Слике страница
PDF
ePub

They

take their last adieu of their deliverers-What a parting! what a scene! they crowded with their wives and children about St. PIERRE and his fellow prifoners. They embraced, they fell proftrate before them. groaned; they wept aloud; and the clamour of their mourning paffed the gates of the city, and was heard throughout the camp.

At length SAINT PIERRE and his fellow victims appeared under the conduct of Sir WALTER and his guard. All the tents of the English were inftantly emptied. The foldiers poured from all parts, and arranged themselves on each fide, to admire this little band of patriots as they paffed. They murmured their applause of that virtue which they could not but revere even in enemies; and they regarded those ropes which they had affumed about their necks, as enfigns of greater dignity than that of the British Garter.

As foon as they had reached the royal prefence, "MAUNY," (fays the king)," are thefe the principal "inhabitants of CALAIS?" "They are," (fays MAUNY): "they are not only the principal men of Calais; they "are the principal men of FRANCE, my lord, if virtue "has any fhare in the act of ennobling." "Were they $ delivered peaceably " (fays EDWARD); " was there

[merged small][ocr errors]

"no refiftance, no commotion among the people ?"

"Not

in the least, my lord. They are felf-delivered, felf-de"voted, and come to offer up their ineftimable heads, as an "ample equivalent for the ransom of thoufands.

[ocr errors]

The king, who was incenfed at the difficulty of the fiege, ordered them to be carried to immediate execution; nor could all the remonftrances of his courtiers divert him from his purpose.-But what neither a regard to his. own intereft and honour, the dictates of juftice, nor the feelings of humanity could effect, was accomplished by the influence of conjugal affection. The queen, who was then advanced in pregnancy, being informed of the particulars respecting the fix victims, flew into her hufband's prefence, threw herself on her knees before him, and, with tears in her eyes, befought him not to stain his character with an indelible mark of infamy, by committing fuch a barbarous deed. EDWARD could refuse nothing to a wife whom he fo tenderly loved, and efpecially in her fituation; and the queen, not satisfied with having faved the lives of the fix burghers, conducted them to her tent, where fhe applauded their virtue, regaled them plentifully, and having made them a present of money and clothes, fent them back to their fellowcitizens.

SECT.

SECT. LXV.

OF SYMPATHY.

PLEASURE and PAIN, fays FONTENELLE, which are two fentiments fo different in themselves, differ not much in their caufe. From the inftances of tickling, it appears, that the movement of pleasure, pushed a little too far, becomes pain; and that the movement of pain a little moderated be comes pleasure.

It is by fympathy that we enter into the concerns of others; that we are moved as they are moved, and are never fuffered to be indifferent fpectators of almost any thing which men can do or fuffer. For Sympathy must be confidered as a fort of fubftitution, by which we are put into the place of another man, and affected in many respects as he is affected. It is by this principle chiefly that poetry, painting, and the other arts of peace, transfuse their paffions from one breast to another, and are often capable of exciting a delight from wretchedness, misery, and even death itself. This taken as a fact, has been the cause of much reasoning. The fatisfaction has been commonly

commonly attributed, firft, to the comfort we receive in confidering that fo melancholy a story is no more than a fiction; and next, to the contemplation of our own freedom from the evils which we see represented. But I believe the nearer any tragedy approaches to reality, and the further it removes us from any idea of fiction, the more exquifite is the gratification. Do we not read the authentic hiftories of fcenes of this nature with as much pleasure as romances or poems, where the incidents are fictitious? The prosperity of no empire, nor the grandeur of no king, can so agreeably affect in the reading, as the ruin of the state of Macedon, and the distress of its unhappy prince. Such a catastrophe touches us in history as much as the destruction of Troy does in fable. Our delight, in cafes of this kind, is very greatly heightened, if the sufferer be fome excellent perfon, who finks under an unworthy fortune. SCIPIO and CATO are both virtuous characters; but we are more deeply affected by the violent death of the one, and the ruin of the great cause he adhered to, than with the deserved triumphs and uninterrupted profperity of the other; for every emotion of the mind produces delight, except when the fenfation preffes upon us too close.

Thus

Thus Lord CLARENDON, when he approaches towards the catastrophe of the royal party, fuppofes that his narration must then become infinitely difagreeable; and he hurries over the beheading of King CHARLES, without giving us one circumftance of his death. He confiders it as too horrid a scene to be contemplated with any fatisfaction, or even without the utmost pain and averfion. He himself, as well as the readers of that age, were too deeply concerned in the events, and felt a pain, which an historian and a reader of another age would regard as the most pathetic and interesting, and by confequence the most agreeable.

NATURE has formed us for activity, and the emotions of the foul are fources of delight, be the exciting caufes what they will: for I am convinced, we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others; for let the affection be what it will in appearance, if it does not make us fly from them, in this cafe I conceive we must have a delight or pleasure of fome fpecies or other. If this paffion was fimply painful, we fhould fhun, with the greatest care, all perfons and places that could excite fuch a fenfation. But the cafe is widely

different

« ПретходнаНастави »