grace, and have made me an object of detestation to the world. How can you reconcile such a conduct with the justice you profess? You were men before you were judges, and have, some of you, felt what lovers feel: yes, you have felt enough to paint to your imaginations the torment which one that so dearly loves must feel, when she can reproach herself with being the cause of death, of a miserable death, to the object of her passion. Tell me, if ye are men, and sympathize like men, is there in the compass of your decrees a punishment equal to this terrible idea? To condemn me to the scaffold, would be a blessing in comparison. I am now going, Sirs, to open your eyes. I have hitherto concealed my crime, that your decision might be favourable to me: but, urged by remorse, I can no longer dissemble my guilt. It was I that loved the first-I communicated the flame which was consuming me-I was the seducer-I was the instrument of my own dishonour. Spare an innocent person-spare my love; and let your punishments fall upon the real offender. He has indeed engaged in holy orders, to avoid the necessity of fulfilling his contract. But this is not his own action; it is the action of a barbarous father, whom he had no power to resist. It is right in you, who are fathers, to postpone the duties of a child to the duties of a lover? But how can you retract your first decree? You condemned my lover to death, unless he performed his promise to me; and then, by your second award, you precluded that option which your first had allowed. You permit him a mockery of choice, and then choose for him what his own heart would of course have rejected. That he may yet marry me, in spite of the profession he has embraced, who can doubt? Although, in truth, I am nothing but an ignorant girl, my love prompts my tongue, and gives me knowledge upon this occasion. Ah! what science could not such love as mine inspire me with, if its interests required it? Yes, I know-and you, Sirs, know also, that an ecclesiastic may marry, with a dispensation from the pope. The legate from his holiness is expected soon to arrive, and he has all the plenitude of the papal power. I will ask myself-on my knees will I beg this dispensation, and I know I shall obtain it. My love is a match for all obstacles. Oh! deign then to suspend the execution of your decree, till the legate arrives. Though you still persist in thinking the crime of my lover enormous, ah ! consider, in your clemency, what erime is not all the apparatus and show of death, that has already moved before his eyes, sufficient to expiate? Are you still inflexible? Then refuse me not the consolation of dying under the same axe with my lover." The judges were melted, and suspended the decree: but the legate was so struck with the iniquity of the young man's conduct, that he would grant the dispensation to no instances or tears. Distracted with the disappointment, Renée Corbeau rushed into the presence of the king, and threw herself at his feet. It was Henry the Fourth, and afflicted beauty was imploring his assistance ;-little more need be said. The kind monarch himself became her advocate, and easily obtained the dispensation. The marriage was immediately celebrated, and became the happiest in all France. As my story is no fiction, but among the celebrated causes collected by Mr. Gayot de Pitaval, let my readers confess that it is one of the greatest miracles which love has ever performed. No. 64. SATURDAY, AUGUST 3. Pace vestrâ liceat dixisse, primi omnium eloquentiam perdidistis ; levibus enim atque inanibus sonis ludibria effecistis, ut corpus enervaretur et caderet. dicam, pudica oratio non est maculosa nec rali pulchritudine exsurgit. quædam excitando Grandis, et, ut ita turgida, sed natu PETRONIUS. Allow me to say that you have been among the first corrupters of the true eloquence: you have substituted indeed a kind of mockery of it, while the real substance is perishing. An elevated and chaste style of oratory is not tricked out with cumbrous ornament, but recommends itself by its own natural beauty. In the course of these papers some pains have been taken to discountenance that false refinement to which the present age is tending, and towards which every age and nation inclines, at a certain period of its growth. But it is not enough to expose that mock sensibility of manners which has borne away the rewards of genuine feeling-of that feeling which is too dignified to be loquacious: there is also a mock sensibility in the writings of some men, that deserves all the ridicule which can be thrown upon it, as it falsifies the natural tones of virtue, and debauches our relish of the sublime in morals. I have before remarked the alliance which subsists between taste and morality; the truth is, that the one is rarely corrupted without some depravation of the other. He who ingrafts upon his stock of virtue solecisms in taste, and distorted ideas of elegance and beauty, however upright and pure his theory may be, will hardly escape continual absurdity in his practice and deportment. There is a decorum in truth, and in every thing in which truth is concerned, that demands a certain severity of dress, and simplicity of ornament; and virtue, methinks, has an honest sort of language in which she loves to express herself, and which, though by no means preclusive of elegance, disdains that gaudiness of phrase and imagery which may be necessary to meaner subjects. Religion and virtue are not always assisted by their busiest friends; and there is an officiousness in some of their advocates which disappoints their purposes, and brings no honour to the cause. Of this number are those who are for ever introducing their favourite themes, however little they harmonize with the subjects they are upon; or, when their principal concern is with these sacred topics, are perpetually degrading them with low allusions and comparisons, and laying under contribution to them the whole of the natural world in a strain of symbolical enthusiasm. At the head of these raving philosophers, is the author of certain Meditations upon tombs and gardens; one who could find a resemblance between religion and a radish, or draw the fire of devotion out of cucumbers; to whom every thorn was the thorn of Glastonbury, and every bush contained a divinity; who could make up the ten commandments into a nosegay for the bosom, and squeeze morality for a dozen pages out of a green gooseberry. I shall suppose this gentleman, after a visit to Covent-garden market, detailing, in a letter to a lady, the reflections which occurred to him on so moving an occasion. 46 MY DEAR MADAM, "AFTER following my melancholy march among the silent dead, and my gayer progress among the garden flowers, you will not refuse me your gentle society in a moral stroll through this instructive scene. What a delicious confusion of tongues! One might imagine one's-self at the building of the Tower of Babel: but who can wonder, where there is so much to nourish, contemplation, and to prompt the tongue, that this most amiable part of the creation should exalt their tones, and give a loose to those laudable feelings which the objects before them inspire? What a rich and varied repast here offers itself to the thinking mind! In this view, the luxury of courts, and the appointments of princes, must yield up the palm to yon loaded jackass, that seems to smile significantly as he trots on with his vegetable burden. Approach, thou venerable beast! for in those symbolical baskets which grace your comely sides I read important lessons of life, and a vegetable kind of philosophy sprouts up in my view. Jog on, my gentle friend! and let it render your burden light, to reflect, that it is all instruction which you carry. In the mean time my thoughts shall ramble to the place whence you set out on your morning's progress, saluting the sun-rise with a bray of exultation. And why should not the kitchen-garden be as great a school of morality as the beds of the flaunting flowers, or the silent sepulchres of the dead? Or why should I injure the olitory, by seeming thus to doubt of its attractions? If the tomb and the grave present us with wholesome mementos of mortality and revival, may we not find as striking emblems of both, in those regions where what goes in a dead seed, comes out a living cabbage? Shall the vegetable tribes hide their diminished heads before the children of Flora, so long as the mouth shall maintain its due preeminence over the nose? so long, too, as the bean shall rival with its odours the choicest essences |