Page:Glenarvon (Volume 1).djvu/173

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

a strangers dress. Because a woman who, like a mechanic, has turned her understanding, and hopes, and energies, into this course, remains uninjured by the storms around her, is she to be admired?—must she be exalted?" "It is not their occupation, but their character, you censure:—I fear, Calantha, it is their very virtue you despise." Oh no!" she replied, indignantly: "when real virtue, struggling with temptations of which these senseless, passionless creatures have no conception, clinging for support to Heaven, yet preserves itself uncorrupted amidst the vicious and the base, it deserves a crown of glory, and the praise and admiration of every heart. Not so these spiritless immaculate prejudiced sticklers for propriety. I do not love Sophia:—no, though she ever affords me a cold extenuation for my faults—though through life she considers me as a sort of friend whom fate has imposed upon her through the ties of con-