Be you my leader and
protector."
"Alas, my charming mistress," replied her admirer, "I would to God it
were in my power to inspire you with hope and fill you with courage. I
confess that while peril was at a distance, and I sat secure in the
tranquil vale, I received without distinction the doctrines of the
Druids, and bowed assent to their sacred lessons. But practice, my
Imogen, and the scenes of danger differ beyond conception from the ideas
we form of them in the calmness of repose. Something must be allowed to
the unruffled solitude of these sacred men, and something to the sublime
of poetry. Surely it is no part of comprehensive prudence to banish the
idea of those hazards that must be encountered, and to refuse to survey
the snares and the difficulties with which our path is surrounded.
Remember, my fair one, the malignant suspiciousness of your jailer, and
the comfortless darkness of the night."--
"Oh Edwin, and is this the strain in which you were wont to talk? Why
are you thus altered, and what means this inauspicious quick-sightedness
and alarm? We should indeed survey and prepare for danger, but we should
never suffer it to overwhelm us. The cause of integrity should never be
despaired of. What avails the suspicions of my keeper? The ever wakeful
eye of heaven can make them slumber.
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