BOOK VII. DESCRIPTIVE PIECES. CHA P. I. Sensibility. DEAR Sensibility! source inexhausted of all that's precious in our joys, or costly in our sorrows; thou chainest the 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' of words!--but that I feel some --mere pomp generous joys and generous cares beyond myself --all comes from thee, great, great Sensoriain 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 bleakest 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. 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. CHA P. I I. Liberty and Slavery. ISGUISE ISGUISE thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery! still thou art a bitter draught; and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of the, 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 iron--with 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 by my table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself 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 fellow-creatures born to no inheritance but Slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it nearer and that the multitude of sad groups in it, did but distract me-- me " 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 pic ture. 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 years the western breeze had not once fanned · his blood--he had seen no sun, no moon in all that time--nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice. His child ren- But here my heart began to bleed--and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait. He was sitting upon the ground upon a little straw, in the furthest corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair and bed a litte calendar of small sticks were laid at the head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed there--he had one of these little sticks in his hand, and with a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, then cast it down--shook his head, and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs, as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle--He gave a deep sigh--I saw the iron enter into his soul--I burst into tears--I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn. STERNE. CHA P. II I. Corporal Trim's Eloquence. ---My young master in London is dead, said Obediah- --Here is sad news, Trim, cried Susannah, wiping her eyes as Trim stepped into the kitchen--master Bobby is dead." I lament for him from my heart and my soul, said Trim, fetching a sigh--poor creature !--poor boy !--poor gentleman! He was alive last Whitsuntide, said the coachman.--Whitsuntide!--Alas! cried Trim, extending his right arm, and falling instantly in to the same attitude in which he read the sermon,--what is Whitsuntide, Jonathan, (for that was the coachman's name) or Shrovetide, or any tide or time past, to this? Are we not here now, continued the corporal, (striking the end of his stick perpendicularly upon the floor, so as to give an idea of health an stability) and are we not (dropping his hat upon the ground) gone--in a moment !--It was in-. finitely striking! Susannah burst into a flood of tears--We are not stocks and stones--Jonathan, Obediah, the cook-maid, all melted-The foolish fat scullion herself, who was scoùring a fish-kettle upon her knees, was foused with it.--The whole kitchen crouded about the corporal. «Are we not here now, --and gone in a moment? » -- There was nothing in the sentence--it was one of your self-evident truths we have the advantage of hearing every day; and if Trim had not trusted more to his hat than his head, he had made nothing at all of it. c « Are we not here now, continued the corporal, and are we not» (dropping his hat plump upon the ground--and pausing before he pronounced the word) « gone! in a mo«ment?» The descent of the hat was as if a heavy lump of clay had been kneade into the crown of it.--Nothing could have expressed the sentiment of mortality, of which it was the type and forerunner, like it; his hand seemed to vanish from under it, it fell dead, the corporal's eye fixed upon it, as upon a corpse,-and Susannach burst into a flood of tears. STERNE. CHAP. I V. The Man of Ross. ALL our praises why should Lords engross? Rise, honest Muse! and sing the Man of Ross : brow? From the dry rock who bade the waters flow, But clear and artless, pouring through the plain gate: |