from weeping, fo powerfully did he feel, by the force of fympathy, the pleasure exquisite almost to pain, which they felt by their animated interview upon their being at liberty to difplay new proofs of their patriotic zeal.

Soon after this junction between the two brothers, Alcander and Cephifus were warmly employed in two parts of the field of battle with fome of the best troops in the Perfian army. Alcander was fo fortunate with his little corps, that he put his adverfaries to flight, and took a lady, who had accompanied the commanding officer, prisoner.

Alcander was very much pleased with having routed any part of that army by which Xerxes, prefuming upon numbers,' thought, no doubt, in the pride of his heart, that the Greeks, who were daring enough to appear in arms against him, would be all cut to pieces: he was additionally pleased with the capture he had made. With the beauty of Celimene, indeed, he was tranfported to fuch a degree that he could not mention her without having recourse to the most rapturous expreffions. So happy. a mixture of beauty and grace, of dignity and ease, he had not, even among his own country-women, ever feen before; and as he was of an amorous complexion, her perfonal charms operated upon him in a viclent manner. To increase the transports which

he

1

he felt upon the occafion, he beheld in her rather a fatisfaction than a concern at her captivity. This seeming paradox must be explained.

... Celimene, the only daughter of a man in a very humble sphere, was all his comfort: he loved her with an unusual share of parental affection, and her behaviour to him, from her earliest infancy, left him no room to question the fincerity of her filial attachment to him. Her whole ftudy, indeed, was to make her father's life happy, and she succeeded so well, that he derived from her dutiful attentions much the greatest part of the rural felicity which he enjoyed in his lowly cottage, refpected by all who knew his worth (though doomed by fortune to labour for a fubfiftence) for the innocence of his life, and the integrity, of his conduct. The birth of his daughter gave the poor peasant small pleasure, as he had wished for a fon, and as her mother died in bringing her into the world; but as she grew up, fhe not only rendered herself perfectly agreeable, she made herself also really useful to him. As fhe was exceedingly handfome, however, he fometimes fighed to think of the temptations to which she would be exposed, should he be fnatched fuddenly from her by the omnipotent arm of death; but he drew confolation on the other hand, from the difcretion which fhe discovered in all her actions, and from

her

her never appearing to be cenfurably conscious of her beauty; fo that he was, upon the whole, more inclined to believe, that fhe would be always gol verned by prudence, than do any thing to blast her honour. To thofe among the libertines of the age who happen to dip into this artless tale, this paffage may, perhaps, afford merriment, and prompt them to be as witty as they can upon the honour of a country girl; but fuch a girl has furely a character to fupport as well as the daughter of a peer; and if every female, both in high and low life, would look upon a good name as the immediate jewel of their fouls,

"Men would adore them,

"And all the business of their lives be loving."

Thoroughly happy in her humble fituation, Celimene, though she had been often tempted by fome of the licentious men of fashion in her father's neighbourhood, to put them in poffeffion of her beauty, upon their own terms, would never make. any deviations from the paths of virtue, in which her father had laudably trained her. Never dazzled by the splendour of their offers, she rejected them all with a commendable difdain; and by fo doing fhe rendered her difhonourable admirers almost mad with vexation and pride; but fhe, at the fame time,

fhone

fhone with redoubled luftre in the eyes of all thofe who confider the union between beauty and virtue in a female form, as "a confummation devoutly to "be wished:" for without that union, the man who takes a Venus to his arms, may be justly apprehenfive of every young Mars who comes in his way.

On his march with the Perfian troops under his command towards the plains of Marathon, Harpagus could not, without deviating unneceffarily from the direct road, avoid paffing within fight of that cottage in which the above-mentioned beauty lived in a state of the pureft fimplicity. The fight of this cottage would have been no object of this general's attention, had he not beheld, at the entrance of it, a female figure, the most alluring, in spite of the rufticity of her attire, which he had ever met with. The meanness of her drefs could not diveft her perfon of the power of striking whenever it appeared. Harpagus felt its force to fuch a degree that he could not restrain himself from halting, in order to folicit her company in his expedition.

Celimene, happening at that moment to be quite alone, and waiting impatiently for the return of her father from the nearest city, on whofe account fhe endured no fmall uneafinefs, fearful of his having been detained from his homely, but happy dwelling, by fome difagreeable accident, was very much em

barraffed

barraffed and confused at the approach of a fine young fellow, extremely pleasing in his person, and by his habiliments evidently a man of importance in the Perfian army. The nearer he approached, the greater was her confufion; her eyes were fo powerfully attracted at the fame time by the pompousness of his appearance, that she had not sufficient prefence of mind to retire, in order to fhun an interview which the dreaded. Harpagus, having advanced near enough to take a very accurate survey of her perfonal charms, was ftill more inflamed than he had been by a diftant view of them, and, with all the politeness of a fatrap, made her an offer which few English girls in her fituation would have refused: nor would fhe have rejected them, had her admirer given her reason to believe that his generofity proceeded from the most difinterested motives. As foon as the found that his magnificent offers were only intended as a bribe to seduce her from the paths of virtue, the felt her foul fuperior to all his glittering temptations, and fled from his prefence. Impelled by love-or rather by a paffion which deferves not that name-he followed; and perceiving, with the utmost pleasure, that there was not a creature except herself in the cottage, he forced her from it, regardless of her intreaties and her prayer, doubly affecting by the tears with which they were accompanied.