Maria was not permitted to walk in the garden; but sometimes,
from her window, she turned her eyes from the gloomy walls,
in which she pined life away, on the poor wretches who strayed along
the walks, and contemplated the most terrific of ruins--that of a
human soul. What is the view of the fallen column, the mouldering
arch, of the most exquisite workmanship, when compared with this
living memento of the fragility, the instability, of reason, and
the wild luxuriancy of noxious passions? Enthusiasm turned adrift,
like some rich stream overflowing its banks, rushes forward with
destructive velocity, inspiring a sublime concentration of thought.
Thus thought Maria--These are the ravages over which humanity must
ever mournfully ponder, with a degree of anguish not excited by
crumbling marble, or cankering brass, unfaithful to the trust of
monumental fame. It is not over the decaying productions of the
mind, embodied with the happiest art, we grieve most bitterly.
The view of what has been done by man, produces a melancholy, yet
aggrandizing, sense of what remains to be achieved by human intellect;
but a mental convulsion, which, like the devastation of an earthquake,
throws all the elements of thought and imagination into confusion,
makes contemplation giddy, and we fearfully ask on what ground we
ourselves stand.
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