Our feelings are as little in our power as the bodily structure they animate. My love had been sudden, uncontrollable, and born not of my own will—and such was my hate. As little could I master the sick shudder his image now called up, as I could the passionate beating of the heart it had once excited. I stood alone in my solitary hall—I gazed on the eternal fire burning over the tomb of my father, and I wished it were burning over mine. For the first time I felt the limitations of humanity. The desire of my race was in me accomplished—I was immortal! and what was this immortality? A dark and measureless future. Alas! we had mistaken life for felicity! What was my knowledge? it only served to show its own vanity; what was my power, when its exercise only served to work out the decrees of an inexorable necessity? I had parted myself from my kind, but I had not acquired the nature of a spirit. I had lost of humanity but its illusions, and they alone are what render it supportable. The mystic scrolls over which I had once pored with such intenseness, were now flung aside; what could they teach me? Time was to me but one great vacancy; how could I fill it up, who had neither labour nor excitement? I set me down mournfully, and thought of the past. Why, when love is perished, should its memory remain? I had said to myself, so long as I have life, one deep feeling must absorb my existence. A change—and that too of my own earnest seeking—had passed over my being; and the past, which had been so precious, was now as a frightful phantasm. The love which alters, in its inconstancy may set up a new idol, and worship again with a pleasant blindness; but the love which leaves the heart with a full knowledge of its own vanity and nothingness,—which saith, The object of my passion still remains, but it is worthless in my sight—never more can I renew my early feeling—I marvel how I ever could have loved—I loathe, I disdain the weakness of my former self;—ah, the end of such love is indeed despair!
"Do you mark yonder black marble slab, which is spread as over a tomb? It covers the most silvery fountain that ever mirrored the golden light of noon, or caught the fall of the evening dew, in an element bright as themselves. The radiant likeness of a spirit rests on those waters. I bade him give duration to the shadow he flung upon the wave, that I might gaze on it during his absence. The first act of my immortality was to shut it from my sight. There must that black marble rest for ever."
[By the way, the ancients are excellent judges of beauty. Socrates calls beauty (we dare not use the contemptible it,) a short-lived tyranny: Xenophon says "Fire burns only when we are near it; but a beautiful face burns and inflames, though at a distance: Plato calls beauty a privilege of nature: Theophrastus (arch fellow,) a silent cheat: Theocritus, (cunning elf,) a delightful prejudice; Carneades, a solitary kingdom, (which he doubtless would keep to himself): Domitian says that nothing is more grateful, (not even killing flies); Aristotle affirms that beauty is better than all the letters of recommendation in the world: Homer, that it is a glorious gift of nature; and Ovid calls beauty a favour bestowed by the gods, which this same Ovid shows the gods to have been jealous of among mortals." Certainly the moderns do not wage war for a beautiful woman, as did the ancients: we fear they would rather fight for an old castle.
To conclude, if, as Steele tells us, "to make happy is the true empire of beauty;" why, buy the Book of Beauty, to be sure.]
THE COMIC OFFERING
[MISS SHERIDAN presents us with her third volume of ladye mirth, as heretofore, over-flowing with fun and patter, and sprinkled with some sixty or seventy Cuts—many of them, to use a critical term, of "spirited design." Probably, the most humorous tale among the fifty is—]
THE FLYBEKINS, OR THE FIRE-ESCAPE.
The Flybekins were distant connexions of the great Lord B., living "genteelly" in the west of England: and Mr. and Mrs. Flybekin were the only adult members of the family at the period of the incident which gave rise to this anecdote. It happened once that these "country cousins" were possessed with an uncontrollable desire to enter within the hitherto unapproached circle of London fashion and gaiety in which their noble relatives moved with such distinction. Every thing was propitious in furtherance of the meditated scheme: the spring was approaching, London filling, the country emptying, and the children could all go to school. A few weeks "in Town, just to see what was going on," would be fully worth the journey, especially as it would afford an opportunity for them to commence an acquaintance with their magnificent relation. And as the boys were growing up, it might be serviceable to their interests to tighten the bonds of connexion a little, which had, from lapse of time, and want of intercourse, become somewhat loosened. There is an old saying—"where there is a will, there is always a way."—In a short time Mr. and Mrs. Flybekin, being bent on the measure, argued themselves into a belief of the projected visit being nothing short of an imperative moral duty.
When matters had gone thus far, a hint was dropped in the drawing-room, which immediately reached the "domestic department," and very soon spread through the village,—as the smallest stone falling into water creates successive circles around the spot where it fell, each increasing in circumference. Accordingly, the Flybekins were the centre of attraction on the following Sunday, after morning service. Hearty congratulations, and ardent wishes for a pleasant trip, with various commissions, pressed upon them. The newest fashions were promised to be brought down, and the village milliner looked forward to a glorious triumph over all her rivals in the trade about the country. The happy pair were on the pinnacle of provincial glory; he was expected to return with the true state of foreign affairs, and the nation, from the intercourse he would enjoy with the peer; she was expected to import news of operas, plays, music, novels, writers, balls, routs, drawing-rooms and dresses, from her intercourse with the peeress.