n right; and who, without the real depravity of
heart and malignity of intention of Iago, judge as he does of the
character and productions of others.

ALDA.

Heaven bless me from such critics! yet if genius, youth, and innocence
could not escape unslurred, can I hope to do so? I pity from my soul the
persons you allude to--for to such minds there can exist few
uncontaminated sources of pleasure either in nature or in art.

MEDON.

Ay--"the perfumes of Paradise were poison to the Dives, and made them
melancholy."[3] You pity them, and they will sneer at you. But what have
we here?--"Characters of Imagination--Juliet--Viola;" are these romantic
young ladies the pillars which are to sustain your moral edifice? Are
they to serve as examples or as warnings for the youth of this
enlightened age?

ALDA.

As warnings, of course--what else?

MEDON.

Against the dangers of romance?--but where are they? "Vraiment," as B.
Constant says, "je ne vois pas qu'en fait d'enthousiasme, le feu soit a
la maison." Where are they--these disciples of poetry and romance, these
victims of disinterested devotion and believing truth, these unblown
roses--all conscience and tenderness--whom it is so necessary to guard
against too much confidence in others, and too little in
themselves--where are they?

ALDA.

Wandering in the Elysian fields, I presume, with the romantic young
gentlemen who are too generous, too zealous in defence of innocence, too
enthusiastic in their admiration of virtue, too violent in their hatred
of vice, too sincere in friendship, too faithful in love, too active and
disinterested in the cause of truth--

MEDON.

Very fair! But seriously, do you think it necessary to guard young
people, in this selfish and calculating age, against an excess of
sentiment and imagination? Do you allow no distinction between the
romance of exaggerated sentiment, and the romance of elevated thought?
Do _you_ bring cold water to quench the smouldering ashes of enthusiasm?
Methinks it is rather superfluous; and that another doctrine is needed
to withstand the heartless system of expediency which is the favorite
philosophy of the day. The warning you speak of may be gently hinted to
the few who are in danger of being misled by an excess of the generous
impulses of fancy and feeling; but need hardly, I think, be pro