with their demoralising effects existing in him: and from a conviction so salutary, his mental sight was at last led to behold the ineffable beauty of morality and virtue,—in short, the understanding of truth, united to the pure affections of the heart for the practice of it.
In proportion as the charms of sense and the things of time began to lose their predominating influence over him, with that train of fluctuating thought thence engendered, the intellectual principle assumed the ascendancy. Opening, as it were, the window of his soul, and casting a contemplative gaze around,—as the first dawn is seen to chase the obscure atmosphere of night, announcing the coming of a day serene and beautiful, so the first ray of truth shone in upon Douglas, preceding a reception infinitely more enlarged, bright, and exalted! He began to feel the real value of true wisdom; for as much as he deplored the time he had lost, his mind became elevated. His affliction for the loss of Rosilia (though he felt conscious he should never love but her) became softened when he reflected that it was thence he had been led to the review of himself, and might also date the first stage of his reformation. This idea, though enhancing to him her perfections, yet brought with it a degree of consolation, to which,
