The master of this august ceremony now waved his wand: the music ceased, all was silent, and he thus began.
'My countrymen and countrywomen.
'Behold your Cherubina; behold the most celebrated woman in our island. Need I recount to you all her accomplishments? Her impassioned sensibility, her exquisite art in depicting the delicate and affecting relations between the beauties of nature, and the deep emotions of the soul? Need I dwell on those elegant adventures, those sorrows, and those horrors, which she has experienced; I might almost say, sought? Oh! no. The whole globe already resounds with them, and their fame will descend to the most remote posterity.
'Need I portray her eloquence, the purity of her style, and the smoothness of her periods? Are not her ancestors illustrious? Are not her manners fascinating? Alas! to this question, some of our hearts beat audible response. Her's is the head of a Sappho, deficient alone in the voluptuous languor, which should characterize the countenance of that enamoured Lesbian.
'To crown her, therefore, as the patroness of arts, the paragon of charms, and the first of heroines, is to gratify our feelings, more than her own; by enabling us to pay a just homage to beauty and to virtue.'
He ceased amidst thunders of applause. I rose;—and in an instant, it was the stillness of death. Then with a timorous, yet ardent air, I thus addressed the assembly.
'My countrymen, my countrywomen!
'I will not thank you, for I cannot. In giving me cause to be grateful, you have taken from me the means of expressing my gratitude, for you have overpowered me.
'How I happen to deserve the beautiful eulogium just pronounced, I am sure I cannot conceive. Till this flattering moment, I never knew that the grove resounds with my praises, that my style is pure, and my head a Sappho's. But unconsciousness of merit is the characteristic of a heroine.
'The gratitude, however, which my words cannot express, my deeds shall evince; and I now pledge myself, that neither rank nor riches (which, from my pursuits, I am peculiarly liable to) shall ever make me unmindful of what I owe to adversity. For, from her, I have acquired all my knowledge of the world, my sympathy, my pensiveness, and my sensibility. Yes, since adversity thus adds to virtue, it must be a virtue to seek adversity.