A FRAGMENT.
It is dark, and a silent gloom pervades the face of Heaven and of Earth, that makes my soul expand to such a magnitude, as if it would burst the very bosom which contains it.—All is silent!—fear takes possession of my mind; when, from an angry cloud, the liquid flames flash forth with terrible sublimity; darting from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, with such repeated swiftness, blazing expansive through the heaven’s high vaults, then on a sudden vanishing! On rolls the distant thunder solemnly sublime, and with the pelting rain and howling wind, approaches nearer: between each peal out flashes the sulphureous flame, illumining the rushing cataract with its light; succeeded by a crash most horrible, which shakes the very earth to its centre! Once more a sombre gloom spreads over the face of nature—again, all is terror and confusion!—
Dudley.
WISDOM.
Lessons of Wisdom have never such power over us as when they were wrought into the heart through the ground work of a story which engages the passions. Is it that we are like iron and must first be heated before we can be wrought upon? or is the heart so in love with deceit, that where a true report will not reach it, we must cheat it with a fable, in order to come at truth?
LEVITY.
A Devonshire droll has thus burlesqued the lullababy pastoral of Shenstone. “My banks they are furnish’d with bees, &c.”
My beds are all furnish’d with fleas,
Whose bitings invite me to scratch;
Well stock’d are my orchards with jays,