occasionally with a penury of thought, and most willing to pay my public debt, I solicit a hint from one, a sentiment from another, and a subject from a third. Conscious of imbecility, I dread stumbling in my solitary walk, and timidity warns me to lean, sometimes on the staff of quotation, and sometimes, to employ a guide. My acquaintance, Adage, who loves sentences short and pithy, like himself, and who has read with diligence, and who admires with judgment, the PROMPTER, requests me to compose an essay in his laconic style. No, I replied, he has exhausted Franklinisms, he has commented upon almost every common saying in the popular mouth. Your reasons, Adage rejoined, are like Gratiano’s in the Merchant of Venice; they are two grains of wheat, hid in two bushels of chaff, you shall search all day ere you find them, and when found, they are not worth the search. Be it my task to furnish a subject, to take the pen and write quickly be thine. My neighbour Crispin, quoth Adage, contracted last week with a countryman for cheese. It was damaged; Crispin gives five pence per lb. and promises to pay in leather. I thought he was over-reached; but, when the cheese-monger had departed, Crispin laughingly cries, “if his cheese is mouldy, my leather is unmerchantable, and two cheats make an even bargain.” As the PROMPTER, continued Adage, never preached a sermon from that text, and as, to continue the allusion, the bishop is slumbering in his stall, do you become his chaplain, and ascend the pulpit yourself.

Reflecting on my friends advice, I quickly perceived that this even bargain was concluded by many characters besides professional cheats. An old London magazine, which I read many years ago, and which memory just handed me, offers the first example.

A brocaded Italian Count had an amour with Lady Ligonier. Every body bewailed the fate of her unhappy husband; but every body did not know that his wretchedness was alleviated in the arms of a courtezan. Every body did not know, that these two right honourable cheats made an even bargain.

A clown solicits an attorney to prosecute an obsolete claim against neighbour Clodpole; the limb of the law knows that the claim of his client is as lame, as his hobbling justice, he tells him nevertheless that he will recover, and anticipates a heavy bill of cost. He does his dirty work, and the plaintiff is nonsuited, who emigrates to Genesee, and forgets to pay the advocate his fees. Don’t fret, Mr. Greenbag, keep yourself cool, you have another cause to argue, another false title to set up which will demand the calmness and intrepidity of falsehood. Don’t damn your absconded client. The balance of deception was in equilibrio between you. Two cheats make an even bargain.

A spruce stripling of sixteen, courts an old beldame of sixty. He thinks her rich, and hopes that her gold will enable him to buy at the female flesh market of beauty a more juicy rib. She, relying on the bridegroom’s vigour, dreams of the comforts of matrimony, and forthwith pronounces—I obey, before the Parson. But alas! the bride’s purse is coinless, and the fond bridegroom chooses to consummate elsewhere. I advise the husband when in consequence of his wife’s fortune, he keeps a coach, to choose for a motto, two cheats make an even bargain.

Last week, I wrote at length, and like Dogberry, in Shakespeare, bestowed all my tediousness upon my readers. I will make atonement. The PROMPTER is laconic, and Adage hates prolixity.

SINGULAR CUSTOMS OF THE HINDOOS.

Although the Hindoos are naturally the most inoffensive of all mortals, yet does their humanity consist more in abstaining from injurious, than in the performance of beneficent actions. There is a wonderful mildness in their manners, and also in their laws, which are influenced by their manners; by which the murder of an human creature, and of a cow, are the only crimes that are punished by death. Yet with all this gentleness of disposition, they are inferior to the boisterous Europeans, with all their vices, in the virtues of compassion and generosity. They are wanting in that tenderness which is the most amiable part of our nature. They are less affected by the distresses and dangers, and even the accidental deaths of one another, than any nation I know in the old or new world. Yet they love to excess: a proof, either of the inconstancy of the human character; or that the amorous passion is not derived from the noblest part of our nature.

