Belario was a youth who had been bred up under his father’s eye, according to the most rigid morals. Old Syphax had, in the early part of his life, been a great dupe to the fair sex; he had fancied himself a beau garcon, and imagined he had a right to captivate every female he thought proper to address. In this opinion he was greatly mistaken, and meeting with a variety of coquettes and jilts, he found himself often deceived by his own artifice, and after having squandered considerable sums upon them, discovered he was only laughed at for his vanity and folly. He, however, pursued the career of a general lover for upwards of a dozen years; in the course of which time he had much injured his fortune, in dangling after beauties who despised him, and substituting in their place professed harlots. At length he closed the circle of his amours in marrying, out of mere spight, his own cook-maid, by whom he had Belario.—His consort, though she had approved herself an excellent cook, turned out a dreadful wife. She no sooner attained the summit of her ambition, which she had long aimed at, and which she obtained by the most servile flattery, and the greatest humility imaginable, than she threw off the independant, and soon convinced Syphax, she knew the difference between a servile state and that of a mistress. In a word, she was the modern Zantippe, and probably Socrates never led half so wretched a life, as did poor Syphax, after the connubial knot was tied. He now took an aversion to the whole sex, swore eternal enmity to them, and made a solemn vow, after separating from his wife, soon after the expiration of the honey moon, never to associate or speak to a woman in the course of his future life. Upon the birth of his son he immediately sent for him, and would never let him know who was his mother.
As Belario advanced towards maturity, he had him educated under his own roof, having resolved that he should not be trained at a public school, lest, by associating with the world, he might imbibe their notions in favour of the female sex. He never suffered him to read any books that had the least allusion to the tender passion, and constantly represented women, whenever they were mentioned, as monsters in human forms, and more to be dreaded than wolves and tigers. In this opinion whenever Belario beheld a female at a distance, he fled from her with the greatest swiftness, fearful that even the air might be contaminated with her breath. Yet he thought that there was something enchanting in woman, which he could not account for; but if he hinted such a thought to his father, Syphax depicted them as Syrens, who allured unwary travellers to approach them for their destruction.
Tutored with these extraordinary notions, Belario had attained his eighteenth year, when Syphax paid the great debt of nature, and left his son in possession of an easy fortune. He began now to relax from the severity of those studies, to which he had been confined. He read novels, Ovid’s Art of love, and many other books, that soon made him suspect his father’s doctrine had been fallacious. Belario had not, however, the fortitude to dare approach a female so nearly, as to enjoy the contemplation of her charms, or the enchanting raptures of her conversation; when one day walking in a pensive mood, in a grove adjacent to his abode, his ears were assailed with such harmoneous accents as involuntarily attracted not only his attention, but, by a secret impulse, led him to the spot where the seeming celestial notes proved to issue.
He had scarce reached the hawthorn of melody, before he perceived the lovely Lucetta singing, accompanied by her guittar. Now, in despight of all his father’s tenets so carefully inculcated, he found the impulse of nature, and the power of music, operate far beyond all the sophistry of Syphax’s reasoning against the lovely sex.
He intuitively approached the beauteous maid, and instantly became a captive to her charms---a votary to love and harmony.
Lucetta at first received him with some reserve; but after a fervent declaration of his passion, which soon became sympathetic, she listened to his addresses; when he revealed to her how much he had been imposed upon by Syphax, who represented the most amiable part of the creation as monsters, more dangerous than serpents and crocodiles, and that in this opinion he had shunned them to this very hour; but that he now flattered himself he should make ample amends in paying his devotions to such an angelic being as the divine Lucetta.
This young lady was the only daughter of a gentleman of property in an adjacent village, whom Belario, with the approbation of Lucetta, waited upon to obtain his consent for their nuptials. Her father received the young man with politeness and hospitality, and told him he should have no objection to the match, if he could obtain his daughter’s consent. Happy in such a reply, he flew to his adored Lucetta, and acquainted her with the glad tidings, which she received with as much transport as he communicated them.
To be brief, in a few days their nuptials were solemnized, and they have now enjoyed the most permanent felicity the connubial state can confer, for upwards of two years, in which time the lovely Lucetta has given to the world two pledges of their mutual fondness, in a delightful boy, and a still more beautiful girl. Here we shall leave them, to enjoy that unsullied happiness which ever attends the purest virtue, and the sincerest love.