"We cannot wish to look upon anything with mere charms for a mind at ease, than we can see under such circumstances; but I fear there are some few old and familiar features that I should find sad havoc in."
"You would, certainly, for the burnings and razings to the ground of some places, have made some dismal appearances; but time may efface that, and then the evil may die away, and the future will become the present, should we be able to allay popular feeling."
"Yes," said Sir Francis; "but popular prejudices, or justice, or feeling, are things not easily assuaged. The people when once aroused go on to commit all kinds of excess, and there is no one point at which they will step short of the complete extirpation of some one object or other that they have taken a fancy to hunt."
"The hubbub and excitement must subside."
"The greater the ignorance the more persevering and the more brutal they are," said Sir Francis; "but I must not complain of what is the necessary consequence of their state."
"It might be otherwise."
"So it might, and no mischief arise either; but as we cannot divert the stream, we may as well bend to the force of a current too strong to resist."
"The moon is up," said Flora, who wished to turn the conversation from that to another topic. "I see it yonder through the trees; it rises red and large—it is very beautiful—and yet there is not a cloud about to give it the colour and appearance it now wears."
"Exactly so," said Sir Francis Varney; "but the reason is the air is filled with a light, invisible vapour, that has the effect you perceive. There has been much evaporation going on, and now it shows itself in giving the moon that peculiar large appearance and deep colour."
"Ay, I see; it peeps through the trees, the branches of which cut it up into various portions. It is singular, and yet beautiful, and yet the earth below seems dark."