This insensibility of the Hindoos to the distresses and dangers of their fellow-creatures, appears to me a wonderful phenomenon. Perhaps that despotism which has long been exercised under the Mogul tyranny, by familiarising the mind to scenes of death, has blunted a sense of its terrors. Perhaps those ideas of predestination and irresistible fate, which prevail in Asia, and in all despotic governments, prepares the mind for an acquiescence in all events. An English gentleman was standing by a native of Hindostan when an enormous and fierce tiger leaped from a thicket, and carried off a screaming boy, the son of one of his neighbours. The Englishman expressed symptoms of the most extreme horror, while the Hindoo remained unmoved. “What,” said the former, “are you unaffected by so dreadful a scene?”—“The great God,” said the other, “would have it so.”—Whatever may be the cause, it is certain, that death is regarded with less horror in India than in any other country in the world. The origin and the end of all things, say the philosophers of India of the present time, is a vacuum. A state of repose is the state of greatest perfection: and this is the state after which a wise man aspires. It is better, say the Hindoos, to sit than to walk, and to sleep than to wake; but death is the best of all.

According to the Gentoo laws, criminals sentenced to death are not to be strangled, suffocated, or poisoned, but to be cut off by the sword; because, without an effusion of blood, malefactors are supposed to die with all their sins about them; but the shedding of their blood, it is thought, expiates their crimes. The unjust punishment of Nundcomar, who was hanged on a gibbet against the laws of his country, and even by an ex post facto English law, was aggravated by that circumstance of horror, that he died without an effusion of blood.

The Hindoos are well acquainted with the nature of simples, and apply them judiciously either in performing cures which require not amputation, or in effecting death by quick or slow poisons. They have been for ages in the practice of inoculating for the small-pox; on which occasion, as well as on others, they have recourse to the favourable mediation of charms, or spells.

Although the practice of Hindoo women burning themselves on the funeral piles of their husbands, and embracing in the mean time their dead bodies in their arms, be not so general now as it has formerly been, yet does it still prevail among some of the wives of men of high caste or condition: and although this effort of frantic love, courage, and ambition, be deemed an aggrandizement of the family and relations of both husband and wife, but especially of the wife’s, yet their friends and relations constantly endeavour to dissuade the women who declare their resolutions of burning, from carrying them into execution. Even the Brahmins do not encourage this practice.

The causes which inspire Hindoo women with this desperate resolution, are, I imagine, the following:

In the first place; as the wife has, from her earliest infancy, been betrothed in marriage to her husband, and from that time has never been permitted to see another man; as she is instructed to believe that he is perfectly accomplished, and taught to respect and honour him; as, after consummation, she is shut up from the company, conversation, and even the sight of other men, with still greater care, if possible, than before, being now debarred from seeing even the father or elder brother of her husband, the bonds of her affection must needs be inconceivably strong and indissoluble. To an European lady the zenana naturally appears in the light of an horrible prison: but the daughters of Asia never consider confinement to the zenana as any hardship. They consider it as a condition of their existence, and they enjoy all the happiness of which they have any conception; their whole desires being concentered and fixed on their husband, their food, jewels, and female attendants.

In the second place, if the wife survive her husband, she cannot marry again, and is treated as an inferior person, and an outcast from her family. Nay, she is obliged, in her mournful and hopeless widowhood, to perform all the offices of a menial servant.

In the third place, she is flattered with the idea of having immortalized her name, and aggrandized her children, and her own and husbands families.

Lastly, she is rendered insensible to the pains and horrors of what she is to suffer, by those intoxicating perfumes and mixtures which are administered to her after she has declared her final and unalterable resolution—I say her final resolution, because one or two declarations, of an intention to die with her husband, is not sufficient.

The strength of her resolution undergoes a probation. There is a certain time prescribed by the Gentoo law, during which her family and friends exert their utmost influence in order to dissuade her from burning; and if she persist in her resolution to the end of that period, it is not lawful to use any more persuasions with her, to abandon it. If she should alter her purpose after that period, she would be punished with the loss of all castes, and live in a state of the most complete misery and contempt. Nay, if an European or Christian does but touch her very garment with his finger, when she is going to the pile, an immediate stop is put to the ceremony, she is forced to live an outcast from her family, and from the Gentoo religion.

You will doubtless, my friend, have curiosity to know, in what manner, after all their stimulatives to perseverance, the tender sex, among a soft and effeminate people, sustains the near approach, of a scene so full of awe and horror. Amidst her weeping relations and friends, the voluntary victim to love and honor alone appears serene and undaunted. A gentle smile is diffused over her countenance: she walks upright, with an easy but firm step; talks to those around her of the virtues of the deceased, and of the joy with which she will be transported when her shade shall meet with his; and encourages her sorrowful attendants to bear with fortitude the sight of those momentary sufferings which she herself is going to feel.—Having ascended the funeral pile, she lays herself down by the body of her husband, which she fervently embraces. A dose of narcotic mixtures is then administered for the last time; and instantly the person, whose office it is, sets fire to the pile.

