Page:Duty and Inclination. Volume 3.pdf/104

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102
DUTY AND INCLINATION.

to describe, of which the pure in heart can form no just conception.

Rosilia, on the contrary, loved to image to herself the immortal soul, not as in its perishable tenement of clay, the mere mortal covering which at death is consigned to its kindred dust; but the soul, or spirit, such as it is when it has burst those fetters that confined it here, and thus emancipated, soars beyond its terrestrial boundaries into spheres of supreme bliss, an element congenial with its immaterial nature, its spiritual state of being. It was of immortality, regeneration, the philosophy of the mind, infinity increasing in perfection, and endless perpetuity, upon which she had been taught to meditate, and loved to dwell, and which often drew from her heart the devout and holy sigh of unfeigned gratitude and love.

Such respectively were the distinctly opposite ideas of Sir Howard and Rosilia, as each mutely contemplated the awful scene before them, and which led each insensibly to speak of those latter moments to which all must arrive—Rosilia was transported in heavenly thought to the paradise of angels; while Sir Howard, on the contrary, talked but of the dissolution of matter, when beauty, falling into atoms, would exhibit but a terrific and ghastly spectacle!

Meanwhile Melliphant, in the front apartment, finding that Sir Howard had engrossed Rosilia, and having a great desire to approach, dared not venture to offend his rival by encroaching upon his prerogative. Whilst thus keeping apart, he endured, almost