Enchanting melody was in her voice! Alonzo knew not why, but it thrilled his bosom, electrified his soul, and vibrated every nerve of his heart. Confused and hurried sensations, melancholy, yet pleasing; transporting as the recurrence of youthful joys, enrapturing as dreams of early childhood, passed in rapid succession over his imagination!
She advanced towards him and turned aside her veil. Her eyes were suffused, and tears streamed down her cheeks.—Alonzo started—his whole frame shook—he gasped for breath!——“Melissa! he convulsively exclaimed,—God of infinite wonders, it is Melissa!”
Again will the incidents of our history produce a pause. Our sentimental readers will experience a recurrence of sympathetic sensibilities, and will attend more eagerly to the final scene of our drama.——“Melissa alive!” may they say—“impossible! Did not Alonzo see her death announced in the public prints? Did not her cousin at New-London inform him of the circumstances, and was he not in mourning? Did not the dying Beauman confirm the melancholy fact? And was not the unquestionable testimony of her brother Edgar sufficient to seal the truth of all of this? Did not the sexton’s wife who knew not Alonzo, corroborate it? And did not Alonzo finally read her name, her age, and the time of her death, on her tomb-stone, which exactly accorded with the publication of her death in the papers, and his own knowledge of her age? And is not all this sufficient to prove, clearly and incontestibly prove, that she is dead? And yet here she is again, in all her primitive beauty and splendour! No, this surely can never be. However the author may succeed in his description, in painting reanimated nature, he is no magician, or if he is, he cannot raise the dead.
“Melissa has long since mouldered into dust,
and he has raised up some female Martin Guerre, or Thomas Hoag—some person, from whose near resemblance to the deceased, he thinks to impose upon us and upon Alonzo also, for Melissa. But it will not do; it must be the identical Melissa herself, or it might as well be her likeness in a marble statue. What! can Alonzo realize the delicacies, the tenderness, the blandishments of Melissa in another? Can her substitute point him to the rock on New London beach, the bower on her favourite hill, or so feelingly describe the charms of nature? Can he, indeed, find in her representative those alluring graces, that pensive sweetness, those unrivalled virtues and matchless worth which he found in Melissa, and which attracted, fixed and secured the youngest affections of his soul? Impossible!——Or could the author even make it out that Alonzo was deceived by a person so nearly resembling Melissa that he could not distinguish the difference, yet to his readers he must unveil the deception, and, of course, the story will end in disappointment; it will leave an unpleasant and disagreeable impression on the mind of the reader,
which in novel writing is certainly wrong. It is proved as clearly as facts can prove, that he has suffered Melissa to die; and since she is dead, it is totally beyond his power to bring her to life——and so his history is intrinsically good for nothing.”
Be not quite so hasty, my zealous censor.
Did we not tell you that we were detailing facts? Shall we disguise or discolour truth to please your taste? Have we not told you that disappointments are the lot of life? Have we not, according to the advice of the moralist*, * See Barometer, No. 118 led Alonzo to the temple of philosophy, the shrine of reason, and the sanctuary of religion? If all these fail—if in these Alonzo cannot find a balsam sufficient to heal his wounded bosom; then if, in despite of graves and tomb-stones, Melissa will come to his relief—will pour the balm of consolation over his anguished soul, cynical critic, can the author help it?
It was indeed Melissa, the identical Melissa, whom Alonzo ascended a tree to catch a last glimpse of, as she walked up the avenue to the old mansion, after they had parted at the draw-bridge, on the morning of the day when she was so mysteriously removed. “Melissa!”——“Alonzo!”——were all they could articulate: and frown not, my fair readers, if we tell you that she was instantly in his arms, while he pressed his ardent lips to her glowing cheek.