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PAUL CLIFFORD.
ous gesture, and burst into a boyish exclamation of hilarity and delight.
"Whist, Captain!" said Ned, checking his own spirits with a mock air of gravity, "let us conduct ourselves like gentlemen; it is only your low fellows who get into such confoundedly high spirits; men of the world like us, should do every thing as if their hearts were broken."
"Melancholy[1] ever cronies with sublimity, and
- ↑ A maxim which would have pleased Madame de Staël, who thought that philosophy consisted in fine sentiments. In the Life of Lord Byron, just published by Mr. Moore, the distinguished biographer makes a similar assertion to that of the sage Augustus; "When did ever a sublime thought spring up in the soul that Melancholy was not to be found, however latent, in its neighbourhood?" Now, with due deference to Mr. Moore, this is a very sickly piece of nonsense, that has not even an atom of truth to stand on. "God said let there be light, and there was light!" we should like to know where lies the melancholy of that sublime sentence. "Truth," says Plato, "is the body of God, and Light is his shadow." In the name of common sense, in what possible corner, in the vicinity of that lofty Image, lurks the jaundiced face of this eternal bête noire of Mr. Moore's? Again, in that sublimest passage in the sublimest of the Latin poets, (Lucretius) which bursts forth in honour of Epicurus,[*] is there any thing redolent of sadness? On the contrary,
