Page:Nightmare Abbey (1818).djvu/109

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98
NIGHTMARE ABBEY.

would make an Arctic ocean of the human mind, if the more humane pursuits of philosophy and science did not keep alive the better feelings and more valuable energies of our nature.

The Honorable Mr. Listless.

You are pleased to be severe upon our fashionable belles lettres.

Mr. Asterias.

Surely not without reason, when pirates, highwaymen, and other varieties of the extensive genus Marauder, are the only beau idéal of the active, as splenetic and railing misanthropy is of the speculative, energy. A gloomy brow and a tragical voice seem to have been, of late, the characteristics of fashionable manners; and a morbid, withering, deadly, antisocial sirocco, loaded with moral and political despair,