of old, which was generated between
the sunbeams from heaven and the slime of earth.

ALDA.

No such thing. Rather of the powerful and beautiful fairy Melusina, who
had every talent and every charm under heaven but once in so many hours
was fated to become a serpent. No, I return to my first position. It is
not by exposing folly and scorning fools, that we make other people
wiser, or ourselves happier. But to soften the heart by images and
examples of the kindly and generous affections--to show how the human
soul is disciplined and perfected by suffering--to prove how much of
possible good may exist in things evil and perverted--how much hope
there is for those who despair--how much comfort for those whom a
heartless world has taught to contemn both others and themselves, and so
put barriers to the hard, cold, selfish, mocking, and levelling spirit
of the day--O would I could do this!

MEDON.

On the same principle, I suppose, that they have changed the treatment
of lunatics; and whereas they used to condemn poor distempered wretches
to straw and darkness, stripes and a strait waistcoat, they now send
them to sunshine and green fields, to wander in gardens among birds and
flowers, and soothe them with soft music and kind flattering speech.

ALDA.

You laugh at me! perhaps I deserve it.

MEDON.

No, in truth; I am a little amused, but most honestly attentive: and
perhaps wish I could think more like you. But to proceed: I allow that
with this view of the case, you could not well have chosen your
illustrations from real life; but why not from history?

ALDA.

As far as history could guide me, I have taken her with me in one or two
recent publications, which all tend to the same object. Nor have I here
lost sight of her; but I have entered on a land where she alone is not
to be trusted, and may make a pleasant companion but a most fallacious
guide. To drop metaphor: history informs us that such things have been
done or have occurred; but when we come to inquire into motives and
characters, it is the most false and partial and unsatisfactory
authority we can refer to. Women are illustrious in history, not from
what they have been in themselves, but generally in proportion to the
mischief they have done or caused. Those characters best fitted to my
purpose are precisely those of which history never heard, or disdai