Hedge in, by rules, his roving mind.”
If he be suffered to remain enfranchised, though abusing his liberty, he may stray from the high road, yet he hopes never to deviate far from the boundaries of common sense; and if, in the wildness of volatility, he sometimes leap the hedge, he will endeavour to catch a butterfly, or crop a flower. All parties in the State, may read the moderate sentiments of a writer, who will neither factiously blow the trumpet of democracy, nor proudly stalk in the aristocratical buskin. All sects in the Church, may cheerily and charitably unite in the perusal of a work, intended to amuse as a speculation, not dogmatize as a creed. Though feminine foibles will be smilingly derided, yet, at the apprehension of malignant satire from the author of the Farrago, not a heart need palpitate, a fan flutter, nor a tea-table shake. If the ladies will “put away those strange gods,” coquetry, futility and artifice, he will, in, the words of Shakespeare’s weaver, so restrain and aggravate his voice, that he will roar at them, like any sucking dove, he will roar, like any nightingale.—In fine, like every other adventurer, he promises plausibly; and though he cannot hope to instruct by golden precept, like Pythagoras, or divert by humour, like Falstaff, yet like Sancho Panza, by his very simplicity he may inform and amuse.
The ADVENTURES of ALPHONSO and MARINA;
AN INTERESTING SPANISH TALE.
(Concluded from [page 342].)
No sooner had she come to the bottom of the stairs than she perceived Don Alphonso. Her joy almost deprived her of speech; she leaned against the wall, her head sunk on her shoulder, and the tears bedewed her cheeks. She wiped them away, stopped a moment to take breath, and, endeavouring to speak with firmness, approached the prisoner.
‘Stranger,’ said she, disguising her voice, ‘you have killed your companion. What could induce you to commit such a horrid crime?’
‘Alcaid,’ answered Don Alphonso, ‘I have committed no crime; it was an act of justice; but I am desirous to die. Death alone can end the miseries, of which the wretch I have sacrificed was the first cause. Condemn me. I wish not to make a defence. Deliver me from a life which is hateful to me, since I have lost what alone could render it delightful; since I can no longer hope ever to find’——