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virtuous, and attached to truth; we go down with the current of the paffions, and let bent and humour determine us, in oppofition to what is decent and fit: if in a state fo unfriendly as this is, to the heavenly and divine life, where folly and vice are for ever ftriving to introduce diforder into our frame, and it is difficult indeed, to preserve, in any degree, an integrity of character, and peace within:-if, in fuch a fituation, instead of labouring to destroy all the feeds of envy, pride, ill-will, and impatience, and endeavouring to establish and maintain a due inward œconomy and harmony, by paying a perpetual regard to truth, that is, to the real circumstances and relation of things in which we ftand,to the practice of reafon in its juft extent, according to the capacities and natures of every being; we do, on the contrary, difregard the moral faculty, and become a mere fyftem of paffions and affections, without any thing at the head of them to govern them;

what then can be expected, but deficiency and deformity, degeneracy and guilty practice? This was the cafe of Euftace and Bellinda. Paffion and own-will were fo near and intimate to him, that he feemed to live under a deliberate refolution not to be governed by reafon. He would wink at the light he had, ftruggle to evade conviction, and make his mind a chaos and a bell, Bellinda, at the

fame

fame time, was too quick, too vain, and too often forgot to take into her idea of a good character, a continual fubordination of the lower powers of our nature to the faculty of reason. This produced the following scene.

Maria (fifter to Bellinda) returned one evening with a five-guinea fan fhe had bought that afternoon, and was tedious in praifing fome Indian figures that were painted in it. Mrs. Euftace, who had a tafte for pictures, faid, the colours were fine, but the images ridiculous and defpicable; and her fifter must certainly be a little Indian-mad, or her fondnefs for every thing from that fide of the globe could not be fo exceffive and extravagant as it always appeared to be.

To this Maria replied with fome heat, and Euftace very peremptorily infifted upon it, that he was right. With pofitiveness and paffion, he magnified the beauties of the figures in the fan, and with violence reflected fo feverely on the good judgment Bellinda, upon all occafions, pretended to, (as he expreffed it) that at laft, her imagination was fired, and, with too much eagerness, she not only ridiculed the opinion of her fister, in refpect of fuch things, but fpoke with too much warmth against the defpotic tempers of felf-fufficient husbands.

To reverence and obey (fhe faid) was not required by any obligation, when men were B 4

unrea

unreasonable, and paid no regard to a wife's domestic and personal felicity; nor would she give up her understanding to his weak determination, fince cuftom cannot confer an authority which nature has denied: It cannot licenfe a husband to be unjust, nor give right to treat her as a flave. If this was to be the cafe in matrimony, and women were to fuffer under conjugal vexations, as he did, by his fenfeless arguments every day, they had better bear the reproach and folitude of antiquated virginity, and be treated as the refufe of the world, in the character of old maids,

This too lively, though juft fpeech, enraged Euftace to the laft degree, and from a fury, he funk in a few minutes into a total fullen filence, and fat for half an hour, while Iftayed, cruelly determining, I fuppofe, her fad doom. Bellinda foon faw fhe had gone too far, and did all that could be done to recover him from the fit he was in. She fmiled, cried, afked pardon; but 'twas all in vain. Every charm had loft its power, and he seemed no longer man. When this beauty ftood weeping by his chair, and faid, My love, forgive me, as it was in rallery only I fpoke, and let our pleasures and pains be hereafter honeftly fhared; I remember the tears burst from my eyes, and in that condition I went away. It was frightful to look at Eulace,

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as he fhook, started, and wildly stared; and the diftrefs his Lady appeared in, was enough to make the most ftony heart bleed: it was a difmal scene.

This happened at nine at night, and at ten Orlando withdrew to bed, without speaking one word, as I was informed. Soon after he lay down, he pretended to be fast, afleep, and his wife rejoicing to find him fo, as the believed, in hopes that nature's foft nurse would lull the active inftruments of motion, and calm the raging operations of his mind: the refigned herfelf to flumbers, and thought to abolish for that night every difagreeable fenfation of pain: but no fooner did this furious man find that his charming wife was really afleep, than he plunged a dagger into her breaft. The monster repeated the ftrokes, while fhe had life to fpeak to him, in the tendereft manner, and conjured him, in regard to his own happinefs, to let her live, and not fink himself into perdition here and hereafter, by her death. In vain the prayed; he gave her a thousand wounds, and I faw her the next morning a bloody, mangled corpfe, in the great house in Smithfield, which stood at a diftance from the street, with a wall before it, and an avenue of high trees up to the door; and not in the country, as the Tatler fays.

Euftace

Euftace fled, when he thought he was expiring, (though the lived for an hour after, to relate the cafe to her maid, who heard her groan, and came into her room) and went from Dublin to a little lodge he had in the country, about twenty miles from town. The magiftrates, in a fhort time, had information where he was; and one John Manfel, a conftable, a bold and ftrong man, undertook, for a reward, to apprehend him. To this purpose, he fet out immediately, with a cafe of piftols, and a hanger, and lurked feveral days and nights in the fields, before he could find an opportunity of coming at him; for Euftace lived by himself in the house, well fecured by ftrong doors and bars, and only went out now and then, to an alehouse, the mafter of which was his friend. Near it, at last, about break of day, Manfel chanced to find him, and, upon his refufing to be made a prifoner, and cocking a piftol to fhoot the officer of justice, both their piftols were discharged at once, and they both dropt down dead men. Euftace was fhot in the heart, and the conftable in the brain. They were both brought to Dublin on one of the little low-back'd cars there used and I was one of the boys that followed the car, from the beginning of James-freet, the out-fide of the city, all thro' the town. Euftace's head hung dangling

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