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BERENICE
Dicebant mihi sodales, si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas
meas aliquantulum forelevatas.
--Ebn Zaiat.
MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching
the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of
that arch--as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the
wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived
a type of unloveliness?--from the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow?
But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of
joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of
to-day, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies
which might have been.
My baptismal name is Egaeus; that of my family I will not mention. Yet
there are no towers in the land more time-honored than my gloomy, gray,
hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries; and
in many striking particulars--in the character of the family
mansion--in the frescos of the chief saloon--in the tapestries of the
dormitories--in the chiselling of some buttresses in the armory--but
more especially in the gallery of antique paintings--in the fashion of
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