With a whirling brain he now threw himself upon his pillow.--The music still sounded in his ears; he yet wound with airy step through the mazes of the dance; the familiar pressure of the laughing Violante was still warm on his hand; and he yet thrilled under the soft glances of the fair Italian. Till that day, he had never seen the manners of women so unzoned. He had never thought it possible, that any behaviour, freer than what he saw in the behaviour of his aunt and cousins, could excite other emotions in him, than those of dislike and disgust. He had admired the magic painting of Homer, Tasso, and Spenser, in their Circé, Armida, and Adessa; and he had trembled for the constancy of their respective heroes, before the allurements of such sorcery:--but he never expected to find similar trials in real life. He believed the fair tempters in romance, were indebted for the beautiful mask with which they concealed their mental deformity, entirely to the spells of the poet's genius. Vice, in living woman, he expected to find as odious in outward shape, as it is loathsome within. In short, in meditation, nothing is beautiful without goodness. The unbiassed heart, speculating upon these subjects, never unites admiration with any thing foreign to that character; and mistaking taste for principle, when it comes to the proof, too often substitutes the approbation of virtue for virtue itself. The discourses of Mrs. Coningsby fostered in the mind of her nephew this natural idea of the indivisibility of goodness and beauty. She described the empire of vice to be absolute, when it takes possession of a woman; and that its immediate effects were to obliterate every feminine grace, and transmute her at once into a monster of sin and disgust. Believing this, Louis was not prepared for the scene he had just witnessed. The pit, he expected to behold yawning like the mouth of hell, and so warning him from its approach, he saw overlaid with a verdure, brighter than all around: and no wonder his unwary feet trod the tempting spot, and found it treacherous. Footnote A: The reader is requested to call to mind, that this is the description of the Theatrical Profession, at that period of its history in this country, when the plays of Farquhar, and others of the same taste, occupied the stage; and were performed by persons who too nearly resembled in reality the characters they represented.--With Garrick and revived Shakspeare, morals and propriety were restored:--and at the head of our present British actresses who possess the "grace of delicate reserve, which is the indispensable work of a true English gentlewoman;" no one can fail to respect Mrs. Siddons. CHAP. IV.