Here's to the maiden of bashful sixteen, to the great amusement of Darley, who had not enjoyed an evening's English society for several years-if that can be called society, where noise and ribaldry were echoed by voluptuousness and indecency. The night was spent in a way Harolde wished to forget when he came to his senses, and which Freeman blushed to think of before the sun gave sufficient light to shew a blush on his countenance. Harolde having given the reins to his passions, let them riot uncontrolled, and extended his vagaries to many more days and nights than one, the governor and the nuns keeping him at Trapani a whole month after he had engaged a vessel to carry him away. Darley was a bachelor, and a dissipated VOL. III. с one; one; and in his company Harolde became depraved, and Freeman quite corruptedso true it is, that "Evil communication corrupts good manners." In time Harolde assumed courage to depart, accompanied with vain regrets, self-disapprobation, and a constitution shaken by intemperance. I again beg the reader not to condemn Harolde for this conduct; he was no hero; this is a romance of real life, and will not admit of a hero to carry it on; the per sons in it are neither superior to human frailties, or below the imperfections of man in his most corrupt state. "Be to their faults a little blind, Be to their virtues very kind," and you will find more to please than condemn. Harolde embarked in a Venetian treba culo, culo, not well fitted to sustain the buffetings of a tempest; and on the second day, one assailed them, "As if the wrathful demons of the wind, At once the dreadful magazine disclos'd." Harolde refused to take shelter in the port of Malta, and the master bore away for Corfu, or any of the Ionian islands they could reach. Night overtook them, with rain, thunder, and lightning; and the billows made a breach over the vessel with resistless power. Amidst the terrors of the mariners, who were all rank cowards, Harolde found time to jest, and proposed throwing Freeman overboard, as a propitiation to Neptune and Boreas; not doubting, he said, "but like Camoens, he would swim to land, with his book dry C 2 over over his head; and for himself, he would tune his lyre, like Arion, and charm the dolphins to give him a ride into port." Harolde often said he set no value upon life, and he always shewed a contempt for death, which either arose from indifference as to his future existence, or a moral certainty that he must exchange this being for a better. We will charitably suppose the latter, from the strong sense and enlightened understanding he possessed. The ship was driven past Corfu, Zante, and Cephalonia, up the Gulf of Venice, and the sickly sun discovered them close to the island of Ithaca. "A shore where shelves and hidden rocks abound, And death in secret ambush lurks around." All their efforts to weather the land on either side were useless; every stitch of canvas canvas was no sooner spread, than it was blown from the yards; the rocks were tremendously high, and the sea dashing against their base, sent the whitened spray far above the inaccessible cliffs. Harolde thanked God that no one he loved was going to suffer with him; and he parted with Freeman, as Brutus did with Cassius, " for ever and for ever." Poor Freeman could have died better before he visited Trapani, which made his conscience rather uneasy; but he had philo sophy to bear with resignation a fate which seemed unavoidable. The shore was crowded with people, who run to and fro, but could render no assistance; and the master, quitting the helm, resigned himself to despair, and called on the Virgin most piteously for help. |