| "And is this Cupid's realm?—if so, good by! Cupid, and Cupid's votaries I fly: No offering to his altar do I bring— No bleeding heart, nor hymeneal ring." |
In the third number of the Messenger, my good reader, you and I were engaged in taking a peep at Cupid's Sport. Unless you have fallen out with me, (as I certainly have not with you,) we will again travel together, in a half merry, half serious mood, through some three or four pages. We shall perhaps be forced to scramble over hedges matted with brambles, or amble along some grassy mead or velvet lawn; it may be we
| "Must pore where babbling waters flow, And watch unfolding roses blow." |
You no doubt remember in what a sad plight we left our young friend Timothy Wilberforce; how he had been gradually led on by Cupid, buoyed up and transported, till he attained within a step of the pinnacle of bliss—and then, how the mischief-making God had precipitated him to the very brink of despair; how, like Sisyphus,
"Up the high hill he heav'd the huge round stone;"
and how
| "The huge round stone resulting with a bound, Thunder'd impetuous down, and smoked along the ground." |
In fine, he had been caught and caged, manacled, cuffed, and then kicked, (that's the word,) by our good little, sweet little Molly, to his heart's content. Alas! this truly is one of the miseries of human life. Had Tim received a kick from a man fashioned like himself, he might at least have returned the blow. Had it been bestowed by one fashioned after the manner of the Houyhnims, with hock and hoof, or had it been driven full in his face by an ass, shod with a double set of irons, he might have consoled himself with the reflection that some skilful surgeon would replace the mangled elements, or kind nature reproduce a healthy action. But the impress of a damsel's foot upon a generous heart was far more difficult to efface. The wound it inflicted, had baffled through all ages the skill of anatomists, phrenologists, and philosophers. Tim then, could only bewail the hopelessness of his situation in the mournful strains of the gentle Corydon:
| "She is faithless, and I am undone. Ye that witness the woes I endure, Let reason instruct you to shun What it cannot instruct you to cure." |
These were the first sensations of his softened soul, but as time moved on with his unslackened wing, other thoughts unbidden sprung upon his mind. Memory indeed, for awhile continued to brood over "the ills that flesh is heir to," but the good Tim, at last, came to the same conclusion with the wise McPherson, that