ABSTRACT
The conversation of men of acknowledged virtue usually leaves an impression on every ingenuous mind, that does not speedily wear out; nor would it be possible for the most pro igate character, while he retained any sense or judgment at all, to be o en in the company of such without improving his morals, and in the end perhaps becoming a proselyte to that virtue which wants only to be known, to be adored. – Lord Rivers was far from being abandoned,/ though deeply immersed in fashionable dissipations: his honour was unimpeached; and though his sentiments on religion were not clear, or determined, yet he never went into the monstrous impiety of blaspheming the object of it, nor, where he had any controul, permitted it to be ridiculed in his presence: his morals too, though not strictly evangelical, were however such as did not disgrace him in the eye of the public; nor would the most orthodox bishop have refused him for a son-in-law, had he done his daughter the honour to address her. e sentiments of the exalted character with whom he spent the last evening sunk deep into his heart, and had already elevated his mind so far that he could not immediately relish the society at his club, and he actually entertained thoughts of withdrawing from it altogether. His constitution too began to feel the good e ects of his abstaining from it; for, as he now kept more regular hours, his spirits and his appetite returned. Instead of going to bed at four or ve in the morning,/ he now proposed to rise at that hour, and to take Ned with him in his phaeton, and make a little tour through those beautiful parts of the counties of Dublin and Wicklow, which lie in the neighbourhood of the metropolis. Captain Rivers was to accompany them on horseback. ey set out for the Dargle at about ve o’clock in the morning, and Lord Rivers had the pleasure to see the sun rise for the rst time since he was a school-boy. e novelty of this object had a wonderful e ect upon his spirits, though the Captain and Ned, to whom it was more familiar, felt nothing extraordinary, except the whetting of their appetite by the keenness of the morning air, in which sensation his lordship also partook, and experienced for the rst time in his recollection how excellent a sauce is hunger. ey arrived at a little village about eight, for they went purposely a circuitous road; and here his lordship found such tea, butter and bread, as he was astonished the
metropolis could not a ord;/ but which was indeed indebted for its superior excellence entirely to his ride. – From hence they got to the Dargle about ten: the season was not yet su ciently advanced to shew this charming dell in its full beauty; though perhaps what it wanted in the richness and variety of its foliage was more than made amends for by the redundance of its water. For the brook which murmurs through it in the summer, was now a torrent, tumbling over the rocks with irresistible rage, and roaring among the caverns, from whence it sent up a foamy mist, which marked its course, and gave a hoary majesty to the awful precipices that frowned above it. ough Ned was accustomed to the grandest views of nature in his own country, yet he could not help being struck with the noble scenery of the Dargle, which, adorned by the elegant taste of its proprietor, unites the beautiful to the sublime.