Thus the most determined resolution of which we can form any conception, is found in the weaker sex, and in the soft climes of Asia. It is to the honour of that sex and those climes, that the greatest courage they exhibit, is the effect, not of the furious impulses of rage and revenge, but conscious dignity and love.

It might naturally be imagined by an European, that the several wives of one man (for polygamy is general throughout all Asia) would regard one another with mutual jealousy and aversion: and that they in reality do, has been asserted by writers of high reputation. The fact however is quite otherwise: they visit one another with great friendship and cordiality; and if they are of the same caste, will occasionally eat together.—The husband is restrained from eating with his wives, either by a regard to custom; or, as I have been informed by some of the Gentoos themselves, by a precept of their religion.

Notwithstanding the extreme antiquity of most Indian nations, I am told that in India beyond the Ganges, on the confines of Aracan and Pegu, there is a people (if solitary savages roaming through woods in quest of prey, deserve the name of people) that appear to be in the very first stage of society. They are the only people in the known world that go absolutely naked, without the smallest covering on any part of their bodies. They live on fruit, which grows spontaneously, in the uncultivated deserts they inhabit, in great abundance; and on the flesh of animals, which they tear alive and devour. They sit on their hams, with their legs and arms disposed in the manner of monkeys. At the approach of men, they fly into their woods. They take care of their offspring, and live in families, but seem to have no ideas of subordination of rank or civil government. I have never had occasion to see this race of mortals myself, but I have conversed with several persons who have seen them; all of whom concur in the general account of them, which I have now given you.

CHARACTER OF THE SWEDES,

FROM THE LETTERS OF MRS. WOLLSTONECRAFT.

The Swedes pique themselves on their politeness; but far from being the polish of a cultivated mind, it consists merely of tiresome forms and ceremonies. So far indeed from entering immediately into your character, and making you feel instantly at your ease, like the well-bred French, their over-acted civility is a continual restraint on all your actions. The sort of superiority which a fortune gives when there is no superiority of education, excepting what consists in the observance of senseless forms, has a contrary effect than was intended; so that I could not help reckoning the peasantry the politest people of Sweden, who only aiming at pleasing you, never think of being admired for their behaviour.

Their tables, like their compliments, seem equally a caricature of the French. The dishes are composed, as well as their’s, of a variety of mixtures to destroy the native taste of the food, without being as relishing. Spices and sugar are put into every thing, even into the bread, and the only way that I can account for their partiality to high-seasoned dishes, is the constant use of salted provisions. Necessity obliges them to lay up a store of dried fish, and salted meat, for the winter; and in the summer, fresh meat and fish taste insipid after them. To which may be added, the constant use of spirits. Every day, before dinner and supper, even whilst the dishes are cooling on the table, men and women repair to a side-table, and, to obtain an appetite, eat bread and butter, cheese, raw salmon, or anchovies, drinking a glass of brandy. Salt fish or meat then immediately follows, to give a further whet to the stomach. As the dinner advances, pardon me for taking up a few minutes to describe what, alas! has detained me two or three hours on the stretch observing; dish after dish is changed, in endless rotation, and handed round with solemn pace to each guest: but should you happen not to like the first dishes, which was often my case, it is a gross breach of politeness to ask for part of any other till its turn comes.

THE POVERTY OF THE LEARNED.

FROM CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE.

To mention those who left nothing behind them to satisfy the undertaker, were an endless task.

Agrippa died in a workhouse; Cervantes is supposed to have died with hunger; Camoens was deprived of the necessaries of life, and is believed to have died in the streets.

The great Tasso was reduced to such a dilemma, that he was obliged to borrow a crown from a friend, to subsist through the week. He alludes to his distress in a pretty sonnet which he addresses to his cat, entreating her to assist him, during the night, with the lustre of her eyes, having no candle by which he could see to write his verses!

The illustrious Cardinal Bentivoglio, the ornament of Italy and of literature, languished, in his old age, in the most distressful poverty; and, having sold his palace to satisfy his creditors, left nothing behind him but his reputation.

Le Sage resided in a little cottage on the borders of Paris, and supplied the world with their most agreeable romances; while he never knew what it was to possess any moderate degree of comfort in pecuniary matters.

