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: