Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub
[graphic]

remorse which the consequences of profligate folly will sometimes produce in men more weak than wicked. He too had been in use to talk of feeling and of sentiment. He was He was willing to be impelled by the passions, though not restrained by the principles of virtue, and to taste the pleasures of vice, while he thought he abhorred its depravity. His conversion was now as violent as sudden. Emilia believed it sincere, because confidence was natural to her, and the effects of sudden emotion her favourite system. By her means a thorough re-union took place between Mr. and Mrs. Marlow; and the short while the latter survived, was passed in that luxury of reconcilement, which more than reinstates the injurer in our affection. Harriet died in the arms of her husband; and, by a solemn adjuration, left to Emilia the comfort of him, and the care of her children.

There is in the communion of sorrow one of the strongest of all connections; and the charge which Emilia had received from her dying friend of her daughters, necessarily produced the freest and most frequent intercourse with their father. Debts, which his former course of life had obliged him to contract, he was unable to pay; and the demands of his creditors were the more peremptory, as, by the death of his wife, the hopes of any pecuniary assistance from her father were cut off. In the extremity of this distress, he communicated it to Emilia. Her generosity relieved him from the embarrassment, and gave him that farther tie which is formed by the gratitude of those we oblige. Meanwhile, from the exertions of that generosity, she suffered considerable inconvenience. The world was loud, and sometimes scurrilous, in its censure of her conduct. I tried once more, by a letter written

[graphic]

with all the art I was master of, to recall her from the labyrinth in which this false sort of virtue had involved her. My endeavours were vain. I found that sentiment, like religion, had its superstition, and its martyrdom. Every hardship she suffered she accounted a trial, every censure she endured she considered as a testimony of her virtue. At last my poor deluded niece was so entangled in the toils which her own imagination, and the art of Marlow, had spread for her, that she gave to the dyingcharge of Harriet the romantic interpretation of becoming the wife of her widower, and the mother of her children. My heart bleeds, Mr MIRROR, while I foresee the consequences! She will be wretched, with feelings ill accommodated to her wretchedness. Her sensibility will aggravate that ruin to which it has led her, and the world will not even afford their pity to distresses, which the prudent may blame, and the selfish may deride.

Let me warn at least where I cannot remedy, Tell your readers this story, Sir. Tell them, there are bounds beyond which virtuous feelings cease to be virtue; that the decisions of sentiment are subject to the controul of prudence, and the ties of friendship subordinate to the obligations of duty,

I am, &c.

LEONTIUS.

No 102. SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 1780.

SIR,

To the AUTHOR of the MIRROR.

You have already observed how difficult it is to reduce the science of manners to general denominations, and have shewn how liable to misapplication are some of the terms which are used in it. To your instances of men of fashion and good company, you will give me leave to add another, of which, I think, the perversion is neither less common nor less dangerous: I mean the term applied to a certain species of character, which we distinguish by the appellation of a man of spirit.

Lord Chesterfield says somewhere, that, to speak and act with spirit, is to speak rudely, and act foolishly; and his Lordship's definition is frequently right. At the same time, SPIRIT may be, and certainly is, often applied to that line of conduct and sentiment that deserves it: a person of virtue, dignity, and prudence, is, with much propriety, denominated a MAN OF SPIRIT;' but, by the abuse I complain of, man of spirit' is, for the most part, very differently applied.

6

[ocr errors]

In the various departments of business, the term spirit is frequently applied to unprofitable projects and visionary speculations. Let a man be bold enough to risk his own fortune, and the fortunes of other people, upon schemes brilliant but improbable; let him go on, sanguine amidst repeated

[graphic]
[ocr errors]
« VorigeDoorgaan »