A PRUDENT CHOICE.

ANECDOTES

OF

EMINENT PERSONS.

Mesdemoiselles De Fernigs.

These two young heroines were the daughters of a quarter-master of cavalry, and by accompanying the French troops in their excursions at the beginning of the war, attained a certain degree of attachment to military exploits, and even an enthusiasm against the common enemy. Unlike the “maid of Orleans,” they were dressed in female attire, and pretended neither to prophecy nor revelation, but they headed the French troops, in 1791, with the same boldness that the martial female alluded to, was accustomed to do, two centuries before.

Dumourier, who never let slip any occasion of inspiring his army with confidence, invited these ladies to the camp at Maulde, and made such a flattering report to the Convention of their modesty, intrepidity, and good conduct, that they received a house, and an adjoining piece of land, as a present from the republic.

On the defection of this general, preferring gratitude to duty, and personal attachment to the love of their country, they both took part with him, and were out-lawed.

Moreau

Is a native of Morlaix, in the ci-devant Bretanny, 29 miles distant from Brest. When about 18 years of age, he was sent to Rennes, to study the law; and he who might have proved but an indifferent avocat, has, at the age of 33, acquired the character of a skilful commander.

He first distinguished himself in Holland, and then served with great éclat under Pichegru. The late brilliant passage across the Rhine, without the loss of a single man, was achieved under his auspices. His father is said to have perished during the tyranny of Robespierre; the son is a zealous republican, and fights and conquers in that cause.

The Abbe De Lille,

Like the bards of old, is at once a poet and a musician: and, in consequence of a rare union of both characters, he composed the Marsellois Hymn, which, by connecting his name with the history of the French Revolution, will render it immortal.

In addition to his other works, he has meditated a poem on the “Imagination,” for what is singular enough, this has never as yet been committed to paper. The truth is, that the Abbé, relying on his extraordinary memory, never copies out any of his verses, until they are about to be printed.

He was arrested during the short-lived tyranny of Robespierre; and if he had perished on that occasion, both the poem and the poet would have been lost together.

NEW-YORK.

MARRIED,

On Saturday evening the 6th ult. at Augusta (Georgia) by the Rev. Mr. Boyd, Mr. James Cooper, merchant, to Miss Susan Winslow, both of that place.

On Sunday evening the 21st ult. by the Rev. Dr. Linn, Mr. Nicholas Roome, to Miss Jemima Lewis, both of this city.

By the Rev. Dr. Moore, Mr. Patrick Munn, to Miss Ann Maverick, both of this city.

By the Rev. Dr. Moore, Capt. Woodham, of the ship Swan, to Miss Rebecca Maverick, of this city.

On Saturday se’nnight, by the Rev. Dr. Foster, Mr. Benjamin Gifford, to Miss Sally Anderson, both of this city.

On Tuesday evening se’nnight, Mr. John Lockwood, to Mrs. Sarah Smith, relict of Mr. Stephen Smith, both of Norwalk.

Same evening, by the Rev. Dr. Moore, David A. Ogden, Esq. to Miss Rebecca Edwards, both of this city.

On Saturday evening, by the Rev. Dr. Linn, N. Prime, Esq. of Boston, to Miss Cornelia Sands, daughter of Comfort Sands, Esq. Merchant, of this city.

A HYMN,

COMPOSED IN A MORNING’S WALK IN MAY.

BY THE REV. MR. TURNER.

THE PROSTITUTE.

EPITAPH.

FROM THE GREEK.

NEW-YORK: Printed by JOHN TIEBOUT, No. 358, Pearl-Street, for THOMAS BURLING, Jun. & Co. Subscriptions for this Magazine (at 6s. per quarter) are taken in at the Printing-Office, and at the Book-Store of Mr. J. FELLOWS, Pine-Street.

METHOD IN THE ARRANGEMENT OF IDEAS.

In delivering our sentiments on particular subjects, there is nothing which is attended with better effect, and makes us appear to more advantage than offering our opinions with clearness and precision; and this can only be done by arranging them in proper order, so that they may appear regularly to arise one from the other: this is stiled method, and prevents confusion; hinders us from indulging in the luxuriance of fancy, running into desultory digressions, and makes us appear superior to our subject.

