ginning
at home in this case, urged me to our mutual relief, it would have been
cruel indeed to have suffered the youth to burst with straining, when
the remedy was so obvious and so near at hand.

Accordingly we took a bench, whilst Emily and her spark, who belonged it
seems to the sea, stood at the side-board, drinking to our good voyage:
for, as the last observed, we were well under weigh, with a fair wind up
channel, and full-freighted; nor indeed were we long before we finished
our trip to Cythera, and unloaded in the old haven; but, as the
circumstances-did not admit of much variation, I shall spare you the
description.

At the same time, allow me to place you here an excuse I am conscious of
owing you, for having, perhaps, too much affected the figurative style;
though surely, it can pass nowhere more allowable than in a subject
which is so properly the province of poetry, nay, is poetry itself,
pregnant with every flower of imagination and loving metaphors, even
were not the natural expressions, for respects of fashion and sound,
necessarily forbidden.

Resuming now my history, you may please to know, that what with a
competent number of repetitions, all in the same strain (and, by the
bye, we have a certain natural sense that those repetitions are very
much to the taste), what with a circle of pleasures delicately varied,
there was not a moment lost to joy all the time we staid there,
till late in the night we were re-escorted home by our esquires, who
delivered us safe to Mrs. Cole, with generous thanks for our company.

This too was Emily's last adventure in our way: for scarce a week after,
she was, by an accident too trivial to detail to you the particulars,
found out by her parents, who were in good circumstances, and who had
been punished for their partiality to their son, in the loss of him,
occasioned by a circumstance of their over indulgence to his appetite;
upon which the so long engrossed stream of fondness, running violently
in favour of this lost and inhumanly abandoned child whom if they had
not neglected enquiry about, they might long before have recovered, they
were now so over-joyed at the retrieval of her, that, I presume, it made
them much less strict in examining the bottom of things: for they seemed
very glad to take for granted, in the lump, every thing that the grave
and decent Mrs. Cole was pleased to pass upon them; and soon afterwards
sent her, from the country, handsome acknowled