infinite trials, difficulties, distresses, and even disgraces, (her delicacy and situation considered) see her married: see her an excellent wife, an excellent mistress, and even an excellent mother, struggling through very delicate and very painful circumstances, what though common, not the less painful and delicate for being common: see her foolish and obstinate relations reconciled to her: see Mr. Lovelace in his behaviour to her all that can be expected from a tender, a fond husband: what is there unusual in all this? except in the latter case, an example as dangerous as rare! What, in a happiness so common and so private (the lady of equal degree with the gentleman, and of superior, at least equal, talents, so not preferred by the marriage as a recompense for her sufferings) worth troubling the world about? How many are the infelicities, how many are the drawbacks upon happiness, that attend upon what is even called a happy married life? Indeed the best of our happiness here is but happiness by competition or comparison. A becalmed life is like a becalmed ship. The very happiness to which we are long accustomed becomes like a stagnated water, rather infectious than salutary. The full stomach loathes the honeycomb. There are sighs that proceed from fullness as well as from emptiness. If happy in ourselves, it is in the power of our very servants, and so much the more, too often, if they find we endeavour to make them happy, to render us not so. Are not the happiest of us continually looking forward to what we have not? passing by with thankless indifference what we possess? But not too severely to moralize. Let us attend Clarissa in the issue of her supposed nuptials. We will imagine her to have repeatedly escaped the perils of child-birth. How many children shall we give her? five, six, seven? How many, madam? Not less, I hope. Suppose them then grown up; do they, however well instructed, always or generally answer the cultivator's wishes? Will they have nothing of the mortal of a father in them, as he was before his reformation? Even the goddess mother had something to reproach herself with; the consequences of which made her and all her family long unhappy. Will there be nothing of that perverseness, shall I call it ? Good parents are not sure they shall have good children. But suppose all their children dutiful, prudent, good; and suppose them to continue so, sons and daughters till marriageable years, how then are the cares of the anxious parents increased? If ever so worthy, may not the daughters marry unworthy men, the sons unworthy women? How many discomforts may spring from these sources to make fathers and mothers, however happy in each other, unhappy in their offspring; then probably most unhappy, when least able to contend with misfortunes. And is this, even this not unfavourable view, the condition of life to which we are so solicitous to prefer a creature perfected by sufferings, and already ripened for glory. If you are dissatisfied with this view, let me beg of you, madam (you have a charming imagination, and are yourself happy in the nuptial state, let me beg of you), to describe for Clarissa such a state as you would have wished her to shine in before she went to heaven. Clarissa has the greatest of triumphs even in this world. The greatest, I will venture to say, even in and after the outrage, and because of the outrage, that ever woman had. A writer who follows nature, and pretends to keep the Christian system in his eye, cannot make a heaven in this world for his favourites, or represent this life otherwise than as a state of probation. Clarissa, I once more aver, could not be rewarded in this world. To have given her her reward here, as in a happy marriage, would have been as if a poet had placed his catastrophe in the third act of his play, when the audience were obliged to expect two more. What greater moral proof can be given of a world after this, for the rewarding of suffering virtue, and for the punishing of oppressive vice, than the inequalities in the distribution of rewards and punishments here below? "How can any one," say you, "think with pleasure of parting with what he loves, supposing his end ever 80 glorious? Could you, sir? Have you ever made it your own case?" Ah, madam! And do you thus call upon me?-Forgive an interrupting sigh, and allow me a short silence. I told you, madam, that I have been twice married-both times happily. You will guess so as to my first, when I tell you that I cherish the memory of my lost wife to this hour; and as to the second, when I assure you, that I can do so without derogating from the merits of, or being disallowed by my present, who speaks of her on all occasions as respectfully and as affectionately as I do myself. By my first wife I had five sons and one daughter; some of them living to be delightful prattlers, with all the appearances of sound health; lovely in their features, and promising as to their minds and the death of one of them, I doubt, accelerating from grief, that of the otherwise laudably afflicted mother. I have had by my present wife five girls and one boy. I have buried of these the promising boy and one girl. Four girls I have living, all at present good, very good. Their mother, a true and instructing mother to them. Thus have I lost six sons (all my sons!) and two daughters, with every one of which, to answer your question, I parted with great regret. Other heavy deprivations of friends, very near, and very dear, have I also