Where great sprightliness is the natural bent of the temper, girls should endeavour to habituate themselves to a custom of observing, thinking, and reasoning. It is not necessary that they should devote themselves to abstruse speculation, or the study of logic; but she who is accustomed to give a due arrangement to her thoughts, to reason justly and pertinently on common affairs, and judiciously to deduce effects from their causes, will be a better logician than some of those who claim the name, because they have studied the art. That species of knowledge, which appears to be the result of reflection rather than of science, fits peculiarly well on women.

BEHAVIOUR.

One of the chief beauties in a female character is that modest reserve, that retiring delicacy which avoids the public eye, and is disconcerted even at the gaze of admiration. For when a girl ceases to blush, she has lost the most powerful charm of beauty. That extreme sensibility, which it indicates, is peculiarly engaging.

Silence in company, particularly a large one, is never mistaken by the judicious and discerning for dullness, but bespeaks a modesty essential in the female sex. Dignity of behaviour is necessary at public places, but care must be taken not to mistake that for that confident ease, that unabashed countenance which seems to set the company at defiance.

Women should be cautious even in displaying their good sense. It is often thought assuming a superiority over the rest of the company; but their learning should be kept a profound secret, especially from men, who generally look with a jealous and malign eye on a woman of great parts, and a cultivated understanding.

The great art of pleasing in conversation consists in making the company pleased with themselves. Detraction should be avoided, especially amongst women where their own sex is concerned; it would be more noble for them to shew a compassionate sympathy to the unfortunate, especially to those who are rendered so by the villainy of men. It is a laudable pride, as well as secret pleasure, which ought to be indulged, in being the friend and refuge of the unhappy, but without the vanity of shewing it.

Every species of indelicacy in conversation should be considered as shameful and highly disgusting. A sacred regard should ever be had to truth, for lying is a mean and despicable vice; though a lively embellishment of a humorous story, which is only intended to promote innocent mirth, cannot be understood to fall under that head.

Gentleness of spirit and manners is extremely engaging; but not that indiscriminate attention, that unmeaning simper, which smiles on all alike. For this arises either from affectation of softness, or from perfect insipidity.

A fine woman, like other fine things in nature, has her proper point of view, from which she may be seen to most advantage. To fix this point requires great judgment, and an intimate knowledge of the human heart. By the present mode of female manners, the ladies seem to expect that they shall regain their ascendency over men, by the fullest display of their personal charms, by being always in their eyes at public places, by conversing with them with the same unreserved freedom as they do with one another; in short, by resembling men as near as they can. The folly of this expectation and conduct will soon be shown. For the power of a fine woman over the hearts of men, of men of the finest parts, is even beyond what she conceives. They are sensible of the pleasing illusion, but they cannot, nor do they wish, to dissolve it. But if she is determined to dispel the charm, it certainly is in her power, she may soon reduce the angel to a very ordinary girl.

In fine, to form a complete lady, she should possess the most perfect simplicity of heart and manners; dignity without pride, affability without meanness, and simple elegance without affectation.

In the first paragraph, punctuation is unchanged.

THE

WANDERINGS
 
OF THE
IMAGINATION.

BY MRS. GOOCH.

(Continued from page 387.)

The pleasures of a fashionable life may not be unaptly compared to the delirium of the brain in a high fever. ’Tis in vain we in imagination visit ærial scenes fraught with all that fancy can bestow to give delight: ’tis in vain we visit gorgeous palaces, and partake of sumptuous banquets, while seated in the magic circle of Wit and Beauty, we enjoy the radiant smiles of the happy, and the compliments of the facetious and the learned: we even in the height of our frenzy still feel there is a chasm in our pleasures, and a vacuum in our pursuits and enjoyments; and when awake to reflection, we most sensibly feel that all has been deception—the malady still rages, and the fever still remains.

But I revert to my first idea, and maintain that happiness is to be found; and that I witnessed it in the family I have mentioned: they were uniformly and completely happy in each other; and the casualties of fate appeared not to terrify by their approach an individual belonging to it. Had that happiness they amply possest been sufficient to satisfy them, without searching farther into the world for an addition to it, one of its branches had not, by creating her own misery, cast a bleak veil over her fate, and impeded that heart-felt satisfaction which from her alone knew interruption.

