Page:Modern literature (1804 Volume 1).djvu/277

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  • ceptor the chief good, yet, being in her

philosophy rather a peripatetic than a stoic, she considered it as the summum but not solum expetendum, the greatest but not the only blessing which life might afford. Though she was approaching Sycamore, still he was three hundred miles off: here was a very fine young man close by her; besides, soldiers might, in change of scene, be inconstant. She now recollected that there was some reason to suppose Sycamore rather forgetful. She was one of those prudential persons who preferred possession to reversion, and thought a bird in the hand worth two in the bush. But to justify the application of this proverb, it was necessary that the bird should actually be in hand, and not merely, because very near, supposed within reach. She had penetrated into the sentiments of our hero, the few minutes she saw him