suffered. I am very susceptible, I will venture to say, of impressions of this nature. A father, an honest, a worthy father, I lost by the accident of a broken thigh, snapt by a sudden jerk, endeavouring to recover a slip, passing through his own yard. Two brothers, very dear to me, I lost abroad. A friend more valuable than most brothers was taken from me. No less than eleven affecting deaths attacked me in two years. My nerves were so affected with these repeated blows, that I have been for seven years past forced, after repeatedly labouring through the whole medical process by direction of eminent physicians, to go into a regimen, not a cure to be expected, but merely as a palliative; and for seven years past have forborne wine, flesh, and fish and at this time I and my family are in mourning for a good sister, with whom I would not have parted, could I have had my choice. From these affecting dispensations will you not allow me, madam, to remind an unthinking world, immersed in pleasures, what a life this is, of which they are so fond? and to endeavour to arm them against the most affecting changes and chances of it. The case, therefore, is not what we should like to bear, but what (such is the common lot) we must bear, like it or not. And if we can be prepared by remote instances to support ourselves under real afflictions when it comes to our turn to suffer such, is the attempt an unworthy one? O that my own last hour, and the last hour of those I love, may be such as that I have drawn for my Clarissa! I asked you, madam, at how many years end (endeared by constant good offices) we are to choose to part with those we love? "I really cannot tell," answer you; "but you can tell yourself, that it is impossible to wish for, or be perfectly satisfied at, the time of parting, though this time must come. And have you not observed," proceed you," that, in a general way, the parting sits easier, and makes a less impression upon those in years, than when it happens at an early time, though their esteem and love for each other may or may not be in the least diminished?" Indeed, madam, I have not generally, or at all, observed this, where the love has been undiminished, but the contrary. And it is reasonable to suppose that it should be the contrary, and I could easily give more than one instance where the loss of the one partner has, in all appearance, hastened the death of the other. In the early part of life, youth and gay hopes keep the heart alive. I have compared marriage, even where not unhappy, to a journey in a stage coach, six passengers in it. Very uneasy sit they at first, though they know by the number of places taken what they are to expect; one wishing another to take up less room; the slender entitled, as they think, to grudge the more bulky their very size and shape. But when the vehicle moves on, a hearty jolt or two in a rugged way settles them. They then begin to open lips and countenances, compare notes, tell stories, assume consequence, and endeavour placidly to keep up to the consequence they assume, and are all of a family. I believe no two ever came together who had not each (however pleased in the main) some little matter they wished to be mended, altered, or yielded up; that had not some few jolts as I may call them. The first six, eight, or ten months, may probably pass in settling each to the other their minds, and what the one or what the other shall or will give up, or insist upon. When this is found out, it ends in a composition, a tacit one at least, and then they settle tolerably together. Then love (the intenser, the truer love) increases, if each be satisfied in each other's love: yet a dangerous illness, a fever suppose on the man's side, the parturient circumstances on the woman's, keep hope and fear alive, and the well party will not be able to forbear looking out for what is to be chosen (were the dreaded worst to happen, though not wishing it should happen) and perhaps for whom. But both arrived at the good old age, which you would have had afforded to Clarissa and her reformed Lovelace, their minds weakened, both domesticated, their views narrowed; company principally for each other, and looking not out of themselves, or their own narrow wicket for comfort; must not a parting then be very grievous ? Bodies may be sundered in youth, may be torn from each other, and other bodies may supply the loss, for the loves of youth have more in them of body than of mind, let lovers fancy what they will: but in age, a separation may be called a separation of souls. Joyless, cold to sense, hardly hope left, no near and dear friend to complain to or be soothed by; yet infirmities daily increasing: relations, as well as others, and with more reason, though with less gratitude, than others, ready to jostle the forlorn survivor off the stage of life, and thinking it time for him or her to follow the departed half. In short, human life is not at best so very desirable a thing as we are apt to imagine it to be, had we not a better to hope for. We find this to be true by retrospecting that part of it we have passed And shall we call an early death an untimely one, yet not be able to say at how many years end, or in what situation, we should think the inevitable lot happy? over. "No wonder,” you say, “that she knew happy days before eighteen; trials seldom come till after that time of life." The more useful then my story so full of trials, and these so nobly supported. "Do not provoke me," say you. Will you