e worthless. Almost
all men have been taught to call life a passage, and themselves the
travellers. The similitude still may be improved when we observe that
the good are joyful and serene, like travellers that are going towards
home; the wicked but by intervals happy, like travellers that are going
into exile.'

My compassion for my poor daughter, overpowered by this new disaster,
interrupted what I had farther to observe. I bade her mother support
her, and after a short time she recovered. She appeared from that time
more calm, and I imagined had gained a new degree of resolution;
but appearances deceived me; for her tranquility was the langour of
over-wrought resentment. A supply of provisions, charitably sent us by
my kind parishioners, seemed to diffuse new cheerfulness amongst the
rest of the family, nor was I displeased at seeing them once more
sprightly and at ease. It would have been unjust to damp their
satisfactions, merely to condole with resolute melancholy, or to burthen
them with a sadness they did not feel. Thus, once more, the tale went
round and the song was demanded, and cheerfulness condescended to hover
round our little habitation.

CHAPTER 24

Fresh calamities

The next morning the sun rose with peculiar warmth for the season; so
that we agreed to breakfast together on the honeysuckle bank: where,
while we sate, my youngest daughter, at my request, joined her voice to
the concert on the trees about us. It was in this place my poor Olivia
first met her seducer, and every object served to recall her sadness.
But that melancholy, which is excited by objects of pleasure, or
inspired by sounds of harmony, sooths the heart instead of corroding it.
Her mother too, upon this occasion, felt a pleasing distress, and wept,
and loved her daughter as before. 'Do, my pretty Olivia,' cried she,
'let us have that little melancholy air your pappa was so fond of, your
sister Sophy has already obliged us. Do child, it will please your old
father.' She complied in a manner so exquisitely pathetic as moved me.

When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray,
What charm can sooth her melancholy, What art can wash her guilt away?

The only art her guilt to cover, To hide her shame from every eye, To
give repentance to her lover, And wring his bosom--is to die.

As she was concluding the last stanza, to which an interruption in
her voice from sorrow gave peculiar softness, the appe