ABSTRACT
THE a ecting narrative, however, which Ned had just heard; the innocence, the beauty, and the misfortunes of the lovely girl who was the subject of it, sunk deep into his mind, and for a long time banished sleep from his eyes. ‘Good heavens!’ he cried, ‘can a merciful Providence preside over this world, and su er such villany to go unpunished? Shall the virtuous and the meek sink under the rod of the oppressor, and shall there be no a er-reckoning to set these errors right? – Impossible! Truth is immutable, and virtue must at last be happy. Verily therefore there is a reward for the righteous – doubtless there is a God that judgeth the earth.’ Had the heart of this young man been disengaged, the lovely mourner whose sorrows he bewailed had certainly taken possession of it: as it was, he gave her all he had to bestow./ He gave her pity in an unbounded e usion; but for its sister, love, the purity of his soul could know but one object, and from her he never swerved. To her then he resigned his thoughts; and kissing the locket, which by night and by day was the inseparable companion of his bosom, he gave himself up to the pleasing contemplation of the charming Cecilia, and to the sweet hope that ere long he should actually behold those beauties which were scarce ever absent from his imagination. Sleep, who is in vain invoked by the unhappy, comes unasked to the cheerful and serene. e placid soul of Edward was a residence suited to the tranquil deity; and he took full possession of it till the morning fun, and little Charles tickling him with a straw, dissolved his power.