forgive me, madam, if I own that I really have so much cruelty in my nature, that I should wish to provoke you now and then, if I knew what would do it, consistent with respect and decency? For, as I have often said, I admire you even in the height of that charming spirit which you exert with so much agreeable warmth, in a cause in which you think it becomes a tender and humane nature to exert itself. The faults which proceed from goodness of heart I love beyond the unwilling virtues of the malevolent. "Women to be generally thought a trifling part of the creation." May those who think them so never be blest with a sensible woman! You must see that the tendency of all I have written is to exalt the sex. You say, "you suppose that I designed my fair readers should find out what was worthy and agreeable in Lovelace." I did, madam; and I told you in my first letter that he had some good qualities given him, in compliment to the eye and ear of Clarissa. But little did I think at the time that those qualities would have given women of virtue and honour such a liking to him, as I have found to be the case with many. I thought I had made him too wicked, too intriguing, too revengeful (and that in his very first letters), for him to obtain the favour and good wishes of any worthy heart of either sex. I tried his character, as it was first drawn, and his last exit, on a young lady of seventeen. She showed me by her tears at the latter, that he was not very odious to her for his vagaries and inventions. I was surprised; and for fear such a wretch should induce pity, I threw into his character some deeper shades. And as he now stands, I verily think that had I made him a worse man, he must have been a devil-for devils believe and tremble. "You cannot agree with me, that Lovelace ought to have done all in his power to repair the wrongs of some one of those whom he had deluded." The Manse laws are with me in this point. Pity they are not in force throughout the British, and all Christian dominions. But let me allow with you, that this may depend upon particular circumstances. And yet there are circumstances so particular in some seductions, that a man ought, upon the common principles of honour, whether reformed or not, to marry the woman whom he has betrayed; yea, supposing such to have been an easy prey to him. Perhaps I ought to be excused, by a lady, at least, if I affirm that no one case can be put where a man's solemn promise should be dispensed with, and he has reaped the fruits of it. If a woman be very culpably forward and frail, there need be no promise of marriage made her; the man may obtain his end without. Yet multitudes of those very yielding persons would have been virtuous and good women, were they not to have been tempted, stimulated, and betrayed by wretches who have equal title with Lovelace to tempt, to try, to doubt their mistresses' virtue. "They who are so weak," say you, "as to be tempted by so old a bait as a promise of marriage, deserve not that justice." But if it be justice, and justice surely it is to a poor creature who has risked body, soul, and reputation, upon the credit she gives to the vows of her lover, however inexcusably weak she may be for her affiance to him, she has a title to it. Nor as it may happen, will she want punishment for her easy folly, were he, who has found her so weak, actually to make good his promise. "Had you been a reformed Lovelace," say you, "with a Clarissa in your view, would you have done what you say he ought to do?—No, no, no-nor any man living," answer you, with your happy vivacity. What we would do, or what we should do, madam, are two very different things. But as circumstances might have offered, perhaps I could not have given a stronger nor a more proper evidence to the world, and even to heaven, of the sincerity of my reformation, than by doing this justice, I will call it. And were my conscience engaged (honour call it if you please) to effect the delusion, it ought not to have been released, till I had performed the con.. dition upon which it was pledged. And this course I should be the more bound to take, if the poor creature was likely to be finally lost by the consequence of my perfidy. What, think you, has not Mr. Grimes to answer for in the ruin of Constantia Philips, when but eleven years of age, and abandoning her to the town in two months; if the story she tells be true? What ruins, the consequences of her ruin, may not be laid at his door? You will before now have the whole work courting your acceptance and perusal. If it may not have the honour of the latter you must not, however, deny it that of the former. Be pleased in this case to honour the volumes with a place with your Taylor's "Living and Dying," with your "Practice of Piety," and Nelson's "Feasts and Festivals,” not as being worthy of such company, but that they may have a chance of being dipped into thirty years hence; for I persuade myself, they will not be found utterly unworthy of such a chance, since they appear in the humble guise of novel only by way of accommodation to the manners and taste of an age overwhelmed with luxury, and abandoned to sound and senselessness. I am, Madam, with great truth and respect, To compensate for having made his handsome profligate attractive to ladies, who said that he had given them nothing else to admire, Richardson undertook to paint a man as he should be in Sir Charles Grandison, the hero of his third and last novel. This brought him into more