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was too much taken up by her own dreadful fears, to be angry, hardly
grieved; for she judged that insensibility must be the source of this
continued rancour. This was not altogether the fact: but predominant
self-will assumed the arms and masque of callous feeling; and the haughty
lady disdained to exhibit any token of the struggle she endured; while the
slave of pride, she fancied that she sacrificed her happiness to immutable
principle.
False was all this--false all but the affections of our nature, and the
links of sympathy with pleasure or pain. There was but one good and one
evil in the world--life and death. The pomp of rank, the assumption of
power, the possessions of wealth vanished like morning mist. One living
beggar had become of more worth than a national peerage of dead lords--
alas the day!--than of dead heroes, patriots, or men of genius. There was
much of degradation in this: for even vice and virtue had lost their
attributes--life--life--the continuation of our animal mechanism--
was the Alpha and Omega of the desires, the prayers, the prostrate ambition
of human race.
[
[
[
[
[
[
1] Calderon de la Barca.
2] Wordsworth.
3] Keats.
4] Andrew Marvell.
5] The Cenci
6] The Brides' Tragedy, by T. L. Beddoes, Esq.
386
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