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DON JUAN.

[Painted by Richter.]

[Engraved by Rolls.]

In the mean time Don Juan is not tranquil :

"Young Juan wandered by the glassy brooks,

Thinking unutterable things; he threw

Himself at length within the leafy nooks,

Where the wild branch of the cork forest grew."

Sometimes he turned to look upon the rustling leaves of his book; but, to whatever subject of meditation he directed his thoughts, the remembrance of Donna Julia's eyes distracted his attention, and disturbed his philosophy.

"He pored upon the leaves and on the flowers,

And heard a voice in all the winds; and then

He thought of wood-nymphs and immortal bowers,
And how the goddesses came down to men."

Had he, sagely observes the poet, been well flogged through the third or fourth form of a public school, his daily tasks had given him sufficient occupation to have prevented such dangerous reveries. 'Tis droll to see his lordship and good Dr. Watts hit on the same opinion:

"For Satan finds some mischief still

For idle hands to do."

"The progress of this passion is traced with consummate knowledge of the human heart; and, but for the seductive colouring with which every incident is embellished, and the air of levity and perfect contempt of all consequences, with which

DON JUAN.

the delusions of passion and the approaches of crime are treated, it might be put into the hands of youth as a moral warning, to guard against the first approaches of irregular desires, and that sophistry of sentiment, by which our impurest wishes and designs are frequently veiled and disguised even from ourselves, till the moment when their gratification seems within our reach. It is then that the mask falls off, and the sophistry, which had seduced, acquires the new duty of apologising for, and excusing, what an unsophisticated view of our own hearts ought to have prevented."

On the discovery of their attachment Juan is sent on his travels, and Julia expiates her crime in a convent.

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