discussions with ladies who were honoured by hearing him read his chapters as they were written. One of them, Miss Mulso, afterwards Mrs. Chapone, who published "Letters on the Improvement of the Mind," called down upon herself, among many others, these two letters from Richardson containing— DISQUISITIONS UPON LOVE. Sept. 3, 1751. You tell me, my dear Miss Mulso, "that I am really such a bamboozler on the subject of love, that you can't tell what to make of me." Sometimes, say you, I am persuaded that "you have a noble and just idea of the noblest kind of love; " and sometimes I think that "you and I have different ideas of the passion." In another place, you are offended with the word grati tude; as if your idea of love excluded gratitude. And further on, you are offended that I call this same passion, "a little selfish passion." And you say, "that you have known few girls, and still fewer men, whom you have thought capable of being in love." "By this," proceed you, "you will see, that my ideas of the word love are different from yours, when you call it a little selfish passion." Now, madam, if that passion is not little and selfish that makes two vehement souls prefer the gratification of each other, often to a sense of duty, and always to the whole world without them, be pleased to tell me what it is. And pray be so good as to define to me, what the noble passion is, of which so few people of either sex are capable. Give me your ideas of it. I put not this question as a puzzler, a bamboozler, but purely for information; and that I may make my Sir Charles susceptible of the generous (may I say generous ?) flame; and yet know what he is about, yet be a reasonable man. Harriet's passion is founded in gratitude for relief given her in a great exigence. But the man who rescued her is not, it seems, to have such a word as gratitude in his head, in return for her love. I repeat that I will please you if I can; please you, Miss Mulso I here mean, (before, I meant not you particularly, my dear, but your sex) in Sir Charles's character; and I sincerely declare, that I would rather form his character to your liking, than to the liking of three parts out of four of the persons I am acquainted with. You are one of my best girls, and best judges. Of whom have I the opinion that I have of Miss Mulso on these nice subjects?—I ask therefore repeatedly for your definition of the passion which you dignify by the word noble; and from which you exclude everything mean, little, or selfish. And you really think it marvellous that a young woman should find a man of exalted merit to be in love with? -Why, truly, I am half of your mind; for how should people find what, in general, they do not seek?—Yet what good creatures are many girls!-They will be in love for all that. Why, yes, to be sure, they would be glad of a Sir Charles Grandison, and prefer him even to a Lovelace, were he capable of being terribly in love. And yet, I know one excellent girl who is afraid "that ladies in general will think him too wise."-Dear, dear girls, help me to a few monkeytricks to throw into his character, in order to shield him from contempt for his wisdom. "It is one of my maxims," you say, "that people even of bad hearts will admire and love people of good ones." Very true! And yet admiration and love, in the sense before us, do not always shake hands, except at parting, and with an intention never to meet again. I have known women who professed to admire good men; but have chosen to marry men-not so good; when lovers of both sorts have tendered themselves to their acceptance. There is something very pretty in the sound of the word wild, added to the word fellow; and good sense is a very grateful victim to be sacrificed on the altar of love. Fervour and extravagance in expressions will please. How shall a woman, who, moreover, loves to be admired, know a man's heart, but from his lips? -Let him find flattery, and she will find credulity. Sweet souls! can they be always contradicting? “You believe it is not in human nature, however depraved, to prefer evil to good in another, whatever people may do in themselves." Why, no, one would really think so, did not experience convince us that many, very many young women, in the article of marriage, though not before thought to be very depraved, are taken by this green sickness of the soul, and prefer dirt and rubbish to wholesome diet. The result of the matter is this, with very many young women :--They will admire a good man; but they will marry a bad one.-Are not rakes pretty fellows? But one thing let me add, to comfort you in relation to Harriet's difficulties: I intend to make her shine by her cordial approbation, as she goes along, of every good action of her beloved. She is humbled by her love (suspense in love is a mortifier) to think herself inferior to his sisters; but I intend to raise her above them, even in her own just opinion; and when she shines out the girl worthy of the man, not exalt, but reward her, and at the same time make him think himself highly rewarded by the love of so frank and so right an heart. There now!