cxcusable, at his time of life would be ridiculous and reprehensible; he assuredly wishes more fully to ascertain the temper and disposition of the woman destined to be his future campanion in life; fortunately they can bear the investigation; and, withthe permission of heaven, we shall return, you, to arrange settlements, and I, to be bride-maid at Maria's wedding.' Cheered by this prospect, the spirits of Henry revived, and he requested some music; Caroline had commenced, "Oh, thou who dry'st the mourner's tear,' when interrupted by the entrance of Charles De-. lacour, to whom Henry introduced her, and who solicited a continuance of the strains which had, even at a distance, appeared to him delightful. Caroline knew. not the coquettish excuses of the modern songstress; therefore, without pleading hoarseness-the never-recovered coldwant of practice-or other authorized false hoods, she recommenced, and went through the beautiful melody in a style so indicative of genuine taste and feeling, as to oblige her pleased auditor to acknowledge, if music be the food of love,' then was he indeed feasted, even unto danger. The tea-table assembled the parsonage family and Captain Maxwell, whom Maria and Harriet had met in their evening walk : conversation became general, and might have been protracted, had not Charles, from consideration for the invalid, most unwillingly wished good night,' at an early hour; highly pleased with the agreeable circle, and secretly contrasting their instructive and interesting discourse with the vapid, spiritless, tasteless, jargon of the supercilious, unenlightened, inmates of the Abbey. 46 CHAP. III. • Thou hast by moon-light at her window sung, THE surmises of Henry with respect to the state of Maria's affections were but too well founded; she had permitted the idea of Captain Maxwell so to associate itself with all her brightest hopes, as that happiness and he appeared to be inseparable. Her disposition was warm, confiding, and ingenuous; but an understanding, from nature excellent, was often warped by a tendency to romance, instilled and nurtured by a very intimate acquaintance with the poets and lighter authors of the day and that line of reading unfitted a mind, already too prone to the sentimental, for encountering the thousand ills which flesh is heir to.' It was in vain Mrs. Vernon attempt. ed to lead her back to the solid studies which a visit to a relative in England had interrupted; the pages of Robertson had lost their charm; the heroes of Plutarch ceased to interest a mind habituated to wander in the regions of fiction, and contemplate the ideal perfections of characters, existing but in the imagination of their visionary biographers. The anxious parent, however, consoled herself with the hope that the absurdity and shallowness of those flimsy productions might appear in their true colours to the understanding of her daughter, when it should have attained to maturity; but the undisguisedly extravagant she conceived as innocent when compared with the fashionable pages now perused with avidity, and admired with enthu siasm pages in which an attempt is made to delineate vice and crime in the most attractive and seducing forms, where monsters, cloked by one picturesque virtue, are represented in a garb so alluring as to challenge interest and to claim commiseration; like decorating the putrid corpse with flowers, and seeking to persuade the senses that all is fragrance. Mrs. Vernon also remarked with consternation, in the hands of Maria, a work, emanating from the pen of one assuming the sacred title of christian, which profanely quoted and punningly applied the words of Him who spoke as never man spake: but she had the satisfaction to see the book closed, with an exclamation of mingled horror and surprize; and an observation that "the only palliative which could be offered for such enormity was, that the author had resided some time in a country celebrated for it's infidelity and licen And is this the seminary whi tiousness. |