There is no better antidote against entertaining too high an opinion of
others, than having an excellent one of ourselves at the very same time.
Miss Stubbs had indeed summoned up every assistance which art could
afford to beauty; but, alas! hoop, patches, frizzled locks, and a
new mantua of genuine French silk, were lost upon a young officer of
dragoons, who wore, for the first time, his gold-laced hat, jack-boots,
and broadsword. I know not whether, like the champion of an old ballad,
His heart was all on honour bent,
He could not stoop to love;
No lady in the land had power
His frozen heart to move;
or whether the deep and flaming bars of embroidered gold, which now
fenced his breast, defied the artillery of Cecilia's eyes; but every
arrow was launched at him in vain.
Yet did I mark where Cupid's shaft did light;
It lighted not on little western flower,
But on bold yeoman, flower of all the west,
Hight Jonas Culbertfield, the steward's son.
Craving pardon for my heroics (which I am unable in certain cases to
resist giving way to), it is a melancholy fact, that my history must
here take leave of the fair Cecilia, who, like many a daughter of Eve,
after the departure of Edward, and the dissipation of certain idle
visions which she had adopted, quietly contented herself with a
PIS-ALLER, and gave her hand, at the distance of six months, to the
aforesaid Jonas, son of the Baronet's steward, and heir (no unfertile
prospect) to a steward's fortune; besides the snug probability of
succeeding to his father's office.
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