-Will that do, my Miss Mulso? I laid indeed an heavy hand on the good Clarissa. But I had begun with her, with a view to the future saint in her character: and could she, but by sufferings, shine as she does? Do you, my dear child, look upon me as S. RICHARDSON. Sept. 30, 1751. I can't say, my dear Miss Mulso, but you have given a very pretty definition of love. I knew that the love you contended for must be a passion fit to be owned; and I am sorry you think there are very few, either men or women, that are capable of it. By the way, I had the generality of men and women in my eye, and not those few, those very few, that are capable of that true love which you call the highest kind and degree of friendship. But do not all men and women pretend to this sort of love? Do not the many, as well as the few, lay claim to this sort of love, and dignify it by the name of a noble passion? And do not all the boys and girls around them, when the passionates (forgive the word) break fences, leap from windows, climb walls, swim rivers, defy parents, say, Such a furiosa is in love; ay, and sit down, and form excuses from that single word for the mad-cap! though neither degree, duty, discretion, nor yet modesty, has been consulted in the rapture. Think you, madam, that a certain monodist did not imagine himself possessed by this purer flame, who, mourning a dead wife of exalted qualities, could bring her to his reader's imagination, on the bridal eve, the hymeneal torch lighted up, Dearer to me, than when tby virgin charms How many soft souls have been made to sigh over the images here conveyed, and to pity the sensual lover, when they should have lamented with the widower or husband! But the love you describe "cannot be call'd selfish, because it must desire the happiness of its object preferably to its own." Fine talking! Pretty ideas!-Well; and where this is the case we will not call it selfish, I think. And yet what means the person possessed, but to gratify self,-or self and proposed company? Is a man who enters into a partnership to be regarded, who declares that his ardent thirst after accumulation is not for himself, for his own thirst; but for his partner's, whom he loves better than himself? or his partner, on the other hand, when he declares the same thing by his partner? This cannot be selfishness, though they combine to cheat father and mother, renounce brother and sister; and having made themselves the world to each other, seek to draw every public and private duty into their own narrow circle. Dear madam, is not the object pretended to be preferred to self a single object? A part of self? And is it not a selfishness to propose to make all the world but two persons, and then these two but one; and, intending to become the same flesh as well as spirit, know no public, no other private ? Consider the matter over again, in this its best light. Supposing an opposition founded on reason, from parents or friends, be the flame ever so pure, as well as ardent.-It cannot be called furious. Well then, we will not call it so; and yet constitution is a good deal to be considered in this case; the poet tells us, Love various minds does variously inspire, Like that of incense on the altar laid; But raging fires tempestuous souls invade, And not only constitution, but the fervour or gentleness of the How can it? opposition is to be considered: a furious opposition will make a furious resistance. Let passage be given to the gentle stream, and it will glide gently on, and in soft complainings only murmur. But seek to imbank, to confine it, the waters will rise, and carry away the opposing mound; an inundation follows, and then it will roar, and with difficulty be once more confined to its natural channel, a good deal of fair meadow having been overflowed by the attempt to restrain it. But "True love is all tenderness, gentleness, and kindness-" Yes to the object.-"Ever fearful of offending."Yes the object; but nobody else if withstood.—“ And unbounded in the desire of obliging."-The object.-Yes, so it is, whomever else it happens to disoblige. And this is not selfish!-I am glad of it, with all my heart. My dear papa, my dear mamma, my good uncle, my worthy aunt, my loving cousins, and you my old friends, play-fellows, and intimates, I love not myself, though I can give you up, if you oppose my love; for it is Philander that I love; and nobody else. And he loves me, and only me; I for his sake, he for mine: not either for his or her own sake: and do I not give a convincing proof of my disinterestedness when I can throw off all the regards of duty, of interest, of natural affection, for the sake of a man (not for my own sake) whom perhaps had never seen or known, had I not been at Ranelagh, at Vauxhall, at the Opera, at a certain critical hour, which is to determine the happiness of my whole life? And, as it may happen, your happiness my dear friends, if your hearts are bound up in me, your grateful Philo-Philander. But, "true love, you say, cannot be called a sanctifier of bad actions and a debaser of good; or a Moloch deity, which requires duty, discretion, all that is most valuable, to be sacrificed to it; because (love being the highest kind of friendship) there can be no such thing as true love, any more than true friendship, that has not virtue for its basis."