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DUTY AND INCLINATION.
151

extension of her purse her affection became contracted.

How seldom does the human mind preserve inviolable its honest independence! though contemning the principle, we are insensibly hurried along to bow with the multitude. Thus, while with indignant and philosophic severity we would denounce, on the one hand, those fortunate, yet capricious and weak individuals, who by receiving encourage the servile adulation of the gaping indigent, we see no less reason, on the other, for condemning as highly criminal those worshipers of fortune, who, by flattery and falsehood, inflate the vanity of their fellow mortals.

De Brooke, of independent mind and principle, scorned the idea of being one of those fawning sycophants. It was the resentment of his father, perpetuated through so long an interval, which might have occasioned him his chief mortification, had he not brought himself to submit to a destiny he could not avert. The sweet sunbeam of content, therefore, might long have shone upon his dwelling had discretion guided his actions, had he consulted his reason; and had he not allowed his inclination to triumph over his duty.

The new impressions awakened by his attachment to Angelina, his intercourse with her hea-