CHAPTER XV. BELARIUS, GUIDERIUS, AND ARVIRAGUS. BEL. A GOODLY day! not to keep house, with such Whose roof's as low as ours: see! boys, this gate Instructs you how t'adore the heav'ns; and bows you To morning's holy office. Gates of monarchs Are arch'd so high, that giants may jet through, And keep their impious turbans on, without Good-morrow to the sun. Hail, thou fair Heav'n! We house i' th' rock, yet use thee not so hardly As prouder livers do. Consider, BEL. Now for our mountain sport, up to yond' hill, Such gain the cap of him that makes them fine, GUID Out of your proof your speak; we, poor, unfledg'd, Have never wing'd from view o' th' nest; nor know If quiet life be best; sweeter to you That have a sharper known; well corresponding With your stiff age: but unto us, it is ARV. What should we speak of When we are old as you? When we shall hear BEL. How you speak! Did you but know the city's usuries, And felt them knowingly; the art o' th' court, The fear's as bad as falling; the toil o' th' war, I' th' name of fame and honour; which dies i' th' search, And hath as oft a sland'rous epitaph, As record of fair act; nay, many times, Doth ill deserve, by doing well: what's worse, Must courtesy at the censure.-Oh, boys, this story Whose boughs dvi bend with fruit. But, in one night, Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves; GUID. Uncertain favour! BEL. My fault being nothing, as I have told you oft, But that two villains (whose false oaths prevail'd Before my perfect honour) swore to. Cymbeline I was confed'rate with the Romans; so Follow'd my banishment; and, these twenty years, This rock and these demesnes have been my world; The fore-end of my time.-But, up to the mountains! And we will fear no poison, which attends In place of greater state. I'll meet you in the valleys. SHAKSPEARE. BOOK VII. DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. CHAPTER I. SENSIBILITY. DEAR Sensibility! source inexhausted of all that's precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows! thu chainest thy martyr down upon his bed of straw, and it is thou who liftest him up to Heaven. Eternal Fountain of our feelings! It is here I trace thee, and this is thy "divinity which stirs within me:" not, that in some sad and sickening moments, my soul shrinks back upon herself, and startles at destruction'--mere pomp of words!--but that I feel some generous joys and generous cares beyond myself--all comes from thee, great, great Sensorium of the world! which vibrates, if a hair of our head but falls upon the ground, in the remotest desert of thy creation. Touched, with thee, Eugenius draws my curtain when I languish; hears my tale of symptoms, and blames the weather for the disorder of his nerves. Thou givest a portion of it sometimes to the roughest peasant who traverses the bleak est mountains.-He finds the lacerated lamb of another's flock. This moment I beheld him leaning with his head against his crook, with piteous inclination looking down upon it-Oh! had I come one moment sooner!-it bleeds to death-his gentle heart bleeds with it. L Peace to thee, generous swain! I see thou walkest off with anguish-but thy joys shall balance it; for happy is thy cottage, and happy is the sharer of it, and happy are the lambs which sport about you. STERNE. CHAPTER II. LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. DISGUISE thyself as thou wilt, still, SLAVERY! still then art a bitter draught; and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. It is thou, LIBERTY! thrice sweet and gracious goddess, whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till Nature herself shall change-no tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chymic power turn thy sceptre into ironwith thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious Heaven! grant me but health, thou great Bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion; and shower down thy mitres, if it seems good unto thy divine Providence, upon those heads which are aching for them. Pursuing these ideas, I sat down close to my table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to my self the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and so I gave full scope to my imagination. I was going to begin with the millions of my fellowcreatures born to no inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I coukl not bring it nearer me, and that the multitude of sad did but distract me→→→→→ groups in it I took a single captive, and having first shut him up in his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door to take his picture. I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish in thirty |