Nancy, the youngest daughter, was by nature more susceptible than the rest. She had seen a young sailor in the neighbourhood, and against the advice of all her true friends, contented to marry him, when he should return from a foreign embarkation. She bore his departure with seeming composure; but a few letters she received from him baffled all that parental love could endeavour to save her, and on the first report of the fleet’s intended return, she packed up a few necessaries, took the little money she was, through the indulgence of her parents, become mistress of, and unknown to all, set forward on her disconsolate journey to Portsmouth, to wait his return.

For some weeks she waited in vain; at length the ship to which he belonged arrived in the harbour. She eagerly discovered the means by which she could go on board; and fancy pictured to her ravished senses his delight on thus proving her unabated love. Alas, poor Nancy! the ship indeed returned, but her William had been long consigned to a watery grave. In silent grief she bore the dismal tidings, and returned to her desolate abode. For three days she pined in speechless agony, and on the fourth her account was made.

This melancholy incident gave rise to my endeavouring to express it in the following stanzas:

SIXTH WANDERING.

It was in one of those fine autumnal evenings, when the Sun, while sinking beneath the last cloud of departing day, tinged the blue mountains with a paly light, that chance directed my footsteps from Chepstow, to the all-charming and romantic retirement of Piercefield. The deputed guardian of its woods indulged my request, and left me to myself.

As I wandered alone and pensive over the beauteous scene, no noise but the soft moaning of the leaves, gently agitated by the summer breeze, or the distant voice of the nightingale, interrupted my meditations, while I silently and sadly lamented the fate of its late unfortunate, and hospitable possessor. Was it from hence (thought I) that our first parents were precipitated into the abyss of woe, and will Man be never resigned to his lot? Will he prefer to that path which Nature pointed out for him to follow, the tongue of envy---the voice of detraction---the ruin of his fortune---the injury of his health---the wreck of his peace---and sacrifice to a vision, the pure, true unadulterated joys of rural and domestic felicity? Vain and transitory are all sublunary desires; and the objects of whatever kind our fantastic imagination greedily pursues, soon cloy in the possession. There is no substantial delight but that which we derive from conscious rectitude; and the vicissitudes of the world, like the turbulence of the ocean, if they do not plunge the incautious into actual perdition, will, by annihilating their senses, leave in them a blank, that no future period will fill up.

The gloom that was beginning to dim the horizon, insensibly enveloped my ideas, and the solitude of the woods heightened it. It was the hour when the sky-lark chaunted its evening hymn to its Creator, as it soared beyond the confines of sight. The lofty pines waved their high heads to the wind, and now and then a few straggling leaves, that had loitered beyond their time, rustled through the thick branches, while gently falling towards the ground.

On a sudden, the voice of distant music caught my ear. I listened, and distinguished the sweet sounds of the plaintive harp. My heart responsively echoed the mournful melody, and I approached the spot from whence it issued. The Harper, whom I recollected to have seen before, was blind, and infirm, and his name was Llewyllin. He was sitting at the foot of a tree, and his dog, who sat watchfully by him, retained his station, seeming sensible of the attractions his master possessed, instead of being impressed with fear, or alarm, at the approach of a stranger.

A very lovely girl, more interesting than beautiful, stood leaning against the tree in a pensive attitude; she observed me, and, as if recovering from the reverie I had interrupted, with a soft, but dejected smile, requested her father (for such I found him to be) would repeat the variations of Pleyell’s German Hymn. The slow, and solemn measure, raised my soul to Heaven, while my uplifted eyes invoked the pardon of human frailties, and the rapturous enthusiasm invigorated my mind.

The Harper arose, his dog trotted on before, and I accepted the proffered arm of the lovely Julia. Our conversation was on trifling subjects, and the increasing darkness added an awful solemnity to the stillness of the scene, as the bat flitted round us, and the solitary owl poured forth her wailing plaints to the full-rising Orb of Night. From the high eminence we espied the beautiful little town of Chepstow; its various lamps reflected on the smooth surface of the Severn, while the distant dashing of oars proclaimed our re-union with the world, from which the peaceful groves of Piercefield had just before seemed to separate us.

Julia and I, whose tastes already appeared to be formed for each other, delighted ourselves with the majestic scenery above and below us. We retraced to our memories The Sorrows of Werter, while we gazed on his favourite constellation, and compared its superiority over the luminous bodies that surrounded it. But alas! these chearing prospects gladdened not the heart of our companion; his day was set in everlasting night, and I sighed while I surveyed the marks of placed resignation that beamed on his benign countenance.