'I guess 'twas frightful there to see
A lady so richly clad as she,
Beautiful exceedingly.'
For, if it be terrible to one young lady to find another under a tree
at midnight, it must, _a fortiori_, be much more terrible to a young
gentleman to find a young lady in his study at that hour. If the
logical consecutiveness of this conclusion be not manifest to my
readers, I am sorry for their dulness, and must refer them, for more
ample elucidation, to a treatise which Mr Flosky intends to write, on
the Categories of Relation, which comprehend Substance and Accident,
Cause and Effect, Action and Re-action.
Scythrop, therefore, either was or ought to have been frightened; at
all events, he was astonished; and astonishment, though not in itself
fear, is nevertheless a good stage towards it, and is, indeed, as it
were, the half-way house between respect and terror, according to Mr
Burke's graduated scale of the sublime.[7]
'You are surprised,' said the lady; 'yet why should you be surprised?
If you had met me in a drawing-room, and I had been introduced to
you by an old woman, it would have been a matter of course: can the
division of two or three walls, and the absence of an unimportant
personage, make the same object essentially different in the
perception of a philosopher?'
'Certainly not,' said Scythrop; 'but when any class of objects
has habitually presented itself to our perceptions in invariable
conjunction with particular relations, then, on the sudden appearance
of one object of the class divested of those accompaniments, the
essential difference of the relation is, by an involuntary process,
transferred to the object itself, which thus offers itself to our
perceptions with all the strangeness of novelty.'
'You are a philosopher,' said the lady, 'and a lover of liberty. You
are the author of a treatise, called "Philosophical Gas; or, a Project
for a General Illumination of the Human Mind."'
'I am,' said Scythrop, delighted at this first blossom of his renown.
'I am a stranger in this country,' said the lady; 'I have been but a
few days in it, yet I find myself immediately under the necessity of
seeking refuge from an atrocious persecution. I had no friend to whom
I could apply; and, in the midst of my difficulties, accident threw
your pamphlet in my way. I saw that I had, at least, one kindred mind
in this nation, and determined to apply to you.'
'And what would you have me do?' said Scythrop, more and more amazed,
and not a little perplexed.
'I would have you,' said the young lady, 'assist me in finding some
place of retreat, where I can remain concealed from the indefatigable
search that is being made for me. I have been so nearly caught once or
twice already, that I cannot confide any longer in my own ingenuity.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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