-In virtue, I will presume that you include duty; and not only duty, but prudence; and then I will admit that love, such a love, shall be called noble. But you say, my dear, in your former, that very few are capable of such a sort of love. And I, arguing generally, and not to the few exceptions, am not willing that love, indiscriminately taken, should be called noble; because those persons will then shield a passion under the word, of which they ought to be ashamed, when it becomes the Moloch deity, and requires our children to pass through its fires. "And now, if friendship," infers my Miss Mulso, "may be dignified by the word noble, why may not love be allowed an equal claim to the epithet?" I will not, without discussion, without examination, allow it an equal claim, for this plain reason. Sense may predominate in the one; it cannot in the other. Those will be found to be the most noble friendships which either flame between persons of the same sex; or where the dross of the passion is thrown out, and the ore purified by the union of minds in matrimony. And I am of opinion that love is but the harbinger to such a friendship; and that friendship therefore is the perfection of love, and superior to love: it is love purified, exalted, proved by experience and a consent of minds. Love, madam, may, and love does, often stop short of friendship. Love is a blazing, crackling, green-wood flame, as much smoke as flame; friendship, married friendship particularly, is a steady, intense, comfortable fire. Love, in courtship, is friendship in hope; in matrimony, friendship upon proof. "Cannot all the natural and right affections of the heart," ask you, "subsist together?" They can. "Must one absorb and swallow up the rest ?" It often does in the green-wood love I have been mentioning; and yet very frequently itself evaporates in its own smoke, or dies away in embers, warming only its own sticks, and offending every one's eyes and head that sits near it. "Cannot the same man be at the same time, an effective husband (that is, a married lover), a good son, father, friend, and neighbour?"-He can. "If he can," ask you, "what means your question?" This, my dear Miss Mulso, means my question; that I had before me, love in hope, and not love in proof; love opposed, with reason opposed; and the lovers determined against reason determined. The married lover is an exalted character: but of him we were not debating. We had before us, "two vehement souls, preferring the gratification of each other, often to a sense of duty, always to the whole world, without them;" and was I so very great a bamboozler, when I put the question upon the selfishness of souls so narrow and so vehement? "You did not," you say, "mean to exclude gratitude, &c."I know you did not; and there I own myself to be designedly a caviller; but in pleasantry too, to make you rise upon me, and say right things in your usual beautiful manner. And my end is answered. I suffer.-You shine. As to the severe things I say of the conduct of "unhappy silly women who have married unworthy men," and all that depends upon these severe things; were not my indignation founded in love of the sex; and had I not an opinion that the cause of virtue and the sex is one; and that such persons betray that of both, I should not be so severe. And these motives make me write so ludicrously sometimes, so angrily at others, on the subject of love; which is really made too generally, nay almost universally the sanctifier of bad actions. As to my health-I write, I do anything I am able to do, on purpose to carry myself out of myself; and am not quite so happy, when, tired with my peregrinations, I am obliged to return home. Put me not therefore in mind of myself. My disorder is a chronical one. I am not so bad as I have Adieu, my dear Miss Mulso, child of my heart! S. RICHARDSON. been. "Sir Charles Grandison" was published in 1753, and Richardson enjoyed the worship of many women with susceptible hearts until his death in July 1761. One of the pleasantest illustrations of this, very touching in its close, is in the correspondence established with Richardson by the young enthusiastic wife of the German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, who had loved him for the verse of his Messiah. As the girls of Richardson's native village did in his boyhood, when they poured their confidences into his ears, so now does the good tender-hearted young Frau Klopstock, whose artless attempts at English may not be literature, but have that in their nature which it would take a good artist to show by way of imitation. Perhaps we should illustrate the development of sentiment 1 He is in the grotto of his house at North End, Hammersmith. The artist was Miss Highmore. The persons represented in the drawing are, counting from left to right-"(1) Mr. Richardson, in his usual morning dress; (2) Mr. Mulso; (3) Mr. Edw. Mulso; (4) Miss Mulso, afterwards Mrs. Chapone; (5) Miss Prescott, afterwards Mrs. Mulso; (6) The Rev Mr. Duncombe; (7) Miss Highmore, afterwards Mrs. Duncombe." that became, after the middle of the eighteenth century, a feature of German life and literature, by giving a translation of an Ode founded on Richardson's "Clarissa" which was written by the Major Hohorst, of whose death by fever Mrs. Klopstock will be found to speak: ODE ON THE DEATH OF CLARISSA. (Translated from the German of Major Hohorst.) Flower, tho' transplanted, still blooming: fairest associate of Eden's flowers. O may'st thou not close in obscuring shades. May no swift decay invade thy bloom. Gentle zephyrs, like those which cherish the earth, for thee are too rough. Ah! a storm arises. Alas! it blasts thee in its first onset. Sweet flower, blighted in thy full-blown glories; beautiful in ruin we view thee with tears of admiration. How amiable was the living Clarissa! In her shone each attractive grace: and even now, in the sleep of death, a more placid red covers her hollow cheeks. Now separated, her exalted soul hastened to the celestial spirits: the kindred spirits joyfully received her. |